As many of you may have noticed, I often emphasise and share information about the Doctors of the Church. I try to share devotion to them because the Popes have declared them as Teachers (the meaning of the word Doctor in Latin) for the whole Church, and so they are not only important but it also means we should try to learn about them and more importantly, from them.
Today is the memorial of St Albert the Great. He is famous for being the teacher of St Thomas Aquinas, who is one of the most famous of all the Doctors of the Church. But St Albert is also a Doctor due to his own merits and teachings, not because of his famous pupil student.
He is the Patron Saint of Science due to his study of the natural world and his writings about plants, animals and nature in general. But he was not just a philosopher who taught Aristotle to St Thomas Aquinas, but also a man of prayer and a mystic.
As Pope Benedict XVI said about him in one of his Wednesday Audiences:
“He still has a lot to teach us. Above all, St Albert shows that there is no opposition between faith and science, despite certain episodes of misunderstanding that have been recorded in history. A man of faith and prayer, as was St Albert the Great, can serenely foster the study of the natural sciences and progress in knowledge of the micro and macrocosm, discovering the laws proper to the subject, since all this contributes to fostering thirst for and love of God. “
Here is a link for a short book attributed to St Albert on union with God aka “cleaving to God” that I highly recommend. It is easy to read, short chapters, and most importantly gives good simple advice on prayer. But this is not a book about saying certain prayers and devotions, but on the true and beautiful mystical way of prayer we call contemplation. The focus is on how to seek after and strive for union with God. Please take the time to read it, or save it and read a page or two a day 🙏 it’s worth it, I promise you!
One of the things about this particular book that helped me to go deeper in prayer - is the way he emphasises that we constantly need to cling onto the humanity of Jesus and take refuge/shelter in His wounds. He links this in with the scripture from the Song of Songs about how a dove finds safety in the cleft of a rock, and so we too should fly to to side of Jesus for our place of rest and refuge.
https://motherofmercychapter.com/Library/albert-the-great-on-cleaving-to-god.pdf
