Dean Cain: “We Should be Grateful”

Dr. Steven Cain
Dean
Thomas Aquinas College, New England
Thanksgiving Address
November 23, 2025

We Should Be Grateful

Our celebration of Thanksgiving is intended, in the words of our first president, as a “service of that great and glorious Being, Who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.”

This is so because He Himself is Goodness Itself, and out of that goodness, He brought into being this glorious creature we call the universe; glorious because by making known God’s “eternal power and divinity,” (Rom 1.20) it gives glory to its Maker, thus finding its perfection in its return to its beginning. As the Psalmist says, “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims His handiwork” (Ps 19.1). President Washington, in his proclamation, was, and is, calling upon the citizens of this country to take this day to render a service, a liturgy of gratitude to the beneficent Author of all good for the particular goods He has showered upon our nation and our community within that nation. It right for us to do so.

“And so, we are gathered here to give thanks to God for the blessings He has bestowed on us through our country, our state, our families, and this college.”

Now, it is right for us always and everywhere to give thanks to God, for, though the heavens proclaim the glory of God by their being, we men, in imitation of his Triune Godhead, are able to express that glory in word and love. We, through His grace and providence, are able, every day, as a church to offer Him fitting thanks in the Eucharist. Still, it is good for us to gather at the more natural level of our more human communities to stammer out in our words, however inadequate they may be, our thanks, not only for His supernatural benefits, but also for those He bestows in our more natural associations, goods (because they are natural) we can sometimes forget still depend upon God’s beneficence and providence. And so, we are gathered here to give thanks to God for the blessings He has bestowed on us through our country, our state, our families, and this college.

It is certainly true that our country is losing its sense of dependence on the providence that President Washington asks us to gratefully acknowledge, and that the loss of this awareness is often promoted by the very institutions that we are to give thanks for today, but it is not yet wholly lost. The existence of this college shows this, and so the College is a sign of hope for the future of this nation. Socrates said that Athens, for all its faults, was the one city in Greece that would have tolerated his presence as long as it did, and I think, too, that America, with all its imperfections, is the one country in the world where this college could come into being. There is still enough freedom in our country for it to tolerate, even in education — an institution that is at the very heart of the political community — a college that explicitly orders its education to something other than this country.

States tend to be jealous of the affections of their citizens. Numa and his religious institutions aimed at making the gods citizens, or rather, servants of Rome; and states tend to look upon their citizens as servants. Therefore, they see education as a way to produce servants for themselves. And so, a college that aims explicitly at producing free men would (apparently) be at odds with it. But America, Massachusetts, California, tolerate Thomas Aquinas college, and we should be grateful to God for that. But this implies, of course, that we should be grateful to Him even more for Thomas Aquinas College and for all the colleges in the country that see their mission to be “education under the light of faith,” as the Blue Book puts it. Praise God we are not the only college that sees this as its mission — this bodes well for our country. But I do think that we, through the wisdom of our founders, seek to educate under the light of faith in a very radical way. Through our faith, we see in a way not open to those without faith what man is and what we are for. I believe Saint John Paul II said that in coming to know Jesus, man comes to know himself: Christ reveals man to himself.

To see the radicalness of the college’s approach to education, we should consider its curriculum. In a unique way, we have one curriculum for all our students. It is one in the sense that it is common to all students, but it is also one in a more fundamental way — in the unity of its parts.

There are many members but one Spirit, St. Paul tells us. Most colleges focus on the members, educating for this or that work. And there is good in that. Some of these even recognize something of the one Spirit and so require something of a unified set of courses. But our founders saw that it was important to give a fuller education in the one Spirit, that is, to order our education to our true end and happiness. For education is a leading out from ignorance into knowledge, especially knowledge of the best and highest things. This means that our end and happiness is to be drawn into the very life of the Triune God, and so our education should be ordered in all its parts to the study of sacred doctrine, theology.

Though theology is the culmination of our studies, there are still many parts: mathematics, natural science, music, grammar, etc. But what our founders saw, and used to form our curriculum, is that the best way to order the various parts, to use the different arts and sciences to lead one to theology, was to have us study them for their own sakes.

It is true that the place each course has in the curriculum is determined by the order necessary to lead step by step to theology. We must study geometry before we study the heavens, and study natural history before studying natural philosophy. The establishment of this order takes a real wisdom. But we take up each of the courses to study each of the arts or sciences because they are worthy of study for their own sake.

The soul can rest in seeing that the interior angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. There is a joy in coming to see that. In studying these lower things for their own sake, we come to delight in the order and intelligibility in the subject of the study: in continuous quantity, in music, in motion, in animate being. And there is joy in the realization that this is an order that is discovered in the things we are coming to know, not an order made by us, as in the mechanical arts. By pursuing knowledge of these things for their own sakes, we come to appreciate more and more the beauty of the order discovered in them.

But it is precisely in beholding for its own sake the beautiful order in each of these subjects that we come to appreciate them as parts leading to a greater whole, as they themselves are only understood fully by seeing them as ordered to something beyond themselves. St. Augustine puts this beautifully in Book 11 of his Confessions: “Behold, the heaven and the earth are.” We see the heaven and the earth, but as we behold them, we begin to hear their voices, softly at first, but growing in intensity: “They proclaim that they were made”! If we continue to listen, we hear them proclaim: We did not make ourselves.

“We must be led to hear that voice. And so, our founders have us study nature intensely, and study mathematics intensely, in order to amplify the soft, low voice that speaks to us of their Maker.”

“Therefore we are, because we have been made; we were not therefore before we were so that we could have made ourselves.” And the voice of those that speak is in itself an evidence. Thou, therefore, Lord didst make these things; Thou Who art beautiful, for they are beautiful; Thou Who art good for they are good; Thou Who art because they are. Nor even so are they beautiful, nor good, nor are they, as Thou their Creator art; compared with Whom they are neither beautiful, nor good, nor are at all (Conf. 11.4).

These words of St. Augustine give an epitome of our curriculum. Beginning with the things of nature, we are led to see their beauty, their goodness, their truth, and in seeing these, we come to see the One Who is Beauty, Who is Goodness, Who is Truth. “The voice of those that speak is in itself an evidence.” We must be led to hear that voice. And so, our founders have us study nature intensely, and study mathematics intensely, in order to amplify the soft, low voice that speaks to us of their Maker. And by hearing this voice of His creation, we are better disposed to hear the voice of His Incarnate Word when He speaks to us directly of a life that is higher and more beautiful and more desirable than even the Heavens can tell.

And so, if we give ourselves to the course of studies laid down for us, we are able to understand better ourselves and our place in the order of God’s creation. We can understand in what our happiness consists and how to move toward that happiness, regardless of whatever member of the Mystical body we find ourselves to be when leave here. We know the Way to Truth and to Life, and so we are truly free.

We should, then, be grateful for this college. We should be grateful to our country for providing a society in which this college can exist and flourish, and we should be grateful to the founders of this college for the beginning in the life of wisdom that they provided for us.

I believe that I was led to these reflections this year by the recent anniversaries for the deaths of Dr. McArthur and Mr. Berquist, but most of all by the news of the illness of Mr. Deluca, the last living founder. So, I would like to end these remarks by asking you to join me in praying the Memorare for the repose of the souls of Dr. McArthur, Mr. Berquist, and Dr. Neumayr, and for the welfare of Mr. Deluca.

Remember, O most compassionate Virgin Mary …