I have just finished my first week of the new academic year at Thomas More College in New Hampshire. It’s such a joy to be a Visiting Fellow and Writer-in-Residence of this wonderfully vibrant Catholic institution. This semester I’m co-teaching a core class in the Humanities to sophomores and a tutorial on the Catholic Literary Revival to juniors and seniors. In the former we’ve delved this week into Augustine’s teaching on the symbolic reading of Scripture and on the wisdom to be found in the Rule of St. Benedict, as well as the lessons to be learned in St. Gregory the Great’s “life” of St. Benedict. In the latter class, we’ve spent the week in the company of that most wonderful of poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins, focusing especially on his masterpiece, “The Wreck of the Deutschland”.

Beyond the classroom, I’ve had meetings with students who wished to discuss the topics of their Junior Projects or Senior Theses. On student is thinking of doing her Junior Project on Hopkins, another is planning to write his Senior Thesis on Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy. I met another student, a freshman, who is on fire with his discovery of the Faith and desirous of being received into the Church.

Yesterday the Bishop of Manchester visited the College for its invocation, celebrating Mass, at which the student choir sang beautifully, most especially Byrd’s Ave Verum Corpus. Today I’m meeting up with TMC’s President, William Fahey, for the inaugural meeting of the New Hampshire Chesterton Society.

All of this, and more, in only five short days! Truly I am not deserving of such blessed fellowship.