Homily for the Memorial of St. Anselm

Homily for the Memorial of St. Anselm

April 21, 2026
Collect
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

Fides quaerens intellectum is St. Anselm’s famous description of theology:  faith seeking understanding.  That’s echoed in the collect, in which we prayed “that our faith in you may so aid our understanding”—our understanding of God, which of course can never be complete until we come into God’s very presence.  It’s not faith we seek but God himself.

That seeking was the object of Anselm’s life, leading him to one of the most prominent monasteries in Europe in the latter part of the 11th century, Bec in Normandy, where he aspired “to seek out and teach the depths of your wisdom.”  As a teacher, Anselm founded that school of theology which became known as Scholasticism, the method of the schools.  It relied on the use of reason rather than directly on Scripture—the method of the Fathers of the Church—to ponder and better understand God and his wonders.  The monastic schools eventually evolved into the universities, where men like Albert, Thomas, and Bonaventure further developed Anselm’s method.

In theology, liturgy, and prayer, we better understand God and his wonders so as to find our heart’s delight, as the collect says, to delight in God’s love revealed in the Scriptures, in the life of Christ, in the natural world, in the human mind, and in the bonds of friendship.  Anselm fostered all that in popular devotional writings as well as in theological treatises—and so has been ranked a doctor of the Church.

He also became a great churchman after he was compelled to become archbishop of Canterbury and to defend the rights of the Church against royal impositions.  Part of the responsory in today’s Office of Readings says, “He steadfastly asserted that the Church, the bride of Christ, was not a slave but free.”  For that, he was exiled twice.  Thus he set a precedent for one of his successors, Thomas Becket, and foreshadowed what would come more radically in Thomas More’s time.  The conflict lives on in China and elsewhere, even in the Pope Leo-Donald Trump contretemps.  “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

But Jesus doesn’t change; he continues seeking to grasp us with his love.