But his own spirit aspired, even from youth, to be small in the Kingdom of God and to serve not the kings of the earth but the King of Heaven. He cultivated his pious desire in his heart, until he obtained the consent of his father, to follow his vocation to the religious life.
After having renounced, by means of a notarial document, the Principate, which belonged to him through heredity and his very rich patrimony, he was admitted into the Order of the Clerics Regular Theatine, founded by St Cajetan of Thien in 1524. He made his religious profession in the Theatine house of St Joseph, at Palermo, on 25 March 1666.
In the new state of life, which he had embraced to follow the call of Christ, he was able to dedicate himself to piety and study. The Sacred Liturgy had been his attraction from childhood; even as a child he wanted to wear, everyday, the clothes of the Liturgical colour of the day. Gregorian chant had blossomed soon on his lips, which exulted with joy singing the Liturgical psalms. The sacred languages of Latin and Greek, as if by an innate disposition, he knew well and appreciated from his adolescence.
He completed his studies of philosophy in Messina, Ferrara, Bologna and Modena, forced to the transfers for reasons of health. He studied Theology instead at Rome, in the House of St Andrea della Valle.
In Rome, after having received the subdiaconate and the diaconate, on the Saturday of Advent, on 23 December 1673, he was Ordained a Priest in the Lateran Basilica, at the hands of Msgr Joachim De Angelis, Archbishop of Urbino, Vice-Regent of the Cardinal Vicar Gaspar Carpegna. Two days later, on the night of the Nativity, he celebrated his first Mass, in the Church of St Silvestro al Quirinale, at that time, the residence of the General House of the Theatine Fathers.
The Priestly Anointing seems to have incardinated Father Tomasi to Rome and to give him Roman citizenship. Here, from his Priestly Ordination and in the same house of St Silvestro al Quirnale, for almost forty years, he dedicated himself, with intense productivity, to piety and to assiduous studies. To his knowledge of Latin and Greek, acquired from adolescence, he added that of Hebrew, Syriac, Chaldean and Arabic.
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