Your high school graduation is a momentous occasion for you, your families, and this school.
Your graduation is a big deal to your families because, as I can personally attest to as father of one of you, it is a great blessing to have a teenager growing into adulthood. And while the journey along the way can be and is difficult at times for you and your parents both, it is a joyful one too. It is a wonderful thing to see a child grow.
Your graduation is a big deal for this school because educating you, guiding you and helping you prepare for your lives ahead is its very purpose.
But most of all, today is momentous for the four of you. It marks the end of an important phase of your life, but it is only one phase. There are many yet to come for you. Fun and boring; joyful and sad; momentous and mundane. All that life has in store for you, though, will be shaped by God as He works in and through you to bring your gifts to your corner of this great big world.
What is your corner of the world? Obviously, that includes the Catholic colleges you will attend in the fall. And obviously it includes your four families. And obviously it includes the communities of which you are a part, whether that’s your parish, your friends, your neighborhoods, or your random special-interest-organization where you, I don’t know, cook a different Italian dish every Tuesday night. You get the idea.
But I want you to also think of it relationally: 1) it is others, like the examples I just listed; 2) it is God; and 3) it is yourself. Living a life of human flourishing, of joy and love, contemplates all three.
OK, so what are those blessings? What do you have to offer others? Don’t overthink it. It’s very simple: the gift of yourself. The unique person that you are, and God’s unfathomable love for each of you means that you—and you alone—have something no else does. As our patron St. John Henry Newman beautifully put it:
God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.
It isn’t just that your vocation is unique to you, though. Your vocation and God’s plan for you is unique to you because He has made you to have those things— whether they are strengths or weaknesses— that are suitable for that service. To be that “bond of connection between persons.”
Our patron’s motto, which became part of our school’s crest, is Cor ad cor loquitur: “heart speaks to heart.” On our crest, those three hearts you see with the squiggly line are St. John Henry Newman’s visual representation of this truth: that just as the Trinity is relational, and is a relationship of total love, so too we humans are meant to reflect that.
Education takes place in community, and the human person is shaped relationally by the hearts of others. So too with you: your hearts, whether you fully understand them or not (you don’t; none of us do), are meant to love others. And it is through loving others that you will find the joy and peace of doing that “definite service” which God has made you to do.
Needless to say, each of us spend our whole lives trying to do this. And just because it is simple does not mean it is easy. It is not.
One of the foundational principles of this school is that a good education is rooted in the connectedness and integration of all learning through God. That God, as the creator of all that is, remains at the center, and that our love for Him must remain at the center of learning.
The same goes for living. Every part of you is created to love and serve God. Not just the shiny and pretty and strong parts. The ugly, weak, and embarrassing parts. The next paragraph after the one I recounted above speaks to this point. Because God has that “definite service” in mind for you, Newman says:
I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.
St. Paul experienced this. One of my favorite Bible passages is when he asks God to take away his suffering and God basically says: “No.” “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”
You are many things: you are confident and scared; you are strong and you are weak; you are talented and you are a novice. Offer to Him and anchor in Him all that you are. As St Paul learned, it is through your weakness that you are made strong. Jesus reminds us: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.“ So stay close to Our Lord, to the Sacraments, and to his Church.
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The beauty of living is that each day brings both predictable and unpredictable ways of sharing your hearts, minds, and souls with those around you.
Live each day with the sure knowledge that God is working through you in ways unique to you, even if you don’t fully know what those are. And slow down to listen to Him; give yourself the time, space, and conditions for stillness, so that you can hear Him speak to you.
“Be still and know that I am God,” Psalm 46 reminds us. There are a great many things wanting to occupy your attention, distract you, and make you worry. But we will find Him through stillness; through prayer; by going deeper into ourselves where, as St. Augustine reminds us, God lies waiting for us.
And it is the daily finding of Him Who Loves You that will help you to live the life He wills for you.
God bless you Cecilia, Sydney, Steven, and Addison, and thank you for sharing your gifts with us at Cardinal Newman Academy.
