TAC Matriculates Class of 2029 on Both Coasts

At its 2025 Convocation exercises on Saturday and Monday, Thomas Aquinas College formally welcomed 155 new freshmen to its ranks, thus opening its 55th academic year. Between the California and New England campuses, the newest students hail from over 30 states and 7 countries, including Brazil, Scotland, Canada, Mexico, Ireland, and Lithuania. 

“You are beginning something noble and difficult, and in the end, you will receive an education for a lifetime,” said President Paul J. O’Reilly in his Matriculation Address. “With wonder, humility, confidence, and charity, you will grow into the kind of person who seeks truth, loves what is good, and is capable of giving to others what has been received.”

 

New England 

 

 

The start of the seventh academic year on the College’s New England campus began Saturday morning with a Mass of the Holy Spirit in Our Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel. Serving as the principal celebrant and homilist was Rev. Wojciech Giertych, O.P., theologian of the papal household, joined at the altar by the campus’s two chaplains, Rev. Greg Markey and Rev. John Chung.

In his homily, Fr. Giertych reminded the incoming freshmen that Christ sent the Holy Spirit to guide and teach us as we look to Jesus for an example of how to live in faith. “Being moved with the Holy Spirit, we need to live out our lives being chosen in the face of God, living life with a trustful, childlike open love,” he said. “And at the same time, we need to be adults, responsible in the face of the challenges of the world.”

 

 

After Mass, students and members of the faculty enjoyed refreshments on St. Augustine Hall’s lawn, then reconvened in Moody Auditorium. To begin the Matriculation ceremony, the College welcomed a new member of the New England teaching faculty, Mr. Philip Knuffke (’12), who made the Profession of Faith and Oath of Fidelity, as do all new Catholic members of the College’s teaching faculty.

Then came the Matriculation itself, as — one by one — the members of the Class of 2029 signed their names to the College’s registry. Fr. Giertych returned to the podium for his remarks when the last freshman sat down, urging the class not to distrust faith and reason, as modern culture does, but to embrace them as necessary and complimentary. 

 

 

“We have had in our Western culture a long history of mutual distrust and rivalry between reason and faith,” he said. “The Church reminds us, however, in our prayer, that the two need not be in conflict. … Both reason and faith are a gift of God, and in God there is no contradiction, so we can fully develop and use our natural mind, and we can use the faith that we have received at baptism that enables us to receive the saving truths.”

 

California

Two days later, in California, Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel filled with 100 freshmen, their families, and faculty for their own Mass of the Holy Spirit, with the Most Rev. Sławomir Szkredka, Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles, serving as the principal celebrant. “In the midst of study and discussion, argument building and defending, true education opens a space for interior silence,” said His Excellency said in his homily, reflecting on the importance of quiet prayer and receptivity to the Holy Spirit. “The seed of the Word must first rest in the darkness of the soil, wrapped in quiet, or else it will be snatched away by birds.”

 

 

After Mass, all gathered for the Matriculation Ceremony in Fritz B. Burns Auditorium. There, as Director of Admissions Jon Daly called each student by name, the freshmen came forward to greet President O’Reilly and Bishop Szkredka. They then signed their names in the campus registry, thus beginning their tenure as students at Thomas Aquinas College, California.

In addition to the new students, the College acknowledged the four newest members of the California teaching faculty: Dr. Dale Parker, Mr. Andreas Waldstein (’19), Miss Claire Murphy (’20), and Mr. Dominic Spiekermann, all of whom stood together and made the Profession of Faith and Oath of Fidelity.

 

 

Bishop Szkredka then delivered his Matriculation remarks. “In its Declaration on Christian Education, the Second Vatican Council teaches: ‘For a true education aims at the formation of the human person in the pursuit of his ultimate end and the good of the societies of which, as man, he is a member, and in whose obligations, as an adult, he will share,’” he said. “True education entails formation toward the ultimate end. If that ultimate end, as I have argued, is to allow the Word of God to grow within us — the Word of creation and the Word of the Cross — then worship and loving outreach to those who suffer are not a distraction from study but rather its authenticating mark.”

 

 

At the conclusion of the ceremonies on both campuses, Dr. O’Reilly proclaimed the start of the College’s 55th academic year, to which students responded with loud applause. Members of the faculty and Board of Governors then processed out as all sang “Immaculate Mary” in joyful anticipation of the new year, now at hand.

 

More Convocation photos from New England …

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… and California!

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