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Each year, the College celebrates its patron’s feast day by adjourning classes, offering Mass, and hosting a guest lecturer on the campus. This year, because the feast day (January 28) fell on a Sunday, the Instruction Committee decided to move the celebration to St. Thomas’ original feast date, March 7, so the celebration could have its full impact for all the students and faculty. Invited as the guest speaker for the day was the prolific author and professor of government at Georgetown University, Rev. James Schall, S.J. He received a B.A. and an M.A. in philosophy from Gonzaga University, and went on to receive a Ph.D. in political philosophy from Georgetown University in 1960. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1963. Fr. Schall first visited the campus and delivered the homily at the College’s Baccalaureate Mass in 1995, and he has been a member of the College’s Board of Visitors since 1998. Fr. Cornelius M. Buckley, College chaplain and fellow member of the Society of Jesus, had the honor of introducing his long-time friend to the College community. In addition to receiving from Fr. Buckley the particulars of Fr. Schall’s curriculum vitae, students and faculty were also delighted by the two Jesuits’ inimitable repartee. The topic of Fr. Schall’s lecture was friendship—how it is found in the natural order and perfected in the supernatural order. Undergirding his talk were a number of St. Thomas’ bedrock principles, all too often rejected in modern intellectual circles, e.g. that the mind is ordained to the apprehension of the truth about reality, that there is a continuity between philosophy and the Gospel. In fact, claimed Fr. Schall, the search for truth is also a search for friends at the highest level, friends who live in the truth and are bonded together by it. He referred his listeners to the Gospel of St. John when Christ told His apostles, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:15) (emph. added) Said Dean McLean, “It was wonderful to have Fr. Schall with us again. His talk on friendship was uplifting and so fitting for our celebration of the feast of St. Thomas.” Following the St. Thomas Day Lecture, teams of students were formed and a life-sized playing board was set up for the much-anticipated and thoroughly enjoyed annual game of “Trivial and Quadrivial Pursuits.” -- Qtrly Newsletter, Spring 2007 |
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