Students Celebrate St. Thomas Day with Prayer, Scholarship & Trivia

Every year, Thomas Aquinas College comes together on the feast day of its patron and namesake, St. Thomas Aquinas, to celebrate with rich festivities spiritual, intellectual, and amusing.

New England

In New England, the day began with a beautiful Mass sung by the students, followed by veneration of St. Thomas’s holy relics and a procession of the faculty in full academic regalia into Our Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel.

At noon, the College reassembled for a lecture from Dr. Matthew Levering, a professor at University of St. Mary of the Lake, who spoke on the subject, “The Eucharist and Typology.” Drawing examples from Scripture, Dr. Levering laid out a few of the most prominent parallels and prefigurations of the Eucharist between the Old Testament and the New. In the subsequent question-and-answer session, students and faculty explored different types and tropes in the Old Testament and the illumination of New Testament truths found therein. As Dr. Levering explained, “Aquinas respected the Old Testament; if you want to understand the New Testament, you have to do so through the Old Testament and its types.”

Later, students and faculty adorned in silks and suits came together in Gould Hall for a formal dinner, laughing and chatting over the chef’s choice concoctions around finely laid tables. 

Last but not least on the agenda, everyone settled in for the annual game of Trivial & Quadrivial Pursuits. This game is the capstone of St. Thomas Day, in which student teams go head-to-head in a riveting race of curriculum-based knowledge. Students split into three groups — Rhetoricians, Logicians, and Grammarians — each with their own theme and a skit to perform for the tutor judges.

This year, the three student teams were led by Alexei Forrester (NE’26), whose squad recreated the Boston Tea Party; Liam O’Brian (NE’26), heading an enthusiastic, small-town country choir, and Adelina Margand (NE’26), with her group’s raucous reenactment of the Battle of Jericho. Each team put on an entertaining skit for extra points, and after a few hours of desperately and amusedly wracking their brains to recall topics from all four years of Thomas Aquinas College’s curriculum, the final win went to Team Forrester and his Bostonian revolutionaries. “This was a great community-building event,” said Margaret Asjes (NE’29). “I also got such a good sense of how the curriculum integrates across classes — this has been a fun day!”

California

On the West Coast, the feast day commenced with a reverent morning Mass in Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel, concelebrated by all three of the College’s chaplains, followed by a brunch in St. Joseph’s Commons.

Before long, students and tutors gathered in the Fritz B. Burns Auditorium for the St. Thomas Day lecture, “Aquinas and the Consequentialists,” by Dr. Thomas Cavanaugh (’85), a professor at the University of San Francisco. Dr. Cavanaugh, who specializes in medical ethics, explained to his audience how the concept of double effect — when an action whose end is the good has a potentially bad effect — is reconcilable with the Hippocratic Oath taken by medical professionals. He drew from Aquinas’s accounts of intention, as well his distinction between voluntary and deliberate actions, and illustrated his argument with several medical examples. A lively and well-attended question-and-answer session followed, where students, tutors, and Dr. Cavanaugh wrestled with issues such as euthanasia and “the malicious prosecutor” in discussion.

For dinner, all made their way to St. Joseph Commons for a delicious formal buffet, where attendees mingled over steaks and cheesecake. Very soon thereafter, the dining hall was cleared and transformed into a stage, making room for the day’s final event: Trivial & Quadrivial Pursuits. The Grammarians, headed by Greg Haggard (CA’26), presented as entomologist J. Henri Fabre and his insects; the Logicians, captained by Agustina O’Reilly (CA’26), dressed as an ensemble from Homer’s Odyssey; and the Rhetoricians, led by Estevan Henderson (CA’26), performed a Shakespearean medley.

The game lasted late into the night and even went into overtime as the teams battled relentlessly; but, in the end, the Logicians took the crown. “It was wonderful to see how my whole team worked together and pulled us through to the win!” exclaimed Miss O’Reilly.

Afterward, students headed back to their residence halls, joyful after a day of reverence, camaraderie, and fun. “St. Thomas Day is a day for the campus to come together. In that way, Trivial-Quadrivial caps it off really well,” explained Mr. Haggard. “The campus unites, puts lots of work into this thing, and has fun. It’s the perfect capstone for what St. Thomas Day is all about.”

More St. Thomas Day photos from New England …

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… and California!