From the Desk of the President
President Thomas E. Dillon
Farewell Address to the Graduates
(Summer 2005 Newsletter)
[Index of
Past Articles by President Dillon]
 It
is my pleasure, on behalf of the entire faculty and staff, to congratulate
you, the class of 2005, for having formally completed the course
of your education at Thomas Aquinas College. You can be proud of
your accomplishment. Our curriculum is by no means easy - you have
undertaken to study through these four years the most challenging
works in the breadth of the disciplines. High aspirations cannot
be realized without dedication and hard work, and you are to be
commended for your diligence in completing our academic program.
The Importance of St. Thomas
Just recently I returned from a conference of presidents of thirty
colleges and universities from six continents who understand the
importance of St. Thomas' thought in Catholic higher education.
The conference was held at the University of Abat Oliba in Barcelona,
and as representing Thomas Aquinas College, I was welcomed as a
kind of hero. The grand chancellor, the president, and the deans
of the host university already knew about Thomas Aquinas College
and deeply admired us for doing what they think is the purest and
best things in Catholic higher education. They are convinced that
it is crucial to educate the Spanish young in the thought of St.
Thomas in order to help preserve Catholic Spain against the onslaught
of materialism and moral relativism. They particularly think it
is important that the young have their minds and imaginations formed
by St. Thomas' realism, by his logic, and by his objective morality,
and they would like our institution's help in reviewing their curriculum.
Again and again I heard high praise of what we are doing here.
In returning to campus and having my own seminars as well as visiting
some other classes, I was once again struck by how blessed we are
and how good we all have it at Thomas Aquinas College, both tutors
and students alike. Naturally, we are a human institution with human
failings, but the soundness and effectiveness of this educational
endeavor is evident. This will become even clearer to you, I am
confident, as the years go by and the intellectual habits that have
here taken root in your souls blossom and bear abundant fruit.
We Must Sacrifice our Comfort
In thinking about what I might say to you tonight, I turned first
to your class quote, taken from St. Paul's epistle to the Galatians
[2:20]: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives
in me." This is indeed a powerful indication of what is
at the heart of our Faith, and a fitting reminder of how you, counted
among the baptized, are to look at your lives as you go forth into
the larger world.
You should keep in mind, however, the words which immediately precede
your class quote, which are: "I have been crucified with
Christ." All of us must remember that Christ's triumph
came after His crucifixion, and we must unite ourselves with Christ
on the cross if we are ultimately to triumph with Him.
Now the taking up of the cross, as you are well aware, runs contrary
to everything in our culture, which seems to present the highest
good of man to be comfort and pleasure. Nevertheless, in order to
have Christ live within us, we must be willing to sacrifice our
comfort as Christ sacrificed His for the love of us, even unto death
on a cross.
In many ways, living a Christian life beyond this campus will be
more difficult than it has been here because you will most likely
not find yourselves in such a supportive community, and the world
will offer many temptations to soften and weaken your fervor and
resolve - perhaps, at first, just to help you get a little more
comfortable. As you attempt to truly live out your Faith and bring
it in friendship to others, you will probably be called upon to
make many difficult sacrifices, but in doing so, you will be all
the more united with our Lord.
"The Real World"
Notice, by the way, that earlier I spoke about going forth into
the larger world - I purposely avoided saying the "real
world." Why? After all, thousands of graduates across the country
will be exhorted in the next few weeks to do good things as they
move out of colleges and into what is said to be "the real
world." But in your time here at Thomas Aquinas College you
have aspired to understand the true, to love the good, and to take
delight in the beautiful. And the fact is, the true, the good, and
the beautiful have much greater reality than do the false, the evil,
and the ugly, which latter are too often idolized in the larger
world. So I urge you to bring reality to that world - to take whatever
you have grasped here of the true, good, and beautiful out into
that larger world, so much in need of what is real rather than what
is illusory.
What I am saying fits, in a way, with the words of our Lord Himself
in the Gospel read at today's Mass. Here is what He says:
"I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because
they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.
I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep
them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world any more
than I belong to the world. Consecrate them in the truth. Your word
is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the
world. And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be
consecrated in truth." [John 17:14-19]
So insofar as you have been consecrated in the truth, your most
noble task is to follow the mission Christ has set for us, and that
is to bring the truth of Christ to the world, to go forth and evangelize.
Extraordinary Times
In the homily of his Holiness, Benedict XVI, at the Roman basilica
of St. Paul Outside-the-Walls just the day after his installation,
our new pope preached that "The Church is by nature missionary;
her urgent duty is to evangelize." He went on to say this:
"At the beginning of the third millennium, the Church feels
with renewed intensity that Christ's missionary mandate is more
timely than ever. The great Jubilee of the year 2000 led her to
'set out anew from Christ,' contemplated in prayer, so that the
light of His truth might shine on all men and women, primarily through
the witness of holiness."
It seems to me, in reflecting on these words, that in many ways
we live in extraordinary times. On the one hand, we are seeing a
conspicuous regression from high civilization to a new kind of barbarism,
as the West increasingly squanders its Christian patrimony. Western
Europeans, by and large, both are failing to reproduce themselves
and are explicitly repudiating their Christian roots, even as Islam
is ascending throughout Europe. In this country, respect for virtue
and civility are waning, as we continue to feed our unfettered appetites
and deny fundamental truths about human nature in order to perpetuate
a fantasy world of egoism and self-indulgence.
On the other hand, with the death and funeral of Pope John Paul
II and the new pontificate of Benedict XVI, and because of the modern
means of mass communication, especially television, the eyes of
the world are on the Catholic Church now as perhaps never before
in history. Millions upon millions of souls have witnessed a suffering
pope uphold the dignity of all human beings as Sons of God destined
for an eternal life beyond this world.
Millions again have observed the humble yet resolute beginning
of a new pontificate, with a new pope obediently laying himself
down as a bridge between Christ and the world and showing from the
very beginning of his Petrine ministry the same fidelity to the
message of our Lord as his predecessor.
And even while there exist in our times those who hate the Church
and fight for everything that is antithetical to it, there are yet
others who perceive the bankruptcy of secular materialism, moral
relativism, and neo-paganism, and who are ready for the message
of the Gospels - who are ready for the truth.
Development of the Virtues
The gifts you have received here are primarily intellectual. You
have had the opportunity to cultivate intellectual virtue, and you
are well prepared to be of service to the truth. Remember, however,
the hope expressed by Pope Benedict that I quoted earlier, "that
the light of Christ's truth, contemplated in prayer, might shine
on all men and women primarily through the witness of holiness."
This suggests that as members of the Church, it is especially fitting
for us to strive for personal holiness in order to better witness
to the truth.
Let me read again for you a passage from St. Augustine's Confessions,
which you studied in your sophomore year. It concerns St. Augustine's
first encounter with St. Ambrose and is expressed as follows:
"Unknown to me, it was you who led me to him, so that I
might knowingly be led by him to you. This man of God received me
like a father and, as bishop, told me how glad he was that I had
come. My heart warmed to him, not at first as a teacher of the truth,
which I had quite despaired of finding in your Church, but simply
as a man who showed me kindness."
As we can see, it was not Ambrose's preaching which at first disposed
St. Augustine to the truth of the Church, but rather his personal
charity. Charity is an ally to the truth as are all the other virtues.
Consider, for example, St. Thomas's prayer of thanksgiving for after
Holy Communion: May this sacrament perfect me in charity and
patience, in humility and obedience, and in all the other virtues.
Each of these virtues - charity, humility, obedience, and patience
- better dispose all of us and those with whom we inquire to be
more receptive to the truth.
So in this year of the Eucharist, let me exhort you, following
both John Paul II and Benedict XVI, to a greater devotion to the
Eucharist in your spiritual lives, and also to a greater development
of the virtues of charity, humility, obedience, and patience in
your moral lives, and lastly to a greater dedication to the service
of truth in your intellectual lives, so that your whole lives may
be firmly united to Him who is the way, the truth, and the life.
-- Qtrly Newsletter, Summer 2005
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