Photos: St. Thomas Day 2015

On January 28, 2015, members of the Thomas Aquinas College community celebrated the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas with a fitting combination of prayer, scholarship, and fun.

The day began with an early Mass in the Dominican rite, in honor of the College’s patron, with one of the school’s two Dominican chaplains, Rev. Paul Raftery, O.P., serving as the celebrant. “Upon the confidence and trust that St. Thomas had in God, he built his intellectual apostolate,” said Fr. Paul in his homily. “God would never work in the created world in a way that would contradict the Faith; nor would He teach in sacred doctrine anything that would invalidate the truths found in nature. It is all truth that has come from the one source of truth, Who is God Himself.

Later that morning, the College’s Head Chaplain, Rev. Hildebrand Garceau, O.Praem.,offered Mass in the ordinary form, with the College’s 2015 St. Thomas Day lecturer, Rev. Romanus Cessario, O.P., serving as the homilist. “Thomas Aquinas lives as the Common Doctor,” said Fr. Romanus, a professor of theology at St. John’s Seminary in Boston. “Catholics need a common doctor. The unity of Catholic faith requires that those that study sound philosophy and orthodox theology help others to see things correctly…. In this way, well-instructed Catholics, clerics and lay, honor Aquinas and, at the same time, contribute to building up the Church.”

That afternoon students and members of the faculty gathered in St. Joseph Commons for the St. Thomas Day Lecture. Fr. Romanus spoke for an hour on the subject, “Mediated Religion: Aquinas on the Sacraments,” and then spent another hour or so answering students’ questions.

After dinner, the day culminated with a beloved campus tradition, Trivial and Quadrivial Pursuits, a campus-wide quiz show famous for its extravagant costumes and over-the-top displays of creative gamesmanship. Four teams, each drawn from members of all four classes, vied in a competition to answer questions drawn from the College’s classical curriculum. A panel of tutors devised and posed the questions.

Per custom, each team chose a theme and appropriate costumes. Captained by Andrew Meluch (’15), the Logicians dressed as Ents, the tree-like creatures from The Lord of the Rings. The Rhetoricians took for their theme Aristotle’s Categories, with their captain, Ben Coughlin (’15), shaving his head and dying his hair to resemble his philosopher-father, tutor Dr. Glen Coughlin. The Grammarians competed under the banner of Don Quixote, with captain Peter Simonse (’15) dressing as the Man of La Mancha, and his sister, Rose (’17), as Dulcinea.

At the end of the competition, this year’s winners — the Logicians — celebrated with the faculty at a party in the campus coffee shop.