The following address was given by President Walz at his inauguration on September 11, 2026.
Thank you, dear Bishop, for your blessing, for your prayers, and for the shepherd’s love that you have poured out so generously for the people of God in New Hampshire over the past fifteen years.
Thank you, dear priests, for your ministry, configured as you are to Jesus Christ, the Eternal Priest.
Thank you, Chairman Gilleran and all the Board members, who give so much to the College in countless ways.
Thank you, fellow faculty, for your love of truth and your loving labor on behalf of our students.
Thank you, all friends and visitors to the College here today, who have given of your time in order to bless us with your presence and add to the joy of our community.
Thank you, of course, to my beautiful bride, Teresa, and to my five children who are here today and the three who could not make it; thank you for the love that we share as a family and for creating a beautiful home as an oasis to which each of us can return.
And, finally, thank you, dear students and dear alumni of Thomas More College, not only for all that you have done and will do to make today’s events successful and beautiful, but for entrusting yourselves to the College, to our faculty and staff, for your education. Your trust and your hard work are the lifeblood of the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts.
In July 1929, G. K. Chesterton attended the More Memorial Exhibition, a five-day event celebrating the legacy of Thomas More. It took place at the Beaufort Street Convent in Chelsea, London, close to the “Great House” where More and his family resided for about a decade before his arrest and imprisonment. During this memorial celebration, along with others like Hilaire Belloc and Fr. Ronald Knox, Chesterton delivered an address in praise of Thomas More. It was called “A Turning Point in History.” Chesterton opened his address with prophetic words that no doubt some of you here have heard before. “Thomas More,” Chesterton asserted, “is more important at this moment than at any moment since his death, even perhaps the great moment of his dying; but he is not quite so important as he will be in about a hundred years’ time.”
At this beautiful college in New England named after St. Thomas More, located in a state whose motto is “Live Free or Die,” are we not challenged by these words, called to task by these words of Chesterton? Does it belong to us, perhaps, to prove Chesterton’s prophecy true? Do we owe it to our friend Chesterton to make his prediction come true? Indeed, isn’t this often how prophecy actually works, being fulfilled by those who heed the prophecy and deliberately bring it to realization? This is, at least, how our Lord seems to have done it.
St. Thomas More has been much on my mind and in my heart lately. It’s not hard to guess why, of course. The more I dive into the life and writings of this man of chastity, justice, and prudence, the more I am awed by the transparency and splendor of his soul, a great soul that was a veritable diamond-in-the-rough in his own time. Some of those who loved him sensed this greatness about him. Erasmus seems to have perceived it, knowing what a genuine and rare friend he had found in Thomas More. And his daughter Margaret was not unaware of her father’s interior greatness, certainly not after reflecting on his life after his martyrdom. To be sure, she was intelligent and educated enough to recognize his greatness of soul. More importantly, Margaret saw More with eyes of love, the eyes of that unique and somewhat lavish love that only a daughter can bear toward her father. I often think that Margaret must have known her father in this truest light of love, and that we too should try to know Thomas More in this same light.
Chesterton delivered this 1929 address six years before More’s canonization. Thomas More was canonized on May 19, 1935, almost 400 years after his martyrdom in 1535. Today, we, of course, stand almost 100 years away from Chesterton’s 100-year prediction; moreover, in less than a decade we will celebrate the semimillennial of More’s martyrdom. We stand on the brink of a moment, a historic moment, a “turning point” in this College’s history, and we should—indeed, we must—ponder this moment in the coming years. In raising men and women to the altar, the Church shows us who dwell, sometimes dejectedly, in this vale of tears that there really do exist ongoing miracles of holiness and grace among us. We are thus convinced by the lives of saints that holiness and grace are real and powerfully present in their charity-infused souls. We learn thereby what Paul told the Athenians, that “[God] is not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’” (Acts 17:27).
I wonder, though, whether Thomas More would want us to make all this fuss about him: 100 years after this, 500 years after that. If such predictions and celebrations are good, they are good for us, not for him. After all, he’s quite content these days, despite the busy and tumultuous life that he lived here below. Indeed, since humility is truth, I think Thomas More would rather we focus on the everyday truth of his life and learn from that. That truth is not so dramatic, although to my mind it is even more impressive for a man so burdened by worldly duties and affairs. That truth, the everyday truth of Thomas More’s life, consisted in the primacy of his relationship to God through daily prayer and self-discipline, an ongoing intellectual life in the midst of incredible busy-ness, as well as the primacy of the education of his own children through human warmth and humor, infused with divine charity. Making his children’s education such a priority made him unafraid to challenge them and thereby to guide them toward their full maturity, and to ready them for the sufferings that they were to face by being blessed with such a father as he.
More’s children stood out, to be sure; they excelled beyond their peers. We have hints of this in the stories that have been passed down, such as when Margaret impresses the King with her learning and her Latin. The little hints bespeak the closeness and attentiveness of a father to his children. Don’t be fooled, though, by these stories; we must remain realists about the human condition. I don’t doubt that More’s children, though they impressed others, were also talked about, gossiped about, criticized for their backwardness, maligned for being educated so liberally by this witty and accomplished, but also odd and somewhat peculiarly pious man. No doubt his children, as well as More himself, felt the force of those poignant, caring words that Jesus spoke to his disciples on the eve of his own Passion: “In the world you have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
It is likely, then, that More’s children really didn’t fit in all that well and came across as idiosyncratic, even as they excelled all those around them in their educatedness, their seriousness, their humor, and their reverence. Likely they felt more comfortable at home, among their own, with their own inside jokes, their communal memories, and their shared joy in each other’s presence. But they were also inspired by their father’s diligence and courage and political savvy. So they were not cowed by the world and its murmurers. I imagine they felt the temptation to be affected by it, to be disheartened by it—some more than others—and yet they knew this man who had cared so deeply for them, who was able to peer into their souls; he was their father, their patron; they knew that he truly loved them; and it was he whom they trusted more than those who were murmuring all around them.
We, too, every one of us here who are blessed to be associated with this little-engine-that-could of a College—we, too, are More’s children. And in many ways, we too may feel what More’s own children felt—deep gratitude, a kind of uncanny sense that we are not altogether made for this world, and yet ready and faithful enough to trust that Jesus in fact has overcome it and has called us to sow the seeds of the Gospel in it.
I in particular have been granted the privilege, as well as the burden, to exercise presidency over this beautifully familiar educational community that, despite the distance of almost half a millennium, accords so deeply with the everyday truth of Thomas More’s life and the education he gave his own children. As I perceive it, this connection, this strong, durable thread that binds our learning community to Thomas More, is quite real and instructive. I must—we must—ponder this connection in the coming years.
First and foremost, of course—and not just because it’s cliché—I ask for your prayers, because this little-engine-that-could of a College has ongoing needs and will continue to have ongoing needs; and this little-engine-that-could of a College experiences internal disruptions, suffers from hazardous influences, faces all the struggles and difficulties and temptations that any human being and any human community faces in this fallen world. So, yes, please pray for me, and pray also for my fellow faculty members, for the administrators and staff who care so deeply for our students, for the members of the Board who share their time and talents, and for our donors and benefactors who share their treasure. All of them, as they themselves would readily admit, stand in need of the prayers of others, and it is a wondrous thing when the members of a community mutually strengthen each other through intercessory prayer.
Pray too, of course—and most of all!—for our students, past, present, and future. They are sons and daughters of More, and sons and daughters of their alma mater named after him, Thomas More College. From him, and from this College, they receive a truly distinctive education, an education that, as the Church teaches, brings to completion the indispensable work of guiding them to maturity that was begun within their own families. We at the College want to complete the educational work begun in the family. It’s an arduous task; for the human person is a complicated and precious sort of being, a diamond-in-the-rough created in God’s own image. But this educational work is also the most important task that any civilization can undertake. For this reason, we at Thomas More College very deliberately do not aim low in our educational endeavors. We do not aim merely for something like getting our students a job upon graduating or assuring that they get into the most prestigious graduate schools. We welcome such eventualities when they come and when they are actually good for the students who achieve them; and, I should add, such eventualities come about fairly regularly for our students.
Here at Thomas More College, however, we set our sights higher, and we probe more deeply. We aim at true enlargement of the mind, which St. John Henry Newman articulates as a goal of liberal education. We aim, moreover, at the gentle cultivation of the heart, fostering a communal ethos that demands and nurtures virtue and holiness in our students. Furthermore, we challenge our students intellectually in a manner that addresses truth adequately, in full accord with truth’s multifaceted character, including its natural, literary, historical, mathematical, poetic, anthropological, ethical, metaphysical, and theological dimensions. We encourage our students to experience the culmination of their education in liturgical worship and to be nourished sacramentally. We foster sociability, hospitality, collaboration, and friendliness. And, I daresay, we have a lot of fun and experience a lot of joy doing all of this!
And, at the center of this unique educational endeavor, somewhat hidden and silent, dwells the beating heart of Christ, in whose presence our students discover the deepest meaning of their lives, discover their deepest desire to love and to be loved, discover their personal calling when Jesus says to each of them, “Come to me, you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Come to me, deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me. Come to me, because, behold, I make all things new.”
Yes, dear friends, today we are at a turning-point in the history of this College. And, yes, we should take it upon ourselves to fulfill that Chestertonian prophecy, making Thomas More better known and better appreciated than he’s ever been. And yes, we are closing in on the 500th anniversary of his courageous martyrdom in defense of truth, the truth about marriage and about the Church, and the truth of his own conscience. Yes, it’s necessary to observe these historical landmarks, which remind us of the greatness of what we’ve inherited here at Thomas More College.
And yet, my dear friends, when it comes to the everyday truth of this College, we will witness no essential changes. Against the currents of our time, we will stand steadfast in our commitment to an integrated Catholic liberal education on a truly personalized scale. We will stand steadfast in our commitment to true enlargement of the mind and the gentle cultivation of the heart. And we will stand steadfast in our commitment to truth, truth in all its Catholicity, all its universality, the truth in all that it demands of us as human beings and as Christian believers.
Looking to the example of St. Thomas More and the everyday truth of his life, guided by God’s grace and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and enlivened and sustained by the sacraments, let us continue together the good and great work of the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts.
Thank you.
For further reading:
Matthew Walz Inaugurated as Fourth President of Thomas More College of Liberal Arts
