92. St. Thomas the “soft-hearted”
92. ST. THOMAS THE “SOFT-HEARTED”
If St. Thomas, like his God, is hard as a diamond, is he also soft?
[F]our proximate effects may be ascribed to love, viz. melting (at its presence), enjoyment (of its presence), languor (sadness at its absence), and fervor (zeal to make it present).
Of these, the first is melting, which is opposed to freezing. For things that are frozen are closely bound together so as to be hard to pierce; but it belongs to love that the appetite is fitted to receive the good which is loved inasmuch as the object loved is in the lover, as stated above. Consequently the freezing or hardening of the heart is a disposition incompatible with love, while melting denotes a softening of the heart, whereby the heart shows itself to be ready for the entrance of the beloved (I-II,28,5).
St. Thomas is surprisingly poetic, mystical, and even romantic here. He knew the chivalric love poetry of the High Middle Ages, and took from it what he thought was profoundly true about love. (There is hardly any tradition in which St. Thomas did not find something true and worthwhile.)
Every lover experiences something that feels like the melting of the heart at the presence of the beloved, or even at the thought of the beloved. As truth makes heads and wills hard, love makes hearts soft.
“Heart” here refers especially to deep feeling or emotion. “Heart” means not only (1) intuitive reason (“the heart has its reasons”) and (2) will but also (3) a certain kind of emotion that distinguishes us from the animals. Animals have many modes of awareness, or thinking, or consciousness, which they share with us: sensation, cleverness, intuition; but not reason. Animals also have something like wills (e.g., a “strong-willed” horse) as we do; but not free choice and moral responsibility. And animals have many human emotions, perhaps even compassion and affection. But not romantic love, which is personal. No animal can be Romeo.
A complete saint is sanctified in all aspects of human nature, not just reason and will but emotion as well. (And, of course, the body too: it is “the temple of the Holy Spirit”: 1 Cor 6:19.)
Saints are like Jesus, emotionally as well as intellectually and volitionally. And Jesus is both hard as a diamond and soft as a whisper, therefore saints are too.
It may sound strange to call St. Thomas “softhearted” right after calling him a zealot. But Christ, and therefore Christians, and the Christian life, are all full of wonderful paradoxes like this. Like the universe.
Of course, “soft-hearted” may mean (a) sentimentalism, (b) cowardice, (c) naïveté, or (d) lack of intelligence, as well as the “melting” of love; but love, at its height, is the opposite of these four other things. Hearts are soft when they are malleable, open, changeable—to the will of God and to the needs of neighbor. Hearts are open when they are available, humble, earthy, not standoffish, penetratable. Like the Persons of the Trinity to each other.