This talk is brought to you by the Thomistic Institute.

For more talks like this, visit us at tamisticinstitute.org.

So I spoke last night about prayer, and I'll start off today by speaking about the intellectual life,

and then move into what St. Thomas thinks about how they relate. So what is the intellectual life, and then move into what St. Thomas thinks about how they relate.

So what is the intellectual life? There's a wonderful little book that I'd like to recommend

to all of you called The Intellectual Life. It's Spirit Conditions Methods by Dominican

Father Antonach-Ir-Ber-Sotrionch, and it looks like it's

spelled Sertilangis, but that is not how it's spelled, but if you're looking for it on Amazon,

that might help you.

Sergei-Ongh begins the book describing the intellectual life in terms of a vocation.

It's a call by God to dedicate one's life, either in whole or in part, to intellectual work. In this vocation, like other invitations of grace, is discerned by considering the gifts, the desires, and the opportunities that

God has given to us. In my own life, there have been a few occasions where when I've been listening

to a professor and I felt my heart burning within me and I would say to myself almost involuntarily,

that's what I want. I want to be doing what that person is doing.

Or in retrospect, I would say to myself, I could see myself doing what that professor was doing.

Sertianj thinks that responding to this divine vocation

involves earnestly devoting ourselves to study in order to

discover the truth and serving the church and society by bringing the truth to others, primarily by

writing and speaking. Now, St. Thomas Aquinas rarely uses the term intellectual life, vita intellectualis.

When he does, he uses it to refer to something different from Sertianch.

St. Thomas uses it to refer to the kind of life that we have as human beings,

a kind of life that's distinct from the life of brute beasts and a kind of life that we share with

...