A Day of Gratitude

We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.

In our journey of liberal learning, we will, both students and teachers, find ourselves in the presence of the goodness of truth and the beauty of being. We will linger there in that presence, contemplating, knowing that this goodness of truth and this beauty of being is a reflection of the One who is Being itself.

Thank you for participating in this joyful occasion, as we reflect upon the almost fifty years of growth and fidelity that God has granted to this institution, and the beginning of this next chapter in the life of our collegiate community.

I have been told that it is important for a leader to know when to administer justice and when to be merciful. Thus, to show that my thanks to all of you are sincere, I promise to keep my remarks mercifully brief.

Today, we honor and renew our commitment to Christendom’s founding and those who made the heroic sacrifices both to found Christendom College and bring her to this point today.

I think of the college’s great founding president, Dr. Warren Carroll—and I’m so grateful that Mrs. Carroll is here today—the five founding faculty, the five trustees, the founding staff, the founding students, the early friends of the college and those souls hidden from the written record who gave from their substance to lay the college’s foundation. And I also think of and honor the presidents who followed—President Damien Fedoryka, President Timothy O’Donnell—their wives and children, and all of the faculty, students, parents, trustees, benefactors, staff, and alumni, who have given sacrificially over these many years.

And we recall that all of this history, everything that Christendom is today, is the work of Grace, recalling the words of the Psalmist: ‘Unless the Lord buildeth the house, the builders labor in vain.’

Today is a day of gratitude.

+++

We have also gathered today to affirm our commitment to uphold the fidelity of Christendom College, an institution founded on a unique devotion to the Church as mother and teacher. As an institution, we are committed to listening to Holy Mother Church and seeking to think and live as a collegiate community with the mind of the Church, bearing witness to the hope that is within us. And confronted by the ideological currents and pressures that would threaten our commitment to fidelity, let those who would push us to compromise know this: We will not offer incense to Caesar. We will not give quarter to the mediocrity that corrupts the excellence to which we are called. We will not bend to the spirit of the age. And we will not kneel before the gods of this world.

But know this as well: our commitment to institutional and personal fidelity is not primarily defensive. Rather it is joyful, it is eucharistic, and it is born from love; and such fidelity is dynamic and generative.

For each of us who are members of the community that is Christendom College knows firsthand that the truth will set us free. And rooted in this fidelity we are free to affirm that great truth at the beginning of sacred scripture about our created world: ‘And God saw that it was good.’ From this truth, we are free to undertake the great journey of liberal learning, pursuing the goodness of truth and the transformative splendor of beauty that crowns the contemplation of being, being that discloses itself in nature, in culture, and in the most unexpected of places.

Our commitment to fidelity sets us free to go forth with courage and in love to wherever God may call us. Standing firm on this foundation of dynamic and generative fidelity, we see this freedom every day in the classroom and beyond, when all of us—professors and students alike—encounter truth and goodness within the context of faith, taking steps toward the wisdom that liberates and the One who is the source of all wisdom.

Today is a day to affirm joyful, dynamic, and generative fidelity.

+++

As we look toward the future, what might we see?

I would propose that as we approach this next chapter of our life as a college, that we weave together two elements of our tradition. These elements are the experience of conversion and the experience of pilgrimage. And I would propose that we integrate these experiences in two domains: the spiritual and the intellectual within a unity of life.

I believe we can approach our lives seeking opportunities for conversion of our hearts and our minds—a turning toward the truth and the Author of truth—while moving ever forward, with a spirit of boldness, as pilgrims, toward our eternal home.

Of the first, that is, the spiritual conversion: we read in Psalm 80: ‘Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts: show the light thy countenance, and we shall be whole.’ This is the spiritual conversion that we seek. And once this conversion begins, we turn again and again, but all the while moving ‘further up and further in’ on pilgrimage toward a city not built with human hands. In this we share with all Catholics everywhere the act of turning toward God as his children, undertaking the joyful and ecclesial life of prayer, the sacraments, and Christian witness, drawing ever closer to the Divine Physician and Father.

In light of this we can look at our time at Christendom as a part of a much larger conversion and pilgrimage, a time of special intensity and focus within the journey, a time of special grace, as we seek to follow Christ in communion with one another.

But there is a second form of conversion and pilgrimage. One that should unfold simultaneously and be intertwined with the other, one that is specifically proper to a college as a college. We have all heard of the distinctions between the Church Militant, the Church Suffering, and the Church Triumphant. I would posit yet another distinction: we, who are part of the Christendom College community, are also ‘the Church at Study.’

For four years, our students receive a great gift, one that most people through most of human history have never received. This is the gift of a period of time, four years, in which to seek to become truly wise. Our students have the gift of time to pursue true academic and intellectual excellence. Our students have the gift of time to seek an integrated vision of the whole of reality as well as the One who is the architect of this whole. They have the gift of time to experience a profound and transformative intellectual conversion.

And while much of this wisdom will have immediate and practical consequences for a life of flourishing and apostolate, we do not begin there, but rather we begin with the contemplation of the goodness of truth and the being that is resplendent in its beauty. And we recall Christ’s words about Mary and Martha, that Mary chose the better part. Here Mary, stands as an image of the contemplative life while Martha, stands as an icon of the practical life.

And as important as the work of Martha was, it was Mary who chose the better part. And Thomas Aquinas reminds us that in an absolute sense, contemplation is the higher activity. So as important as our studies will be for future labors in the world, especially apostolic labor, we remember that our studies begin in that high calling to contemplation, are born from natural wonder, nurtured in sacred leisure, and will be fulfilled, Deo volente, in supernatural wonder, when we will our God see face-to-face.

In our journey of liberal learning, we will, both students and teachers, find ourselves in the presence of the goodness of truth and the beauty of being. We will linger there in that presence, contemplating, knowing that this goodness of truth and this beauty of being is a reflection of the One who is Being itself.

And then, fulfilling one of the mottos of the great Dominican order, we will, after having given ample and generous time to contemplation, freely and joyfully share the fruits of our contemplation with others. But this generosity must not become degraded, even within the context of faithful apostolate. It must not follow the technocratic logic of late modernity in which contemplation and liberal learning become enslaved to a vulgar practicality and activism. It must not be ruled by productivity metrics and pragmatic efficiency, becoming disconnected from a higher purpose and reduced to ‘outcomes’ alienated from what it means to be fully human. Rather our generous response to the gifts of contemplation must always be a participation in the divine economy of gift.

And here the great genius of our faculty and our curriculum must be emphasized. Unlike so many other institutions, Christendom’s curriculum is ordered coherently and teleologically to Wisdom. And our faculty cultivate simultaneously the sharp vision of their respective disciplines, all the while extending and integrating this vision into a capacious understanding of what it means to be liberally educated, building Newman’s ideal of the circle of the disciplines.

And, through the careful teaching and mentoring by our faculty, our students—traveling as pilgrims through the curriculum—will grow to develop what Cardinal Newman called a philosophical habit of mind, the true fruit of a Catholic liberal education. Thus it is that all of us—in ways appropriate to our roles at Christendom—can undergo a conversion and pilgrimage of the mind, woven into our spiritual conversion and pilgrimage.

And we can fulfill that command by our Lord to love God not only with all of our heart and soul, but also our mind. Thus, I propose to you that as we begin this next chapter that we think of our collegiate life as a double conversion and a double pilgrimage: spiritual and intellectual.

And one day, as Dante suggests at the conclusion of his Paradiso, these double distinctions will melt away when we reach their fulfillment, gazing upon ‘the everlasting light,’ the deep ocean of infinite being, and are united with ‘the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.’

+++

My remarks thus far have been primarily directed to our internal life as a college and ways that we might think about our calling to be students, professors, and those who professionally support the work we do in the classroom and library each day.

But what of Christendom’s relation to the greater Church and our larger society?

First, it is imperative that our external activity, the work of restoring all things in Christ, be conducted as an extension of what we do internally. All of our efforts must overflow from our two-fold conversion and pilgrimage. At the foundation of this renewal will be evangelization.

As we move ever closer to the heavenly Jerusalem, we invite others to accompany us. And as they do, our Church will be renewed and our society transformed.

But Christendom’s role in this renewal will flow primarily from our life as a collegiate community, i.e., an academic community. And what does this mean? This is the essence: as a collegiate community, all of us are called upon to receive, cultivate, extend, and hand on the great Catholic intellectual tradition.

When we speak of ‘restoring all things in Christ,’ this means taking both our spiritual treasures, and our intellectual treasures, and all the gifts God has given us to those who have lost hope, to those who desperately need to experience that truth that will set them free.

This act of liberation is above all an act of intellectual charity. But what is intellectual charity? Allow me to offer two contrasts. At some institutions, they believe that Christian charity and witness only really take place through overtly spiritual activities or are limited to campus ministry. And somehow the great tasks of study, of teaching, and of learning fall outside of what makes the institution Catholic. At still other institutions, it is primarily through politically approved social justice activities that Catholic identity is understood. Here again, the great task of receiving, cultivating, extending, and communicating the Catholic intellectual tradition stands apart from what makes the institution Catholic.

But Pope Benedict XVI saw it differently. And in his address to Catholic educators at the Catholic University of America in 2008, he described what I hope will be a key idea in the next chapter of Christendom College’s history, that of intellectual charity.

In that address, he stated that it is an act of love, an act of charity to bring a student from a state of not knowing, to a state of knowing. That is to say, that the act of teaching truth is an act of love. By extension, a student who studies and learns enters into a communion of intellectual charity.

Bringing students—through our teaching—from a state of not knowing to knowing, holding them to high standards of excellence, even in subjects that are not strictly theological—is an act of intellectual charity. This includes—if we believe that creation and the goods of culture are themselves gifts from God—this includes the teaching of all disciplines.

And this passing on of the good of contemplation does not happen only in the classroom: it can be extended to the one who cultivates the good garden of the scholarly life and shares the fruit of his or her labors with other scholars through books, conference papers, and other publications.

And though the primary locus of intellectual charity is here on our campus, we can and we must also communicate what we do here to the four corners of our nation and world. We are doing this now, through our Principles projects and other initiatives. But these efforts can and will be creatively expanded with new pathways, new partnerships, and new programs. These efforts will involve both cultivating and expanding the Catholic intellectual tradition as a good in itself but also—and this is central to our next chapter—this will take place by bringing that tradition to bear on the most critical points of crisis in our Church and our society today.

Let me say this again: we are, as a collegiate community, specifically entrusted with the task of bringing the riches of the Catholic intellectual tradition to bear on those most critical points of crisis in our Church and in our society today. And each of us—as members of the Christendom community—directly or indirectly, will be agents of this intellectual charity to the world. But what are some of these crises that we are called to address with the riches at our disposal?

One thinks immediately of the crisis of anthropology—what does it mean to be human, both in terms of nature and telos? This crisis is at the root of so many of the social, political, and economic ills of our age.

Then there is the crisis of how technology, science, and other forms of knowledge should relate to one another and how these should inform a fully human life and society.

There is the crisis of education, both in its fragmentation, loss of purpose, and confusion about fundamental questions related to anthropology and metaphysics.

And there is the crisis of beauty. Why has mediocrity, banality, sentimentality, religious kitsch, and bad taste captured the Catholic imagination for so long and borne fruit that fails to turn our souls heavenward? Where are the great Catholic poets, composers, sculptors, painters, playwrights, filmmakers, novelists, choreographers, and architects of this generation?

Because Christendom College has been faithful for these almost-fifty years, we are in a position to bring to bear the great wisdom of our tradition to these points of crisis in our Church and in our world. We can, inspired by Pope Benedict XVI, engage in acts of intellectual charity that go far beyond the borders of our campus.

We can and must take Christendom, with its spiritual and intellectual treasures, to the world if we hope to restore all things in Christ. As much as we may desire continuity and safety, for the sake of souls, we must venture forth boldly.

+++

Today is a day of gratitude.

Today is a day for joyful, dynamic, and generative fidelity.

Today is a day on which we embark anew on a journey of conversion and pilgrimage, of both heart and mind.

And today is a day when we recommit ourselves to building Christendom, that is, we recommit ourselves to enthroning Christ as King, in our hearts, in our minds, in our families, in our parishes, in our communities, in our nation, and across this world.

I believe that Christendom College can and must, by God’s grace, become the engine of a new Catholic intellectual and spiritual renaissance in America for the next fifty years.

Today, with God’s help, let us begin.

+++

This essay was delivered on August 25, 2024, by George A. Harne as his Installment Address as Christendom College’s fourth president.

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

The featured image is courtesy of Christendom College.