Aquinas Conference Celebrates Wisdom and Contemplation

In celebration of the 800th anniversary of the birth of St Thomas Aquinas, Campion College’s Centre for the Study of the Western Tradition (CSWT) hosted a full-day conference on 11 October 2025, exploring the theme “Aquinas and the Vita Contemplativa.”

The event brought together scholars, clergy, and students to reflect on Aquinas’s profound insights into the contemplative life and its enduring relevance to theology, philosophy, and moral reflection.

The keynote address was delivered by Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP, Archbishop of Sydney, titled “From Vision to Virtue and Back Again: Contemplation and the Moral Life in Thomas Aquinas.”

In his lecture, his Grace described contemplation as “the simple intuition of truth,” a foretaste of heaven that “offers a restful, non-discursive gaze whereby the intellect apprehends divine truth without the labour of reasoning from premises to conclusions”.

Yet, Archbishop Fisher stressed, this vision does not lead to passivity. “Contemplative love of God flows naturally into active love of neighbour,” he said, underscoring Aquinas’s belief that teaching and preaching – when “proceeding from contemplative abundance” – represent some of the highest forms of Christian action.

In his concluding reflections, the Archbishop framed Aquinas’s vision as a path to sanctity:
“We must, at the end of the day, be transformed in Christ through the dynamic interplay of contemplation, virtuous action, and sacramental grace,” he said, noting that for Aquinas “the moral life becomes what [he] always understood it to be: our graced return to the God from whom we came”.

Following the keynote, the day featured presentations by Dr Jeremy Bell, Nick Augimeri (Class of 2016), Robert van Gend (Class of 2014), and Andrew Wood, each exploring distinct aspects of Aquinas’s understanding of contemplation from mystical traditions and happiness to modern reflections on reading and returning to God.

As the day drew to a close, participants left with a renewed appreciation for Aquinas’s conviction that the contemplative life is not an escape from the world but a way of seeing it rightly. Through each presentation, the conference illuminated how the pursuit of wisdom – “more perfect, more noble, more useful, and more full of joy,” as Aquinas described – continues to animate the intellectual and spiritual life of Campion College and world at large.

See below for photos from the conference.