How Did Study Sanctify St. Thomas Aquinas? / How Does Study Sanctify Me? - Fr. Thomas Aquinas Pickett, O.P. & Sr. Anna Wray, O.P.

Fr. Thomas Aquinas Pickett and Sr. Anna Wray ask the question "How did study sanctify St. Thomas Aquinas?" St. Thomas serves as an exemplar of how study becomes holy when it is ordered by charity, tempered by right desire, and lived as a way of being with God.

This lecture was given on June 27th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.

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About the Speaker:

Fr Thomas Aquinas Pickett is a son of Ellensburg, Washington and a member of the Western Dominican Province. Apart from running, board games, and coffee, he enjoys studying his namesake, St Thomas Aquinas. Having received his BA in Philosophy at Gonzaga University (where he was NOT a member of the basketball team), his MDiv and MA in theology from the DSPT, his STB from l’Institut Catholique de Toulouse, and his STL and STD from the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, he is now a professor of theology at the DSPT, assigned to St Albert the Great Priory.

Sister Anna Wray is a native of Connecticut and a member of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia of Nashville, TN. Sister received her PhD in philosophy from The Catholic University of America, having written her dissertation on Aristotle’s account of the activity of contemplation. Sister is an assistant professor on the faculty of CUA's School of Philosophy in Washington, DC, where she regularly teaches courses in rhetoric, philosophy of religion, and philosophical psychology. She is also an adjunct professor for Aquinas College, where she teaches metaphysics and epistemology to her sisters in formation. Her research and conversational interests include imagination and attention in human agency and speech, the effects of technology on human agency, and form as function and unifying activity.

Keywords: Charity, Contemplative Life, Dominican Life, Holy Study, Studiousness, Summa Theologiae, Temperance, Theology, Thomas Aquinas