Photos: St. Thomas Day 2016

On January 28, 2016, members of the Thomas Aquinas College community celebrated the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas with a fitting combination of prayer, scholarship, and fun — and a tribute to one of the College’s founders.

At 9:00 a.m. Head Chaplain Rev. Paul Raftery, O.P., offered Mass in Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel in honor of the College’s patron. “The Church, in canonizing a great teacher like St. Thomas, challenges us to think ... deeply about human suffering, and about what kinds of remedies are required,” said Fr. Paul in his homily. “If man were only a body, then physical suffering would be the extent of what would cause him harm and need healing. But man is much more, having been blessed by God with an immortal soul. There is a suffering that goes beyond his body to his spirit. There is a poverty that goes beyond a lack of food and clothing, to a lack of understanding, to darkness in the mind, and confusion about how to live and find happiness.”

St. Thomas Aquinas, Fr. Paul continued, sought to relieve man of this worst sort of poverty. “In this may St. Thomas be an inspiration and an encouragement for all the teaching that goes on here at Thomas Aquinas College, all the hours spent in the classroom, all the arduous learning that you students are doing, and the labor of you on the faculty and those in administration,” he said. “Let us be confident that the Holy Spirit has been at work here at Thomas Aquinas College, Himself distressed at our society so burdened by the deep spiritual suffering of ignorance of truth, and especially of Christ, the true light that enlightens every man.”

That afternoon students and members of the faculty gathered in St. Joseph Commons for the St. Thomas Day Lecture. Rev. Thomas Joseph White, O.P, an associate professor of systematic theology spoke on the subject, How Does the Resurrection of Christ Illumine Human Reason? From Joseph Ratzinger to St. Thomas Aquinas, and then answered students’ questions.

At a special reception and dinner that evening, the College honored one of its founders and a longtime tutor, Dr. John N. Neumayr. In a lighthearted festivity, complete with much joking and celebration, senior members of the faculty thanked Dr. Neumayr for more than four decades of service to the College. “The Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas,” said Dean Brian T. Kelly, “seemed like an eminently appropriate day to honor a man who dedicated so much of his life to promoting the method and doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas.”

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. Three 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 Sean Corkery (’16), the Logicians dressed as characters from The Great Gatsby. The Rhetoricians, with captain Caecilia Shapiro (’16) took for their theme Star Wars, including in their midst Jedi and oddly dressed royalty. The Grammarians and their captain, Richard Varadan (’16) competed under the banner of Prince of Egypt.

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