Advent 2024
Dear Friend,
I won’t deny it. I was pretty tough on him.
Jorge Moncada Hernandez arrived as a freshman at Thomas Aquinas College in the fall of 2014. He came from a troubled public high school, but he was a good kid. He spent his free time helping out at his parish. He wanted to become a priest.
In Freshman Mathematics, I demanded nothing but his best.
Like many of his peers, Jorge approached the blackboard with unease when I would call on him to demonstrate one of Euclid’s geometric propositions. And even though he always committed the proposition to memory, I wasn’t convinced he actually learned it.
“Why did you do Step 2?” I once asked him. “What were you thinking there?”
Jorge grimaced. “Hey, I memorized the prop!” he protested. “Isn’t that good enough?”
“Mr. Moncada,” I quipped. “How are you going to understand St. Thomas’s treatment of the Trinity if you can’t even explain and defend Euclid’s argument?”
We talked after class. “I thought you want to become a priest,” I said. “If a parishioner were to come to you with a question about the Faith, would you want to give him a rote answer? Or would you want to give him the truth in a way that he could understand, defend, and make his own?”
Jorge sighed.
“The whole point of this education is to teach you how to think,” I told him. “What we’re doing here will allow you to become a better priest.”
I’m not sure he believed me then, but he believes me now.
Ten Years Later
On November 23, Jorge received the Sacrament of Holy Orders as a transitional deacon for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. God willing, he will be ordained to the priesthood in just six months — on May 31, 2025.
“I want to tell people that God loves them,” he says of his forthcoming ministry. “I think that’s a problem we face nowadays; we don’t understand the Father’s love. We try to find it somewhere else — friendships, addictions, you name it. I want to bring the Father’s love to the people who desperately need it.”
The rigorous education he received at the College has prepared him well for that calling.
“It hit me sometime during my sophomore year,” he reflects. “I came to see how our studies at the College started with simple truths about the physical world and built to ever-greater ones about man and God. Every step was important, which is why we had to pay attention to every detail.”
Standards are high at the College, and for good reason. Whether our students go on to become priests, doctors, lawyers, teachers, soldiers, mothers, or fathers, they need to learn how to engage the world for Christ in the most excellent way possible.
As a seminarian, Deacon Jorge has come to see that it wasn’t just what he learned at TAC, but how he learned it, that has paved the way for his vocation.
“As a deacon and as a future priest, I needed to learn how to articulate the truth with charity,” he observes. “I learned that in the College’s classrooms. That’s something I owe to TAC.”
Thomas Aquinas College exists for this very purpose: to provide intellectual and spiritual formation for young people who will uphold the truths of the Faith in a world that hungers for them.
“When it comes to teaching the Faith, there’s sometimes a temptation to water things down, and that’s a big mistake,” says Deacon Jorge. “We need to teach the Faith authentically, with charity, but without lowering any standards. We must teach without compromise.”
That’s the sort of priest Deacon Jorge intends to be. That’s the sort of priest Thomas Aquinas College has prepared him to be: “A big part of who I am now — and a big part of the priest I hope to one day become — is because of the changes I went through at TAC.”
A Deacon’s Advent
In this, his first Advent as an ordained minister of the Church, Deacon Jorge seeks to prepare the faithful for the arrival of Our Lord.
“Advent is about preparing ourselves for the coming of Christ,” he says. “Christ is within each of us, so we prepare ourselves to seek Christ in one another. Ultimately, we want to prepare ourselves for our final end, the life to come.”
Such preparation is the work of the College, which forms young men and women, like Deacon Jorge, for lives of service and leadership in this world — and life everlasting in the world to come.
This formation would not be possible without the support of our alumni, parents, and benefactors.
Like some 70 percent of our expanding student body, Deacon Jorge could not have attended the College were it not for the generosity of folks like you. Our financial aid program puts the cost of this priceless education within reach of every committed family. And it depends entirely on the generosity of others.
For this, I am grateful.
In my new role as the College’s vice president for advancement, I am blessed to invite our friends to make a commitment to one of the world’s most excellent institutions of higher learning.
To that end, would you please include Thomas Aquinas College in your Advent giving this year? Any gift you can make will do immense good for the TAC students of today — the Catholic leaders of tomorrow.
Please pray for Deacon Jorge and all our students, past and present. I will keep you in my prayers as well.
A blessed Advent to you and yours,
John J. Goyette, Ph.D.
Tutor and Vice President for Advancement
PS — Please come visit our California or New England campuses any time. Our students would love to see you and thank you in person!