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Note: Each year the graduating class elects one of its members to present the Senior Address at Commencement. Upon graduation, this year’s speaker, April Shonnard of Carson City, Nevada, plans to pursue studies in speech therapy.

Audio:

“Remembering, Openness, and Grateful Rejoicing”

by April Shonnard (’16)
Senior Address
May 14, 2016

 

Good morning! We made it! Praise the Lord for this beautiful day. It is such a blessing to be here today, with each other, with our friends and our families. This is a time filled with joy and it is such a gift to share it with each other.

In some ways it is hard to believe that we are here. I remember seeing the seniors over the Summer Program and Freshman Year. To me they seemed so wise and almost superhuman. They were moved by a single vision. I knew that if this was due to the College, I wanted to come here. Now after four years, I feel very much like my same wondering, simple self. In fact, I realize more how much I do not know. However, this is what God wants us to learn so that we can more fully turn to Him in trust. This single vision that I saw was their trust in God and a sincere desire to grow closer to Him in everything.

With Our Lady, we all say, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior. For He has looked with mercy on the lowliness of His handmaid.” Pope Francis has declared this to be the Year of Mercy. We have been given so much during our time here at Thomas Aquinas College, and all this has come from the mercy of God. I believe the biggest gift we have received here is to begin to learn how to ponder truth. What does this mean? What does it mean to ponder? Our Lady “pondered” so many things in her Immaculate Heart. She pondered Truth itself by gazing on her Divine Son and reflecting on who He is and what He was doing in her life. This pondering was the gaze of a friend. It was a single vision ordered to see and love her Son in all things.

The College has taught us this amazing gift of pondering over our four years here. We have tried to see Christ in science, philosophy, theology, literature, and in the lives of those around us. We have seen His beauty and order in the movement of the planets and stars. We have seen the variety of His creation. We have seen how He orders all men to happiness and does this through a life of virtue. His Divine face has been shown to us in so many ways. This time here, however, is just a beginning of a friendship with Christ that is going to deepen over our whole life.

We will not forget this gift or each other. Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov speaks to the importance of holding on to good memories and letting them form and mold who we become. When saying goodbye to a group of young boys after the death of a dear friend, he tells them, “You must know that there is nothing higher, or stronger, or sounder, or more useful afterwards in life, than some good memory… And even if only one good memory remains with us in our hearts, that alone may serve some day for our salvation.”

 He tells the boys that the memory of the goodness of their friend will save them. In times of temptation, struggle, or distress, it will remind them of true goodness, joy, and hope.

What is this power of pondering memories? What does it entail? Our Lady, Our Lord’s dearest friend and the Queen of all, pondered at every moment. Let us turn to her to follow in her footsteps.

There are at least three important things in pondering. These are remembering, openness, and grateful rejoicing.

Remembering

First, let us begin with remembering. Mary “kept all these things” and then pondered them in her heart. What does it mean to remember? And what is memory?

St. Augustine speaks to this in his Confessions. He says that memory is “like a great field or a spacious palace, a storehouse for countless images of all kinds which are conveyed to it by the senses.” We remember things that have touched us or shaped us in some way. Memories can work even in the background and silently form who we are and what we become. In remembering, we bring forward these different memories and like a laborer, work this great field to see the connections between all that has happened to us. As St. Augustine says, “I can probe deep into my memories and never find the end of them. This is the power of memory! This is the great force of life in living man, mortal though he is!”

We have made such powerful memories here at TAC which will continue to form us in the years to come. We will remember the enthusiasm of Freshman Year, running around catching insects, hurrying to class 15 minutes early to laugh and even dance before it started. We will remember our first attempts at the Discussion Method, learning when, and when not, to bring up quotes, when to back others up, and when to keep smiling even early in the morning. Now looking back, we can truly see how the Discussion Method has formed us to be able to ask good, meaningful questions, to listen with an open mind to others, and to be able to form one’s own opinions and thoughts.

All that we have studied here has in some way pointed us toward a greater grasp of Truth, Who is Christ Himself. In science, we will remember marveling with Fabre over the purpose found in the instinct of the smallest caterpillar and wondering how evolution can work in light of good philosophy and our faith. We will also remember the exciting moments in the lab, when someone accidentally burned the infamous substance D.

In math, we will remember all the times up at the board, the pause before our name was called, the long walk up to the front, and finally the satisfaction in signing QED and finishing a long Euclid proposition. We will remember being filled with wonder at the movement of the stars and the beauty in calculus from Mr. Quackenbush and Mr. Ferrier.

We will have the memories of singing Sicut Cervus early in the morning for Junior Music and listening to all our classmates’ sonatas. We will never forget Plato’s Republic, Augustine’s ardent search and love for God in Confessions, or Dante’s journey in the Divine Comedy. Works like The Brothers Karamazov and My Antonia remind us of the beauty and passion in life even amidst the greatest evils and sufferings.

In philosophy, we will remember proving for the first time that the soul is immaterial. We will remember studying about the nature of man, angels, and being itself. We have learned how man’s happiness consists in a life of virtue with friends and ultimately contemplation of God, the greatest friendship possible.

Most of all, we will remember coming closer to God through theology. We will remember the saints we read and the tutors who encouraged us to take what we learned about God and to make it alive with a life of prayer. We were able to delve into the mysteries of the Bible and humbly witness the fruit of our classmates’ contemplation. We meditated on God’s mercy and generosity in the Incarnation. We read Anselm and Augustine, who proclaimed truths about God but in the midst of intense, ardent prayer. Finally, we were able to read Thomas. His writing was more logical and ordered, but his works, too, came forth from a heart on fire with love for God. We can only love what we know. Going forth from here, we can take the truths we have learned about God and allow them to fill our hearts with greater love for Him.

We will never forget the tutors, staff, and fellow students who impacted our lives while we were here. For example, we will remember the wonder of Mr. Ferrier and Mr. Hattrup, the wisdom of Mr. Kaiser, the stories of Mr. Nieto, and the humility and kindness of Mr. Arias. We will not forget how often the tutors took their time to speak with us after class or at meals and how they treated us with respect and dignity. They also encouraged us to keep going and reminded us on our more tired days that we were really studying the truly good and beautiful things, like what it means to be truly happy.

We will remember Viltis, who welcomed every student and reached out to them with wit, kindness, and generosity. We will never forget the priests who served us and brought us Christ in the Eucharist: Fr. Buckley, Fr. Paul, Fr. Michael Perea, Fr. Michael Chaberek, Fr. Illo, and Fr. Hildebrand.

Finally, how can we begin to describe the beautiful memories of fellow classmates and other students? How can we begin to say what each person here means to us? Each and every person in our class is alive and on fire in a unique way. Sometimes these differences would make it hard to agree on things. We can all attest to the fact that our class meetings usually did not go very smoothly. However, this further shows how rich we are. We agree on what truly matters and are on fire to live out our convictions in different ways. Some of us will go on to teach, some to play music, some to be doctors, lawyers, and phycologists. Some of us will be joining the priesthood or religious life, and others will be dedicating their lives to being faith-filled wives, husbands, and parents.

We will never forget the virtues that we have witnessed here in our friends. The charity of those who helped others around finals, who stayed awake late into the night, answered questions up in the Commons, or wrote out study guides to help others with their tests. We will not forget those who welcomed others and reached out to the lonely by taking time to talk to them, asking them how they were doing, and sitting with members of other classes at tables.

These people have become our brothers and sisters. They know us inside and out, for better or for worse. We joke, laugh, and even scare each other like siblings. We will never forget these last couple of months, especially as we shared our dreams, hopes, and fears about the future. We will remember sitting behind each of our classmates and friends in their thesis defense, and feeling pride, joy, and fear almost as if we ourselves were defending. We will never forget the final days and the last joys and goodbyes with all of our families and friends.

There are so many beautiful memories that we have made here. And in each one, God is active and at work, bringing about His plan for our lives. He is an artist, a storywriter, and each moment in each of our lives has meaning.

Openness

Now that we have brought forward all these memories, what is the next step in pondering? Like Our Lady, who kept all these things in her Immaculate Heart, we must be open and receptive. Each one of these moments in our lives is an instance of God’s mercy. Each moment, each memory is a gift from Our Lord, a gift which He wants us to accept with all of our hearts. In this Year of Mercy especially, and as we go forward into the world, God wants to pour forth His mercies upon us. He wants us to be confident in His love and His plan for us. If we open our hearts, we will make room for Christ so that He will be able to fill our lives completely with His love.

Openness is an essential quality of friendship. We are open to who our friends are, where they have come from and what God has in store for them. Thus, Mary’s pondering of Christ was an act of friendship. We, too, are called to this friendship with Christ. We, too, are called to be open and to ponder all that God has done in our lives, so that we can begin to know Christ, our friend, more and more. Each time we ponder, we desire a deeper, fuller view of the face of Christ.

Over our four years here, we have had glimpses of Truth, glimpses of Christ Himself. Pope St. John Paul II, in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor, states that the Crucified Christ is the Truth that all men seek, that all men hunger for. He says, “It is in the Crucified Christ that the Church finds the answer to the question troubling so many people today.” This question is the true meaning of freedom. Our Holy Father further states that “the frank and open acceptance of truth is the condition for authentic freedom,” and that this “freedom is acquired in love, that is, in the gift of self.” Only in Christ do we see that man’s greatest act, his greatest freedom and joy, is to give of himself completely, even to the point of dying on the Cross.

Our glimpse of Christ here at TAC has allowed us to share this answer of Christ with those in the world. The world is hungering for Christ, for truth. We must not be afraid to proclaim God’s goodness in charity and love.

Gratitude

Finally, pondering leads us to rejoice! In sincere gratitude, we will praise God with Our Lady and magnify the Lord for all He has done in our lives. We have seen the face of Christ and been blessed in countless ways.

As St. Augustine says in his Confessions, “True happiness is to rejoice in the truth, for to rejoice in the truth is to rejoice in you, O God, who are the Truth. This is the happiness that all desire.”

The world thus ardently desires for truth. We are called to share the fruits of our pondering with others. A great example of the witness to Truth is found in Archbishop Cordileone of San Francisco. We are so grateful to have him here with us today. He has not compromised the principles and beliefs of our faith, but has fought hard to uphold the dignity of marriage and to keep the Faith alive for the young in San Francisco’s Catholic schools. He has done this with strength, but also with great charity and trust in our Lord.

Let us follow this example of pondering prayer as we leave Thomas Aquinas College. Let us go forth from here rejoicing and in gratitude for the many mercies God has granted us. We are thankful for all that we have learned and for Dr. and Mrs. McLean, the tutors, the administration, their wives and families, the Board of Governors, and the donors. We thank our priests and fellow students, both in our class and other classes, who have touched our lives in some way. We thank our families, who have supported us in so many ways, especially through their prayers and example. We thank our Blessed Mother, who never ceases to bring us ever closer to her son. Finally, we thank Our Savior, Who comes to us every day in the Eucharist and is always waiting for us in the Chapel, waiting to further reveal Himself to us in love.

We are truly family. We will not forget each other. We have loved each other with charity, with Divine love. God has amazing plans for each and every one of us. As we leave here and each other, as we go forward, we entrust ourselves into the arms and heart of Our Lady, remembering where we have come from and where we are going. Let us walk on in confidence and joy.

Amen.