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Nearly 12%
of Thomas Aquinas College alumni pursue vocations
to the priestly and religious life. While not all
have been called to take final vows, many have.
In fact, 25 men have been ordained to the priesthood
in the first 25 years of the College’s existence.
The numbers are almost evenly divided
between those who pursued vocations before and those
who pursued them after graduation from the College.
All but 5 priests are members of 12 different religious
orders or congregations. Of those who are professed
members of a religious order, five are part of eremitic
or cloistered communities (Cistercians, Carthusians,
Benedictines, Maronite Monks, and Benedictine Camaldolese
Hermits). The Legionaries of Christ claims the most
alumni priests with five, while the Oblates of the
Virgin Mary follows closely with four.
Almost all of these priests found
their vocations during their time at the College:
Fr. Matthew O’Donnell (class
of ’88) a parish priest with care of 4,000
families in Tracy, California, says that his daily
Mass attendance and growth in his prayer life at
Thomas Aquinas College "played a pivotal role"
in forming his religious vocation: "TAC gave
me the true freedom to follow Christ joyfully."
Fr. Francis Gloudeman,
O. Praem.(Norbertine, class of ’84)
says he will never forget the clear and deep call
he felt to be a priest during one of his daily holy
hours in front of the Blessed sacrament at the College.
Fr. Francis - the "bicycle priest" - was
the focus of a January ’98 cover story in Our
Sunday Visitor, because of his unique dedication
to helping home-schooling families with catechesis
near St. Michael’s Norbertine Abbey in Silverado,
California.
Many, like Fr. Francis, credit
their vocations to more than just their exposure
to the sacramental life a the College. "More
than several times since graduating, I have caught
myself reflecting about where I would be without
the convictions which the College’s education
has rooted in my intelligence, and in my heart,"
says Fr. Mark Bachmann, O.S.B.
(Benedictine, class of ’82), whose vocation
is the monastic life. "How much easier
it is," he says, "to dominate the little
trials of life when one remembers from Freshman
philosophy that a passion is just a disposition
and therefore is bound to pass - or from Junior,
year, that true happiness lies in activity, in the
use of our faculties."
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The habit of thinking is what Fr.
James Garceau, CRIC (Canon Regular of the
Immaculate Conception, class of ’78) values
from his college education. "At TAC, we learned
to go to the sources to find truth. I believe that
a priest today must stay close to the Source of
his priesthood, Jesus Christ, the eternal High Priest."
As he says, "I am thankful to the College for
guiding me through texts that helped to strengthen
my faith, and so disposed me better to respond to
God’s call in the priesthood."
Fr. Anthony Kramer, O.
Mar. (Maronite rite, class of ’86),
echoes the same, living as a contemplative monk
with the Congregation of Maronite Monks in Bethlehem,
South Dakota. "The writings of St. Thomas and
the other doctors and Fathers are principal sources
of nourishment for my life as a contemplative monk.
Without the education I received at Thomas
Aquinas College, much of this Catholic tradition
would have remained a closed book to me."
Fr. Anthony is also editor for
a new periodical Return to the Source,
"a theological and spiritual journal which
'breathes with both lungs', drawing from both Eastern
and Western Christian traditions in order to contemplate
the holy mysteries contained in the one deposit
of the faith." The journal is published
by the Maronite Monks of Most Holy Trinity Monastery
in Massachusetts and Holy Nativity Monastery in
South Dakota.
Father John Higgins,
(class of ’90) a Bronx parish priest, sums
up much of what others have found in living their
vocation: "People are hungering for the truth
and my education at Thomas Aquinas College helped
me to become a better servant of the Truth."
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