Practices for Starting the Semester with Purpose

At the start of this academic year, allow me to share some advice concerning study that has been helpful to me over the years.

First, St. Thomas Aquinas gave some very practical advice to a fellow Dominican who desired to advance as St. Thomas had in his study of wisdom. This advice, although over 800 years old, is still relevant to our day. In his typical way, the advice that St. Thomas offers is brief and to the point:

• Advance little by little in one’s studies and do not attempt the whole of it at one sitting
• Think something through to the best that you can before discussing it and offering an opinion
• Study in environments that are conducive to learning where you can be at peace to contemplate these matters
• Understand the clarifying effect that a moral life can have upon your mind and pursue, therefore, the virtues both moral and intellectual as part of the life of study
• Make your study an integral aspect of your prayer, and remember to pray at all times
• Do not be discouraged in the effort required and have confidence that the Holy Spirit will inspire and teach you all that you desire
• Remember always to attend cheerfully and responsibly to the other affairs of your life, but not to be overwhelmed by or excessively attentive to these
• Take for your model the holy men and women that have gone before you
• Be ever attentive to where and from whom wisdom may arise
• Endeavor to understand what you hear and read and never leave a doubt unaddressed
• Commit to memory all that is good, true, and useful
• Incorporate all of these into the life that you live so that you may, through your efforts and His grace, give glory to God

To this sage advice, allow me to add four more observations that have become perennial favorites for me:

1. When you approach your studies, try not to see them as a form of work, or as a training to be endured. Find a context and a purpose that will allow you to take what will indeed be long hours of reading, writing, and attending classes and transform these into the sheer joy and delight that belong to this most truly human endeavor. To give an example of this point, consider how violinists learn their craft. The mastery of their instrument requires endless hours of practice over many years and often involves very humble and repetitive exercises like practicing scales. For some, the promise of mastery is sufficient to endure this and all other like exercises. And yet the joy of performance is never found simply in the techniques associated with mastery of the instrument. The virtuosi pursue something more. They seek to acquire the ability to play well and joyfully, to enter into the heart of music and to play out of this in service of the art itself. So, baroque pieces, like Vivaldi’s Winter movement of his The Four Seasons, demand not simply mastery of the violin, but this combined with a daring facility in its performance, interpretation, and interplay with others in an ensemble setting. The delight that comes from this is the only good reason to engage in the study of the violin in the first place. So too with your study of theology and philosophy. To consider study as work, as generating a product or skill to be sold on the open market, as something to be endured as a means to some end like ministry, etc., is a sure way to miss the joy of study and many of the fruits that derive from it.
2. Treat the study that you have undertaken in much the same way as an encounter with a person that intrigues you and that you want to know better. The advantage of looking at study in this way is that one recognizes from the start that the study, just like a person, requires that I respect the integrity of theology and philosophy, that I do not pursue it for base or utilitarian reasons, and that I court Lady Wisdom with all the dignity that She should be accorded, hoping that in this moral, personalist stance before our study of theology and philosophy, we might be found worthy of Her company and of the fruits that Her conversation can offer.
3. Be fearless in your pursuit of the truth. Think not of how you look to others in your endeavors, nor of the mistakes that you will make. Place your full gaze upon the study itself rather than upon yourself. Abandon yourself to this investigation and cultivate wonder and awe in the face of what you encounter. Always know that wonder and awe will outperform curiosity and doubt every single time; reverence before the whole of reality opens one to enlightenment and to the freedom that is the heart of the liberal arts, while the terror of being duped frustrates all that is good, hale, and holy. Through this posture, we enter into right communion with both the knowledge that we seek and the community that is intent upon it.
4. Lastly, realize and respect the fact that as you study, you are not the only agency at work. Knowledge has a life of its own and is not simply a collection of data that is lifeless and thus to be employed in whatever way I see fit. In the silence of the night, as you sleep, or as you go about your day, understand that what you have studied stays with you, has a life within you, and will work upon you, transforming you into the knower that you wish to be and that you may in fact become an embodiment of what you know. Thus, do not be worried that what you have studied is not entirely or properly understood. All things come in time to those who continue to knock at that door. Patience and respect are key and the life of and formation affected by your studies will surprise you in ways wholly unexpected.

We speak, then, of a way of life, offering advice that regards the immense privilege that goes with the study and contemplation of the highest things to which the human mind can aspire. This is something that has always struck me and for which I give thanks each day, asking not just simply for clarity of mind, but that I honor appropriately all that I have learned, applied it conscientiously to my life, and gift it effectively to others as I have received from those before me. For all of us that study at St. Bernard’s, much has been given to us and much is expected. May this advice help you in the gift that you will make of your lives in the service and glory of God. I wish you all God’s grace this semester and every semester.