Bishop Luis, Mr. Luddy, Msgr. Ingham, Deacon Watkins, parents and grandparents of the Class of 2024 of St. Thomas More Academy, faculty members and staff of this exemplary school, and, above all, dear graduates:
Thank you for inviting me to share this day with you.
Some things in life can never be too short. Visits to the dentist and lines at Chick-Fil-A come immediately to mind. So do presidential State of the Union addresses and New York Yankees winning streaks. Those of you pursuing scientific studies in college will soon learn that an organic chemistry class can never, ever be too short.
I think this Can’t-Be-Too-Short rule also applies to commencement addresses. This day is about you, our graduates, not about me. So as your patron, St. Thomas More, said on the scaffold, just before his execution, “I shall be brief.”
Jerzy Stuhr, a renowned Polish actor, found himself in Rome in the 1990s and was invited to dinner in the papal apartment by Pope John Paul II—who, as you know, had been an actor as a young man. After they were seated, the Pope looked across the table at his guest and said, “Pan Jerzy, what brings you to Rome?” To which Mr. Stuhr replied, “Your Holiness, I am playing in Forefathers’ Eve”—one of the most famous dramas in Polish literature, and a play so emotionally charged with patriotic energy that its public performance was banned in the Russian parts of partitioned Poland in the 19th century.
Hearing this, John Paul got very excited and recited whole chunks of the play (in which he had once acted) from memory. Then he asked, one veteran actor to another, “So, Pan Jerzy, what role do you take?” Mr. Stuhr looked a bit sheepish, and then replied, “Your Holiness, I regret to report that I am Satan”—who is indeed a character in the play. The Pope was silent for a moment; the pontifical eyebrow went up; and then John Paul said, “Well, none of us gets to choose our roles, do we?”
That might have been a bit of papal whimsy from a man who didn’t imagine being a priest, much less a pope, when he was your age. But I think John Paul II was also making a different, and deeper, point: one that another saint, St. John Henry Newman, made in 1848 when he wrote this prayer, which is well worth pondering on this commencement day, or indeed any other day:
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. Somehow I am necessary for His purposes, as necessary in my place as an archangel in his….
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…if I do but keep His commandments.
Therefore, I will trust Him; whatever 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.
Amen. He knows what he is about.
As you, our graduates, have learned here at St. Thomas More Academy, each of you is an idea in the mind of God. That means, to continue the dramatic metaphor, that each of you has a specific role to play in the long arc of the human drama. That drama, Christians believe, is not some lucky accident in which random cosmic biochemical forces fortuitously conjured up us over the course of 15 billion years or so. We know that we have not come from nowhere; we know that we are going somewhere; and we know that there is purpose in the great cosmos.
Each of us lives a personal drama. And each of our personal dramas “plays” within a greater drama. That greater drama is one in which there are eight acts: Creation, Fall, Promise, Prophecy, Incarnation, Redemption, Sanctification—and finally, at the end of the drama, the Wedding Feast of the Lamb in the Kingdom of Heaven.
It will take some time for each of you to discern just what your unique role in that great drama is. Your roles may change over the course of your lives. You may be called on to play multiple roles at a given moment. But if you live your lives asking one question—“What is God asking of me now?”—you will discover that, while your lives may be challenging, they will never be dull or boring.
Living into the future according to that one great question—“What is God asking of me now?”—is the greatest of adventures. And it will prepare you for the greatest, most tremendous adventure of all, which is eternal life in the light and love of God the Holy Trinity.
As you begin the next phase of this great adventure, let me offer you another story from the life of St. John Paul II, which speaks to the challenges before you—and to the help that is always available in meeting those challenges.
Westerplatte is a narrow peninsula framing the Bay of Gdańsk in the northwest of Poland. There, one of the first battles of World War II in Europe was fought. At a quarter to five in the morning on September 1, 1939, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on the small Polish garrison at Westerplatte, expecting that the vastly outnumbered and outgunned Poles would run up a white flag. That, to put it mildly, was a misimpression. The Poles—mostly youngsters your age or slightly older, with no combat experience—not only resisted the offshore bombardment; they repelled amphibious assaults by German marines, suffering serious casualties in the process. The Polish garrison finally surrendered on September 7. But they had so impressed the aggressors that the German commander allowed the Polish officer leading the Westerplatte garrison to keep his ceremonial sword.
Addressing a vast throng of young Poles at Westerplatte in 1987, John Paul II, speaking slowly and forcefully in his beautiful, sonorous Polish, invoked the memory of the heroes of Westerplatte, while explaining how those young Polish soldiers were relevant to young people of every time and place. Here’s what the Pope said:
Here in this place, at Westerplatte, in September 1939, a group of young Poles, soldiers under the command of Major Henryk Sucharski, resisted with noble obstinacy, engaging in an unequal struggle against the invader. A heroic struggle.
They remained in the nation’s memory as an eloquent symbol.
It is necessary for this symbol to continue to speak, for it to be a challenge…to new generations…
Each of you, young friends, will also find your own “Westerplatte.” …[T]asks you must assume and fulfill. A just cause, for which one cannot but fight. Some duty, some obligation, from which one cannot shrink, from which it is not possible to desert. Finally—a certain order of truths and values that one must “maintain” and “defend”: within oneself and beyond oneself…
At such a moment (and such moments are many, they are not just a few exceptions)…remember …[that] Christ is passing by and he says, “Follow me.” Do not forsake him.
Dear Graduates of the Class of 2024 of St. Thomas More Academy: If you carry one thing of what I have said here into the future, let it be this: Remember that, in both your joys and your challenges, Christ is passing by and saying “Follow me.” Remembering that, you will never be alone.
Remembering that, you will be empowered to live, not without fear, but beyond fear.
Remembering that, you will, in time, discover the singular adventure that God has in mind for each of you: the adventure and the mission that will be your unique path to happiness, and ultimately to holiness and beatitude.
Thank you for allowing me to share these thoughts with you today, and Godspeed on your journey.
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A wonderful message from Dr.Weigel. A wonderful message for all. God Bless Dr. Weigel and all the St. Thomas More Graduates.
Fatalism, at first seemed the underlying message in Newman’s prayer, a good prayer that could be interpreted as all is predetermined, all one needs do is follow the prescript.
Man has within himself a kernel of creativity that’s moved by God, [where Newman is right] though completely free [an anomaly incomprehensible to Man, but that’s why we call God God]. “To live, not without fear, but beyond fear”, is emblematic of the heroic [only madmen have no fear]. Good words to hear whether for commencement or for otherwise. All are called to sanctification.
Fatalism?
Well, there is this from the Letter of James: ““You have no idea what your life will be like tomorrow […] You ought rather to say ‘If the Lord wills it, we shall live to do this or that’” (James 4:14-15).
Not exactly brute fatalism, but deprived of the revealed context of the the Father and the Trinity and Incarnation, this half-truth might be the fearful 7th-century virus that has mutated today into 1.5 billion fully human followers of fatalistic Islam. Maybe even the start point for a more consequential inter-religious dialogue?
I could almost hear the tearing of garments here in NY State. But that’s okay. A bit of righteous indignation however misconstrued is nevertheless cathartic. Besides, I’m always open to reasoned follow up.
If you’re interested in where we may find basis for determinism in Newman, an issue he eventually resolved, originates in Cranmer’s Common Book of Prayer. That book with its Catholic origins was revised by Cranmer on original sin and baptism. The text of Article 9, “Of original or birth sin”, [composed by Cranmer in 1553], reads: “And although there is no condemnation for them that believe and are baptized, yet the Apostle doth confess that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin”; this means that the infection of original sin is not [as the Council of Trent ruled it] wholly removed by baptism, but that it remains.
Newman continued to hold the misconception of original sin as an infection of human nature, whereas the Church at Trent taught that baptism removes the sin although the tendency or concupiscence remains. But it is not sin. Cranmer held that “concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin”. The issue for Newman relates to his interpretation of Augustine who said concupiscence is identified with original sin, whereas Aquinas corrects Augustine that concupiscence is simply the material element of original sin.
For Newman this problem remained after his conversion believing that Man is infected with the taint of original sin, concupiscence quasi sinful, thereby fomenting sin in the world. That although God gives us grace in baptism it now is up to us to overcome sin, a depressing form of Pelagianism. Newman eventually overcome this issue in his study of the Greek Fathers and the fatalism of the Pelagians and others in the early Church. A major source for this opinion is “Newman on Education and Original Sin Joseph S O’Leary homepage Essays on literary and theological themes”.