Audio:

Remarks at the 2014 Thanksgiving Dinner

By Michael F. McLean
President, Thomas Aquinas College

Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation, which we have heard this evening, and which was written shortly after the conclusion of the war for America’s independence and the formation of a new national government, is remarkable for its faith in God, trust in His providence, and gratitude for all of His benefits.

Noteworthy among these benefits are the “peaceable and rational manner” in which our constitutional government was formed and the “civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed.” Note, too, Washington’s exhortation that we unite in asking God’s “pardon for our national and other transgressions” and His help in promoting “the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue.”

No less remarkable is Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation, promulgated in October, 1863.

This was three months following the battle of Gettysburg, in which 23,000 Union soldiers and between 20,000 and 28,000 Confederate soldiers met their deaths — about 50,000 young soldiers in a three day period. It was approximately seven months before the Battle of the Wilderness, in which 17,000 more Union soldiers and over 7,000 more Confederate soldiers were killed. The surrender at Appomattox would not take place until April 9, 1865.

And yet in the midst of this Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving. In doing so, he did not forget the suffering and devastation wrought by the war. Like Washington, he called for citizens to offer “humble penitence” to Almighty God for “our national perverseness and disobedience” and “to fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.”

Again like Washington, he looked beyond these afflictions to the nation’s essential goodness and to the great things that lie at its foundation. And so he implored his fellow citizens to thank God for the peace the country enjoyed with many nations, for the blessings of its natural resources, for the maintenance of public order, and for obedience to its laws. He celebrated its economic vitality — “the plough, the shuttle, the ship, the axe, and the mines,” its expected duration, and the expansion of freedom.

And because these blessings are so constantly enjoyed, he noted our tendency to forget the source from which they come — “the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.” In this Lincoln echoed St. Thomas who, in his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, says that in that prayer we pray to be free from the sin of ingratitude, which, he says, “is a great evil, since the ungrateful man prides himself on his wealth and fails to acknowledge that he owes all to God … in order to remove this vice, the Lord says, Give us our daily bread, to remind us that all we have comes from God.”

Thanksgiving is a good time to join two of our greatest presidents in recalling our many blessings and expressing our gratitude for them with full hearts.

Like Washington and Lincoln, we should never forget the importance of the Christian faith to our country’s well-being. Like them, we should look beyond our nation’s tribulations and thank God for the underlying soundness of its institutions and the graces of its circumstances; for the abundance we enjoy and for the freedoms we take for granted. We should be grateful, too, that America is one of the few places on earth with the wealth, generosity, and political arrangements necessary for worthy endeavors like Thomas Aquinas College itself to thrive.

It is no accident that the College was founded in America, and that the blessings America provides make possible the education you are receiving; an education which at its core is Christ-centered — one which helps you to think as adults with Christ and the Church and to love as adults with Christ and the Church.

“Thinking with Christ and the Church” means that you are acquiring a robust sense of the harmony between faith and reason which will equip you, in the words of St. Peter, “to be always ready to give a reason for the hope which is in you.”

It also means that you are developing a robust sense of the natural law, which St. Paul says “is written on our hearts,” and a deep appreciation of the fact that human laws should be framed, and our consciences formed, in harmony with the natural law. And it means that you are receiving a thoroughly Catholic understanding of human happiness, the good life, and moral and political virtue — the elements of the “understanding mind” sought by Solomon in the First Book of Kings.

“Loving with Christ and the Church” means that you are strengthening your sense of the order and beauty of the natural world, a sense encouraged by the study of mathematics and natural science and by the sheer physical beauty of the College’s setting and architecture.

It also means that you are becoming more strongly attracted to good and noble things, an attraction encouraged by your study of music and great literature. And it means that you are growing in fidelity to the two great commandments — love of God and love of neighbor — a fidelity which is a fruit of the study of Sacred Scripture and the fathers and doctors of the Church.

Together with my fellow faculty members and our chaplains, I urge you to do your very best from now until the end of the semester to rejoice in these gifts and to rededicate yourselves to the common good of the College and to what you came here for in the first place — not high grades or A’s on examinations, not the triumph of your own opinions or the esteem of tutors and students, but rather things of far greater worth and enduring importance: deeper relationships with Christ our King and the beginnings of Catholic wisdom and virtue. If you do these things, you will, I think, be preparing yourselves well for whatever God eventually calls you to do and, in gratitude, you will be paying back more than you have received to those who make your lives at the College possible.