Fr. O’Hara’s Matriculation Remarks at Convocation 2024

“The Finished Work of Holy Mercy”

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

Mercy!

Upon reflection upon my years as a student here at Thomas Aquinas College, I discovered that a very dominant element of my education was mercy. Important as mercy is, I fear that all too often we fail to give mercy the attention it deserves.

Yet a distinction is needed. Many a time (as my classmates will attest!), I was ill-prepared for some class or exam, hoping that I would not be called on for a demonstration or that the questions of the exam would just happen to be on issues that I had actually studied. That is cheap mercy, and believe me, I begged for that sort of mercy often! The mercy I highlight to you now is a different type of mercy. It is the mercy that God shows us by the Incarnation, namely the readiness to do whatever can be done to break into a loved one’s brokenness to help and heal him.

My experience of Thomas Aquinas College was that of an ongoing, many-leveled exchange of mercy.

“Aided by your families and the College, you students are together seeking the sublime aim of an authentic Catholic liberal education in a culture that more and more rejects and undermines it.” 

At the very highest level in this circuit of mercy is God. His love compels Him to break into our brokenness and weakness, knowing perfectly the extent and character of our neediness, doing as much as He can, while respecting our free will, to heal us and draw us back into His Household.

In our better moments, each of us might put ourselves out to help a dear friend break free from some bad habit or stupidity, but no matter how well we know them, we enter their brokenness with only partial awareness of its nature and gravity. God sees our sin, ignorance, fear, laziness, etc., perfectly and traces their causes with great precision to their deepest roots, longing to be there with us in the very roots of our problems to forgive and heal us. He entered into our brokenness, taking on the flesh, confronting us sinners so that we might repent and ask for His forgiveness, and offering to bear the pain and punishment due to that sin. As St. Paul tells us, Jesus became sin (2 Cor 5:21), bearing in His flesh and in His human soul all the pain of sin so as to free us from sin.

There is a unique way that His mercy animates the educational mission He inspires in the Church. By becoming flesh, He has access to all that is human to reeducate mankind and draw us back into His light. He teaches powerfully yet most gently: “Here is My servant in Whom I am most pleased … listen to Him” (Mt 17:5). “The bruised reed He shall not break, and dying candle He shall not quench” (Is 42:3). So gentle does He enter our brokenness — the darkness and confusion in the depths of our understanding, in the deepest recesses of our heart. Only God knows the complexity of our heart and the messiness of our confusion; thus only God can navigate to the very roots of that craziness and darkness. His mercy impels Him into those roots, overcoming our deeply entrenched tendencies to resist outside help, so that eventually He might enlighten and heal us.

The next level of mercy is given to us by the authors of the Great Books, with whom you will strive to converse throughout your studies here. I take St. Thomas Aquinas as a paradigm. Mercy flows through St. Thomas. As he picked up his pen to write, with humility he exposed to God his heartfelt inadequacy to fulfill his duty as teacher. Keenly he felt the weight of his task and begged God’s inspiration to better understand the subject at hand and to write about it to instruct his readers. Having been fortified by God’s mercy, he turns and extends it to us, designing his lessons to cut to the depths of our ignorance (our brokenness) and enlighten us with what he himself knew.

As we try to understand St. Thomas, one of the more light-some considerations that we make is, “Why does he develop the lesson as he does; why are the objections laid out in the order that they are?” A lot can be said, but in a certain sense it is his keen mercy that determines that order. He writes to educate, and thus he writes so as to break into the brokenness of his reader — to break into their confusion and ignorance. He is very attentive to that confusion and ignorance, formulating his lessons so that he might securely lead by the hand his reader into the truth he is teaching.

The next level of mercy is that of your administrators and tutors — both the founders and your current ones. Consider the mercy of the founders. The magnitude of the project of breaking out of the educational norms of their day and returning to the tried-and-true ways of the Church sent them to their knee with prayers and tears of supplication, begging for guidance, courage, and strength. They had a few good ideas and as Dr. McArthur was known to say, “a lot of hot air”, but no money, no building and no students. They begged from God His mercy to face these challenges and then they wisely and generously passed that mercy on, setting this college on a course that the current administration and tutors carry on today.

The current tutors, led by Dr. O’Reilly and his local dean here (my brother-in-law!), Mr. Cain, are the living channels of that wisely established structure of mercy instituted by the founders. No doubt you students will have these tutors on their knees begging God for the light and patience to break into the ignorance and bad habits that you will manifest to them in your time here! They will beg God for the light, the patience, and the tact, and then personally turn to you with love and strength, breaking into the ignorance and bad will festering in the depths of your souls. Your chaplains here have a very important role in this.

You, the students of the Class of 2028, provide the final level in this college’s network of mercy. In a sense you all have the final word: If you are animated by mercy, then the mercy of all the higher levels will bear fruit.

Aided by your families and the College, you students are together seeking the sublime aim of an authentic Catholic liberal education in a culture that more and more rejects and undermines it. Shooting high, you are forced to penetrate deep into the roots of your own convictions and attitudes. This purification is difficult, it hurts, and it takes patience. A merciful companion peers deep into the struggles that his friends are having. Diligently he searches for ways to assist his struggling friend and finds ways to share the insights and virtue that he himself already possesses. In turn, the mercy of the quicker student inspires trust in the slower student, inclining him to accept help. As this trust grows, walls fall and communication between these friends becomes more profound, enlightening and liberating.

“The finished work of holy mercy flowing through this college family is not ease of life but fullness of life, that is, the ability to see things for one’s self.”

Cheap mercy fosters laziness. It’s handy in a pinch sometimes, but generally it hurts in the long run. Holy mercy doesn’t foster laziness or an attitude of slavish dependency. The finished work of holy mercy flowing through this college family is not ease of life but fullness of life, that is, the ability to see things for one’s self, delighting not only in being able to follow the instruction of our classical masters and local teachers, but to see as they see, to enjoy the truth itself.

Aided by merciful friends or masters, we face the hardships of learning and holiness. We are in the pack of those seeking to know: running, keeping up, challenged, and making progress. Emboldened with their friendship, we find courage to face the difficulties inherent in the intellectual life. Learners at their best, are at the Cross — seeking evermore insight and clarity, undergoing the trials of acquiring the skills needed in their studies. Learners are at the Cross, and so also are teachers; while knowers are at the Resurrection, rejoicing in the joys of contemplation.

Class of 2028, I challenge you to be renowned of all the graduating classes of this finest college of Catholic liberal education for being the class of mercy! The class of mercy will be very reluctant to leave one of its own behind, dropping out because of the difficulty of adjusting to college life and academic standards. It will be close-knit, joyful and hardworking. Maybe you won’t be the brightest of classes, but you will be masters at exposing your neediness to God and others who are dying to help; and in turn, you will be masters at noting and effectively responding to the neediness of others.

This makes for the deepest of friendships, which will be for you an exquisite joy and consolation for the rest of your lives. But more importantly, that openness to and expertise of receiving and passing on mercy is the surest route to heaven.

Class of 2028, be the Class of mercy! Fulfill the law of Christ by bearing each other’s burdens in this life so that, together, you may sing in heaven God’s glory and praise, forever and ever. Amen!