California
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February 6, 2025
To honor St. Thomas Aquinas on the occasion of his feast day and the 800th anniversary of his birth, the students and faculty of Thomas Aquinas College, California, took the day off from classes last Tuesday, remembering their patron with both reverence and revelry.
In California, the celebration began in the morning with Mass in Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel, offered by Rev. Sebastian Walshe, O. Praem. (’94), a visiting priest and alumnus. In his homily on the life of St. Thomas Aquinas, Fr. Sebastian depicted the Angelic Doctor as a model of both wisdom and purity, encouraging the community to be true disciples of the Church’s greatest theologian.
Later, Fr. Sebastian addressed the College again, this time from the stage of the Fitz B. Burns Auditorium. In his lecture, The Wisdom of the Teachings of Christ as a Sign of the Truth of the Christian Religion, he proposed that the teachings contained in Revelation have the marks of divine wisdom, which far surpasses what is knowable to mere human wisdom. Using examples of the doctrines contained in Scripture, he showed how Christian revelation resolves questions that philosophy raises but cannot answer, and how this is evidence that the origin of this revelation is divine.
In the early evening in St. Joseph Commons, the College community celebrated the feast day with a formal dinner, enjoying good food and joyful conversation.
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Afterward, students gathered for Trivial-Quadrivial Pursuit, a madcap game of trivia and hijinks, based on the College’s integrated curriculum. Per tradition, the students split into three teams: Grammarians, Logicians, and Rhetoricians, aptly named after the arts of the Trivium.
This year, the Grammarians chose the Enlightenment for their theme. Captain Anthony Santine (’25) played the role of Rene Descartes, leading a team of modern philosophers, scientists, and political thinkers in pursuit of universal knowledge. The Logicians chose the Exodus, led by Marcel Pryor (’25) as Aaron, who was joined by his younger, less eloquent brother, Moses; their mutual friend, God; and a host of wandering Israelites. Finally, the Rhetoricians, headed by Claire Rea (’25), chose Mark Twain, with Huckleberry Finn, Jim, and the waters of the Mississippi River leading their entrance.
Photos: Trivial-Quadrivial Pursuits
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The game’s judges, a panel of tutors joined by Fr. Sebastian, voted on their favorite skit to determine which team would go first. Despite hours of heated competition, the Exodus team eventually claimed victory by correctly (or at least persuasively) answering a question from every category.
“Nothing else in the entire year brings the school together like Trivial-Quadrivial,” said student Patrick Salinas (’25). “I think it’s the most TAC thing that we do!”
