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Trust in the Abundant Graces 

 

by Michael F. McLean, Ph.D.
Fourth President and Tutor
Commencement 2025
Thomas Aquinas College, ����ӰԺ

 

Thank you for that kind introduction. Time being of the essence, I guess I can’t ask to hear it again, as much as I might like to.

Anthony has eloquently thanked the College, the faculty, your parents and our benefactors. I would like to begin by returning the favor, and on behalf of the faculty, thanking you, the Class of 2025.

With you, and in many ways because of you, we have in the past four years experienced the beauty and order of the natural world revealed by mathematics and natural science, learned from Aristotle “to strain every nerve to live in accord with the best thing in us,” enjoyed the blossoming of love and the joy of marriage between Pierre and Natasha in War and Peace, been moved at the discovery of the redemptive power of love by Alyosha and the boys in The Brothers Karamazov, and been enriched by the profundity of St. Thomas’s meditations on the mysteries of the Trinity, Incarnation, and Eucharist, which I trust have helped us grow in our knowledge and love of the Triune God and Our Lord, Jesus Christ.

“Your education has prepared you for a Catholic life to be fully and richly lived, a life of the highest and best kind, a life where engagement with the true, the good, and the beautiful has become second nature.”

These are but a few examples which show the absurdity of the commonly held view that liberal education — your education — does not prepare you for life. On the contrary, your education has prepared you for a Catholic life to be fully and richly lived, a life of the highest and best kind, a life where engagement with the true, the good, and the beautiful has become second nature.

Thank you, Class of 2025, for your contributions to the spiritual, social, artistic, and academic lives of the College and for everything you have done for the well-being of this community.

I believe there are some lessons to be drawn from the history of the College, lessons I wish to share especially with our soon-to-be graduates but also with all our guests today who know the College well and, I trust, love it and these seniors deeply.

Intent on implementing a well-articulated vision of Catholic liberal education, and reacting to the decline of liberal education in both Catholic and secular colleges, the principal founders of Thomas Aquinas College — Ron McArthur, Marc Berquist, Jack Neumayr, and Peter DeLuca — began by writing a well-crafted and strongly argued proposal for the fulfillment of Catholic liberal education.

Leaving secure employment, and with very little money, they were eventually offered a site not far from here, recruited some donors, a few brave board members, and an intrepid group of students, and set about educating those students in the truth under the light of the Catholic faith, pursuing a beautifully ordered curriculum and using some of the best books ever written.

The founders’ clarity of mission and purpose, their courage, their faith, and their hope and trust in Divine Providence were inspiring then and have inspired all of us who have been blessed to follow in their footsteps. And so should they inspire you, our seniors.

Times were hard in the early years, and our financial challenges remain significant today. Grateful to be hired by the College in 1978, my wife and I, just as I’m sure prospective tutors do today, carefully calculated the financial implications of coming to the College and living in Southern ����ӰԺ. With our budget worked out, to ����ӰԺ we came, only to discover, contrary to our expectations and plans, but wholly understandable given that point in the College’s history, that we would not be paid in the summer.

Mindful, I think, of what the founders had given up, and with enough piety and respect for them and for their efforts to keep the College afloat, Tom Kaiser and I elected not to form a union and try to negotiate higher salaries but rather to start a small business to help make ends meet.

After distributing some flyers advertising our services, we managed to line up enough roofing jobs to get us through most of the summer. Tom knew something about roofing and was able to teach me enough to get by. To inject a little humor and irony into the situation, we called our small, two-person company Vertigo roofing from the Latin, meaning “to grow dizzy on a height, like a roof, or on a precipice,” like the edge of a roof.

Thanks be to God, the College soon addressed the problem of summer earnings by establishing the tutor summer program to help faculty learn various parts of the curriculum, and some years later by establishing the High School Program to help with student recruitment.

But it was not easy to raise funds for these programs or for anything else the College needed. Our founding president, Ron McArthur, once went to see a donor around Christmastime in an effort to raise $25,000 to meet the payroll. Sometime during the conversation, Ron revealed that his blood pressure was acting up, and the prospective donor urged Ron to take garlic to address the problem. He led Ron to a closet full of garlic pills, garlic powder, and garlic extract. Surveying this abundance, somewhat impatiently Ron said, “I don’t need your [blank] garlic for my blood pressure, I need $25,000 to meet the payroll …” Suffice it to say, Ron got the $25,000, met the payroll, the College survived, and his blood pressure improved.

As I’m sure any of you who have tried to raise money know, it can be a humbling thing.

Now before I continue, I want to clarify one thing. Ron didn’t actually say the word “blank” before he said the word “garlic.” He used a different adjective instead. For the sake of the formality expected of a Commencement Address, the phrase “blank garlic” is entirely my own.

Based on this consideration of the relatively mundane topics of roofing and garlic, my hope is that you will be reminded of the importance in all things of humility, piety, and the willingness to make small (and sometimes large) sacrifices for the sake of the common good. And, as well, the importance of a healthy sense of humor to help you accept trials and tribulations with a sense of equanimity and even some joy.

The College has faced many challenges more serious and more threatening than a small shortage of summer money. One such occurred in the mid-nineties when our accreditors were pushing “diversity” at us — an emphasis on racial and cultural diversity in our curriculum and in our hiring and our student recruitment practices. This was before “equity” and “inclusion” joined the party.

To safeguard our mission and educational philosophy we knew we had to resist this push, and one of our tutors, along with President Dillon, led the resistance. Richard Ferrier, a student of military history, and never one to shy away from verbal combat, did a wonderful job of opposing this effort, and, by forging alliances with schools such as Stanford University, managed to protect the curriculum and help save the school.

Another watershed moment occurred when the College resisted the Obamacare contraceptive insurance mandate. With leadership from our Board of Governors, and the guidance of our legal counsel, Quincy Masteller, along with other outside counsel, we fought this battle, along with the Little Sisters of the Poor, all the way to success before the United States Supreme Court.

In a similar way, our then-Dean, John Goyette, led a successful effort to keep the College operational, and our students and faculty safe, during the Covid crisis, all the while not compromising our pedagogical commitment to in-person classes and class discussions.

Over the years I have been edified by the willingness of our faculty and friends to take on difficult positions beyond those I’ve just mentioned, often with some degree of personal sacrifice — Tom and Paula Kaiser agreeing to lead the opening of the Northfield campus, for example, or tutor after tutor stepping up to serve as assistant dean, most recently Travis Cooper and next year, Joe Zepeda, or tutors volunteering to run the Lecture Series, or the tutor talks, or the writing program, or The Aquinas Review, or stepping up to teach in the tutor summer program, serve on the Instruction Committee, Admissions Committee, in accreditation, in advancement, as dean, as president, or as Board members.

All, along with our other faculty members, and all of our staff, are vital to the flourishing of Thomas Aquinas College and all, each in their own way, have helped make this community and your Commencement possible.

I encourage you to imitate the College and always to resist compromising fundamental principles, mission, and faith commitment, even when the opposition to them is strong and the danger great. Remember, too, that the graces of office are real. Trusting in those abundant graces, be prepared, like David in the Scriptures and like so many of our faculty, to accept leadership positions when the occasion calls for it, even if you don’t feel particularly well qualified to do so or if it requires some sacrifice. With faith in those same graces, do not fear taking on something new and challenging in the near or distant future or even soon after your graduation.

As most of you probably know, we obtained our New England campus from the National Christian Foundation, an evangelical Protestant organization. The process of acquiring the campus was lengthy and required many meetings and much travel. I was sometimes called upon to begin meetings with a prayer, and to strengthen our friendship with our evangelical brethren, I often found myself invoking my personal Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, more than I had ever done before, although I do think I believe that he is my personal lord and savior.

“I encourage you to imitate the College and always to resist compromising fundamental principles, mission, and faith commitment, even when the opposition to them is strong and the danger great.”

When Foundation representatives on one occasion revealed that they had been hoping to give the campus to a Christian, and not a Catholic, organization we had to draw the line and gently point out that Catholics are, and always have been, Christians.

The task of gaining permission from the New England Board of Higher Education to open a campus in Massachusetts was time consuming and complicated. To obtain a modicum of religious freedom protection under Massachusetts law, we had to make the significant compromise of admitting only Catholic students to our New England campus. In the language of the law and of certain judicial precedents, a religious organization in Massachusetts can qualify as such only if it serves what they refer to as “co-religionists.”

It’s good, when possible, to foster friendship and to find points of agreement with those with whom you might otherwise disagree, while remaining faithful to your fundamental principles and policies. It is a fact of political life, however, that you may sometimes be required to compromise on an important point for the sake of obtaining a greater good — in our case the ability to bear witness in largely pagan territory and to offer this education to an increasing number of willing and able students, all the while knowing we can enroll non-Catholic students on our ����ӰԺ campus. Compromise is more acceptable, however, when you know the compromise may not be permanent and that you can live to fight another day to attain your ultimate goal.

Throughout its history, in keeping with the culture of discussion on our campus, and with the prayerful support and sacramental sustenance provided by our chaplains, the College has approached its challenges collaboratively and cooperatively, in a way that preserves friendship and mutual respect among colleagues, encourages open and honest conversation, communication, and compromise — building on smaller points of agreement and working toward consensus on the larger issues in question.

These are hallmarks of TAC governance and the College’s deliberate approach to its many challenges and opportunities. It is an approach that has worked well for us and one that will work well for you as you endeavor to serve your families, your communities, your country, and your Church in a not always friendly or supportive culture.

Now, in closing, let me invite you to recall some encouraging passages from Sacred Scripture. Remember the prophet Elijah, who found the Lord not in the wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire, but in the gentle breeze.

Of course, attend to the advice of your family, friends, and priests, but in prayer, also imitate Elijah and listen to that quiet voice within you as you strive to discern God’s will.

With Solomon, pray that God will give you a discerning heart to distinguish right from wrong. With St. Paul, live so that you can say “I have fought the good and noble fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith …”

Finally, recall St. Peter asking in John 6: “Lord, to whom shall we go?” I hope the answer to this question is, and always will be, as clear to you, especially in times of struggle, as it was to St. Peter, who deep in his heart knew that he must remain close to the Lord, just as you must remain close to the Lord. For when all is said and done, there is nowhere else to go.

Thank you and may God bless you.

 

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