Philosophical Challenge

I was due to lead Assembly at the Infants School on January 28th, and had no idea what to do. Nothing in the news apart from Brexit and I didn't fancy tackling that: nothing out of the ordinary happening to me, and nothing notable in the school calendar either. Normally I would resort in such circumstances to telling the children about the life of whatever saint whose feast-day it happens to be. Now, periodically I like challenging myself to tackle abstruse subjects in my assemblies, but a look down the calendar of saints' days made me baulk a little. Nevertheless, I felt the Holy Spirit pushing me inexorably into a corner. 

St Thomas Aquinas for six-year-olds it had to be.

Luckily the school began doing Philosophy a couple of years ago. The children couldn't remember what they'd actually done in Philosophy, but such is the life of an infant-school pupil: they can't usually recall anything further back than a fortnight, but it sort of sinks in somehow and is recollected through more subtle processes than mere brutal question-and-answer in an assembly. Still, Philosophy gave me an entrée into discussing the business of asking questions, how often Jesus asked questions back to people to encourage them to think, and oh look, here's another person who spent his life asking questions. Whether the blessed Saint would readily recognise his life from the somewhat summarised account I gave I'm not sure. Nor am I convinced that the children will be much enlightened though it is just about possible that one or two of them might have taken away the dim memory of a fat monk writing books. 

I know Thomas Aquinas was a friar, not a monk: I decided to tackle the difference between forms of the religious life another day.