Fr. O’Hara’s Homily at the Convocation Mass of the Holy Spirit

Three Treasures of Monastic Life for TAC Students

by Rev. Joseph O’Hara (’92)
Holy Family Monastery
Mass of the Holy Spirit
Convocation 2024
Thomas Aquinas College, New England

You are opening this year with a strong appeal to the Holy Spirit and to Christ present to us here in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Rested and hopefully not too dissipated through the fun and activities of your summer, you gather here to engage, maybe for the first time — joyfully winking to you incoming freshmen — in the most incredible work of the College.

In today’s Gospel we heard from Jesus that if anyone loves me he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our home with him. To know God with love brings Him to us and He forms within us His Home — the Home of the Triune God.

This school year is drawing you together as a College family to meet Christ’s challenge and to reap His promised reward.

Through the structure and mission of this blessed college, you will strive to love Our Crucified Savior and keep His words — to know him and His plan for us with love — and as you do so through the fun and toil of the year, you can with certitude expect God Himself to come into your midst and make His home with you.

The Persons of the Most Holy Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, promise that they will come and make Their home with you. This happens when the mind is perfected with the truth in a gaze that delights the heart, leading to knowing God Himself and delighting in Him and in His will. In doing so, He comes to us — into that knowing and delighting of heart — and makes our soul His home as our mind is likened to the Word and our heart is inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Your aim here at Thomas Aquinas College is to uproot the errors and misconceptions that culture has given and to seek holy wisdom through discipleship to St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle (presupposing, of course, the prior and more important discipleship to the Holy Spirit, to Christ and the Church!).

The aim here is growth in wisdom through the curriculum and manner of study that defines this great College of Catholic liberal education. There is a method and order to an education within the household of God, to build the ill-formed and unformed mind and heart into the Household of God! The Church has refined that method, and this college has implemented it, applying the gathered expertise of the Church’s 2000 year history as teacher to the needs of the youth of our age. Through this effort you are striving in a particular way to love God and keep His word. As a result, God has a particular way to come and make His home with you. God comes — grace is given — according to the mode of the receiver. If you train to be a world class sprinter, don’t expect the grace from God to be a basketball player like Caitlin Clark; if you train to be an Olympic high diver, don’t expect to get the grace from God to be a winning sumo wrestler. But if you train explicitly within the Church's intellectual tradition, with a curriculum and teaching method that establishes you as a disciple of St. Thomas with Aristotle as his philosopher, then you can expect from God the grace that corresponds to that discipline. It is a rare grace these days, as sadly this education remains quite rare. God enters this effort, building you up in a way that reflects the work you do together. He comes to you and establishes you in His home according to the way you have exposed your mind and heart to Him in an education framed according to the mind and method of St. Thomas. As such God makes you members of His household, members with a very distinct and precious pedigree.

This purification and growth in wisdom as a disciple of St. Thomas is almost as difficult as it is rewarding! I enlist the sapient eloquence of our founding president, Dr. Ronald McArthur to spell out the challenges you will face here in being a disciple of St. Thomas and Aristotle and then I will offer you three tools taken from monastic life to help you meet those challenges.

Dr. McArthur told us in his talk on Intellectual Custom, that “there are many reasons which explain why wisdom seems to be reserved for the few, and we all know some of the most obvious; there are a relatively few who have the opportunity to give themselves to the life of study; few who study with persevering effort the very difficult subjects they should learn; few who pray with constancy for Divine help; few who attain the moral purity so conducive to the life of wisdom — that life which Aristotle without Revelation thought more divine than human.”

Do not be afraid to be counted among those few, for the reward is great.

I am a monk, and my vocation to monastic life grew out of my time at the College. I am starting a monastery that will utilize the conversation based study done that I experience here at the College. Though the College is not a monastery, I think that there is something of a likeness between them. Because of this, I believe that monastic life can provide guidance in overcoming the obstacles that prevent one from getting all one can from the one’s time at the College. I will share three components of monastic life that you can apply to facilitate God’s work of building you up in His wisdom, first is family structure, second is cloister, and third is the practice of making the Mass the center of your day.

We first look at family structure. We find that when God carries on a work that involves a number of people, He does this within a family structure. The initial community of man was a family, with Adam as husband, Eve wife, and Cain, Abel and so on as children. Christ established the Church as a family: He Himself husband, the community the wife, and all of us born in the womb of the Baptismal font the children His household. Within the Church there are multiple layers of family life, as Pope is husband to his wife, the Universal Church; the Bishop is husband to his wife, his diocese; and the pastor husband to his spouse the parish.

The fathers in these families carrying on God’s work here in our midst are commissioned to personify in some way the Heavenly Father’s love, providence and strength, a love perfectly revealed by Jesus at Calvary: “when you see Me you see the Father”. The mothers in these families carrying on God’s work here in our midst are commissioned to personify in some way God’s maternal love and solicitude, a love perfectly revealed to us by Our Blessed Mother Mary. The children in these families carrying on God’s work here in our mist live and grow in some way within that most inspiring and life-giving love perfectly revealed by Jesus and Mary. Within the sight and love of Mom and Dad, the child thrives.

There is a strong and manifest family structure here at this Catholic College that is keeping you securely and freely open to the working of the Holy Spirit to purify and enlighten you. Yes, a great deal of learning is done by wrestling with the texts and concepts alone. But it behooves you to always be aware that you are never alone in your studies. God is reaching out to you, offering you consolation, light and inspiration through the College family, so that you might be shaped and inspired by all the life-giving relationships that constitute the family. The father being those who are in charge of the College; the mother is the College herself, the Alma Mater, rooted as she is in the intellectual custom and pedagogy of Holy Mother Church, incarnated on the two campuses, the one painstakingly developed over the decades on the west coast and the one that seems to have just fallen out of the sky — thank to Hobby Lobby!- here in Massachusetts. We might name the founders as the grandfathers! I saw Dr. McArthur in that role at the end of his life, and no doubt we all can experience now that grandfather-like character in Mr. Peter Deluca, the one surviving founder.

There exists in our day a heightened urgency for you to deliberately foster a strong sense of piety in the college family that you have here in Northfield. There is an art to respecting and benefiting from the family character of the Church and of a College within the Church. Sadly in our culture, our family competency is low! Aware of this negative bias, be on guard! Look with reverence and respect to those who are as parents to you students of this college. God will greatly reward you for doing so.

The second monastic practice that I offer you to help get the most out of this school year is cloister. Monks love cloister, not so much to keep them from going into the world, but rather to keep the world from meddling with and undermining their efforts to truly seek God. The College has a culture that is edifying and beautiful. Guard and promote it by cutting ties to the turbulent and chaotic world and its many evil currents. Be particularly on guard in the use of the phone and Internet. It places a cesspool at your fingertips. Do not only comply with the College’s rules on cell phone and internet usage, but go further, making an even more radical break.

It is so incredibly liberating to live within a spirit and environment of holy learning. Guard that environment, build a solid mental cloister to keep the world from meddling and undermining it, and you will have not only a phenomenal learning environment, but you will likewise have a strong defense against the menaces of the flesh and Satan. It works, I tell you, it works! I know it worked for me.

The third treasure that I offer you from monastic life is that of making the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass the center of your day. God promised that if we love Him and keep His word, He will love us and make His home with us. The most privileged way that He accomplishes this is through the gift of the Mass. Make the Mass the center and high point of each day. Your good chaplains will often be encouraging you attend daily Mass. Listen to them!

At the Holy Sacrifice Christ comes very close to you. As He passes by you in the Holy Sacrifice, touch the hem of His garment, bringing to Him all the regrets and trials of your day, listening to Him, allowing Him to form your heart like unto His.

You are setting a great pattern, opening the school year with the Holy Sacrifice. Keep making Calvary, brought to you through the Holy Sacrifice, the source and summit of your day, and then expect wonders! We can not grasp exactly what God will accomplish in your souls through this school year, individually and as a College family, but it will be awesome! Rejoice and be amazed at the way the Three Persons of the Trinity will come to you through this College and make their Home in you. For sure, I know, your parents will be!