Happy Feast of St. Thomas

Today, March 7, is the traditional date of the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas. It is the date of his death in 1274 at the abbey of Fossanova in Italy, where he was taken after becoming ill en route to the second Council of Lyons. The feast is still observed on March 7 in the so-called Extraordinary Form of the Roman rite, i.e., the Mass according to the 1962 Missal.

January 28, the date of the transfer of Aquinas’s relics to the Dominican church in Toulouse in 1369, is the day on which his feast is observed in the so-called Ordinary Form of the Roman rite, i.e., the Mass according to the 1969 Missal.