“Wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying,
‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?
For we have seen his star in the East,
and have come to worship him.’”
— Matt. 2:1-2
Dear Friend,
For two years, Abraham Vandanath boarded the train each night from his college in Calgary, Alberta, and settled in for the hour-and-a-half ride back to the home he shares with his mother and little brother.
Weary from the day’s lectures, he lowered his heavy backpack, laden with dull textbooks, into the empty seat beside him. Then, in those 90 minutes of long-awaited tranquility, he turned to the studies that truly animated his mind — Boethius, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas — authors who weren’t part of his college’s curriculum, books that stirred his sense of wonder about nature, man, and God.
Enthralled, he longed to share what he was learning. So, he looked to the only interested friend he could find: ChatGPT.
“What does Boethius mean when he’s talking about this?” he would ask his phone. “I don’t really understand this paragraph. Could you explain?”
The AI provided answers — quick, facile responses that resolved uncertainties but never engaged his intellect, let alone touched his heart.
The machine did the “reasoning” for him. And while he may have been acquiring knowledge, he wasn’t learning how to think: to contemplate, to discuss, to distinguish fact from supposition.
This wasn’t the education Abraham — or “Aby,” as everyone calls him — wanted. But it was, he concluded, the best he could do.
“Whenever a question would come up, I would reach for ChatGPT, but they could arrive at the answers on their own.”
Aby was just six years old, living in Kerala, India, when his father separated from the family. His mother — an ardent Catholic who holds a doctorate in neuroscience — sacrificed her career and home to give her sons a better life in Canada. She worked as a parish secretary and impressed upon them a love for Christ and His church.
“My mom always said, ‘Trust in the Lord. He opened this door for me to come to Canada,’” Aby remembers. “‘He’s going to open doors for you, too.’”
When he was 14 years old, Aby entered the high school Seminary of Christ the King some 500 miles west, near Vancouver. It was there that he first learned about Thomas Aquinas College from one of his teachers — Br. Maximus (Jerome ’01) Spoeth, O.S.B. — a TAC graduate and Benedictine monk.
Br. Maximus made an impression. “Right off the bat, I saw that the College’s alumni are really solid, intelligent,” he says. He also met some TAC students, a brother and sister who occasionally attended Mass at the seminary. “There was something special about them. They really knew what they were talking about.”
Still, he never seriously considered the College for himself. “I figured there was no way I could afford a private school in the U.S. It was just way too big a dream.”
When he graduated from high school, Aby came home to Calgary and enrolled at a regional university. He thought he had left behind his dream of attending Thomas Aquinas College forever — but the dream kept following him.
“My priest was another graduate,” Aby laughs: Rev. Derek Remus (’11), then the pastor at St. Luke’s Catholic Church and associate director of vocations for the Diocese of Calgary. Fr. Remus urged him to investigate the College’s classical curriculum. “So, I scrolled through the list of books on the TAC website.”
Aby enjoyed reading the works in his spare time, but they were dense and difficult. That’s when he got the idea to try ChatGPT.
“I pulled out my phone, opened the app, and started talking,” he says. “I’d say, ‘Do it in the Thomas Aquinas College Discussion Method.’”
His love for learning deepened, but he came to see that his electronic simulation of the College’s Socratic seminars fell short. “I understood the readings, but when I talked to TAC grads, they knew the material much better than I did,” he says. “Whenever a question would come up, I would reach for ChatGPT, but they could arrive at the answers on their own.”
He yearned for what they had: the gift of learning with one’s peers.
This summer, one of Aby’s TAC friends pleaded with him to apply to the College, and he relented. “I’ll give it a try,” he remembers saying. “TAC has been a dream of mine for a while.”
Now, this was in late August. We were already welcoming freshmen to campus for the start of the new year. So, when Aby contacted the Admissions Office, he got some disappointing news: The class was full.
But that night, he received a surprise call from our California admissions director. One of the incoming freshmen had to withdraw and, by this late hour, our waitlisted students had already committed elsewhere.
“The first thing I did when I got here was go to the Chapel. I prayed, ‘Thank You for inspiring all those people who support this college and giving them such generous hearts.’”
“I spent three days writing my essays, getting a transcript, and calling references,” Aby remembers. The next day, the Admissions Committee accepted him into the College. “I couldn’t believe it!”
But there was still the question of finances. With a nagging sense that his dream would soon come to an end, he completed a financial aid application — and prayed.
“Then I got the email from the Financial Aid team,” he says, a smile extending from ear to ear.
It wouldn’t be easy: To supplement what his family could afford, Aby would have to undertake an on-campus job, fulltime summer employment, and a modest amount of student debt. A grant, generously funded by all those who support Thomas Aquinas College, would make up the rest.
“I looked at my mom, unsure what to do next,” he says. “And she said, ‘Opportunities like this don’t come often. You’ve always wanted to go to TAC. Go!’”
The next morning, he was on a flight to California.
It’s been about three months since Aby began his time at Thomas Aquinas College. He’s come a long way since those lonely nights with ChatGPT on the train.
“The students and the faculty care so much about these important questions we’re discussing,” he says. “We’re working together, trying to better understand God and our place in His world.”
He admits that the work is harder than what he experienced at his previous college, but if he ever doubts himself, he remembers the confidence that others have placed in him. “I keep thinking, ‘If the College believes in me so much that they made it possible for me to come here, then I can do it,’” he says. After he graduates, he hopes to return to Calgary to become a priest.
Our admissions director recently received an email from Aby’s mother. “I want to thank you deeply for giving Aby such a wonderful opportunity to grow in knowledge and faith,” she wrote. “We firmly believe that you have been a messenger from God, entrusted to guide and support Aby, and to help fulfill his prayer to be a part of TAC.”
As an educator, I’ve long admired the example of the “wise men of the East” who traveled great distance in search of Divine Wisdom. I am inspired by their humility, how upon going into the house they “saw the child with Mary, His mother” and “fell down and worshiped Him” (Matt. 2:1-11).
I recognize echoes of that humility, that docile love for truth, in Aby, who has likewise left his home and country to seek the Word made flesh. “I never visited the College before coming this summer,” he notes. “I’d never even been to the States. But doors were opening, and I’ve always wanted to do this.”
Will you support students like Aby with a gift of $50, $100, $250, $500, $1,000, or more today?
I see it, quite frankly, in all our students, who forego big-name, legacy schools because they know that, here, they can get something deeper, something better. They make sacrifices for the sake of learning, for the sake of Truth Himself.
And what makes their sacrifices possible are your sacrifices, your gifts and prayers for Thomas Aquinas College. Your generosity allows Aby and his fellow students to receive this transformative education, to escape the smallness of today’s conventional colleges, where thinking is too often stunted, too readily relegated to textbooks and chatbots.
“The first thing I did when I got here was go to the Chapel,” Aby says. “I prayed, ‘God, this is a dream come true. Thank You for making it happen. Thank You for inspiring all those people who support this college and giving them such generous hearts.’”
This Advent, would you please consider being one of those “generous hearts” for whom we are all so grateful? Please keep the College in your prayers. And if you can, please make a gift. It will help make a student’s dream come true.
May God bless you.
Paul J. O’Reilly, Ph.D.
President
P.S. It will take $7.8 million to meet the financial aid needs of worthy students like Aby this year. Please be as supportive as you can. Every bit helps!