Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas

MOJ-friend John O'Callaghan passes on the following, written for the upcoming Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas:

In the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas the Church places before us the patron of all universities and students.  She does so because he is an extraordinary model of reflection upon the truths about the world, its creator and redeemer that are manifested in creation and expressed in Scripture.  All university education, but particularly Catholic education, springs from the truths that God creates and sustains in existence all things other than Himself, that as His creatures they are all fundamentally good, and have been redeemed by the Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that all human beings have implanted within them a desire to know and love creation and its Creator.  So all education implicitly begins with the insight of St. Paul who wrote, "the invisible things of God are understood by the things that are made."  No field of study, whether in the Humanities, the Sciences, or the Professions, is foreign to a genuinely Catholic education.  All contribute and are integrated into the pursuit of faith seeking understanding, whether their subject matters talk about God or not, just as Chemistry contributes to the study of health without talking about health.

Catholic education, the life of the University of Notre Dame in particular, is an extraordinary gift that the Church offers to the world as an expression of Her faithfulness to the knowledge and love of its creator.  Since all of St. Thomas’ work expresses a life spent in the pursuit of truth within the light of those fundamental truths, it is fitting that the Church urges universities and their students to seek his intercession in their lives as well. We are blessed at the University of Notre Dame with the opportunity to do so.