2008 Baccalaureate Homily
By Rev. Anthony J. Kuzniewski, S.J.
I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
(Ephesians 3:18, from Reading II)
Graduates of the Class of 2008, Brothers and Sisters in the Lord:
We have a lot to celebrate today. The fact is, for the last four years you graduates have had a fantastic time. You have grown in knowledge and experience, in your capacity for moral vision and personal integrity. All of us here join you in giving thanks—thanks to your families for financial and moral support, thanks to friends who have cared enough to help you over the rough spots and to celebrate the victories, thanks to the faculty, administrators, and staff who modeled ideals of excellence and service; and thanks to God, who has challenged all of us through each other to accept the proposition that no human life reaches its full potential unless it is generous.
Beyond the celebration and the thanks, there is a lot to think and pray about, especially now, when that special end-of-the-season wisdom allows us to look back and look ahead with equanimity, and to appreciate each other and what we have here accomplished. The fact is, that since your arrival here four years ago, you have been associated with an institution characterized by old traditions and venerable purpose. Holy Cross was founded in 165 years ago ad majorem Dei gloriam—for the greater glory of God. That motto still holds. It commits all of us to the proposition that real success in life is a point of intersection between excellence, dedication, and service. Like those who preceded you, you have been challenged to be academically excellent so that you can use your talents and your lives for the greater good—the good whose unswerving pursuit of truth includes compassion for the poor, and assistance to those in need. From the beginning, the long purple line of students and graduates, faculty and administrators have struggled to be faithful to these ideals. James Healy, part African-American and part Irish-American, who was born into slavery in Georgia, wept at the first Holy Cross graduation in 1849, when he reflected in his valedictory address on the bonds that attached him and his classmates to alma mater’s ideals. In our time, the Mission Statement speaks about “excellence,” “a passion for truth,” and the “commitment to the service of faith and the promotion of justice that flows from the intellectual life.”
For four years, those values have been offered to you: each of you in his or her own way, has come to terms with them. Today I beg you again to accept their challenge. Be honored by what they ask of you. These ideals will mark you for life, as women and men who understand that whatever we have been given loses its power for good unless it is shared. Now the gift of a superb education is yours; you will define yourselves by the uses you make of this advantage. Living up to your alma mater’s ideals will engage your best efforts and even require you to sacrifice boredom—not always an easy sacrifice. To the extent that you succeed, your greatness will consist, not in having the most, but in giving your best. Not everyone will appreciate what you are about. Not everyone will applaud. But you will always have each other, and new companions of like mind and great heart, whom you will encounter in the struggle. You will have your families who sacrificed so much to make you part of this process. And you will have Holy Cross—us here today in academic robes and liturgical vestments, who have come to esteem and love you over the past four years.
Over a hundred years ago, in 1895, a true man for others—an unsung hero in the saga of Holy Cross—was presiding at the commencement festivities. His name was Edward McGurk. The son of Irish immigrants, a native of Philadelphia, he joined the Jesuits when he was sixteen and taught at Holy Cross as young Jesuit during the Civil War. Years later, in 1893, he was sent back to Worcester to rescue Holy Cross from bankruptcy. Two years earlier, Father Michael O’Kane had begun construction of the large addition to Fenwick Hall that bears his name. The money ran out, and for eighteen months the structure stood partly completed, building materials stacked on the ground, an ominous symbol of failure. Then Father McGurk arrived. In the midst of the worst economic depression until the 1930s, he found the means to finance the building’s completion, pleading the need of our students with those who were reluctant to permit him to run up an enormous institutional debt. For two years, in failing health, he managed to have the upper four floors and tower constructed, brick by brick. Then, during the commencement exercises of 1895, with the building essentially complete, Father McGurk suffered a physical collapse. He resigned his office shortly afterwards and died a year later at the age of 55. He was buried—as he wished—“on the hill at Holy Cross College.”
Father McGurk gave everything he had. And he made a difference. Overcrowding , and the realization that deserving students were being denied admission because of the lack of space, motivated him to face opposition patiently and to carry through until his efforts succeeded. No campus building bears his name; and few give his marker in the cemetery more than a passing glance. Yet his efforts helped make Holy Cross, for a time, the largest Catholic college in the nation. For over a century, the people of this College have stood on his shoulders, as we do now. So operates the process of divine grace when people live for others. So may it be for each of us when, in those inevitable moments of challenge, we encounter new opportunities to grow in generosity.
Today’s gospel challenges all of us to take up the cross. What happens if we do? What happens if we don’t? I recall speaking years ago with a senior who told me that he had at first hesitated to accept his admission to Holy Cross. He had nothing against the school and its educational program, he told me, but he hadn’t been sure that he wanted to go through life associated with a college whose name is connected with a religious symbol. Now, as a senior, he was at peace with that connection, even pleased. He had come to understand the cross as a primary point of contact between God and the human family. And so it is: the cross stands as a reminder of our imperfection and our need to grow, and as a sign of God’s judgment on the potential of every human being. Jesus died there as our champion, arguing for our goodness when we are most discouraged, and standing for our worthiness when we feel most helpless. For Christians, the cross is the ultimate sign of God’s love; and for us to be Holy Cross is to stand for nothing less—no compromises, no cop outs, no concessions to whatever suggests that we be less than fully human. “Take up the cross”—its a challenge that cuts across this alma mater and its spirit. I think of that when I hear our athletic teams chanting “HC”; I ponder it when I see the emblem on T-shirts and sweatshirts all over campus; it comes to mind as students volunteer for service in Worcester and beyond; I remember it when the new students arrive in August, encountering the Cross and all that it means for the first time. And it comes to life when our graduates speak about the Cross in the manner of their lives.
The message of the Cross—the challenge to be loving and generous, extends to all of our people, Christians and persons of other religious faiths and traditions, even those who are unsure about religious faith or who do not believe. In our secular culture, it’s the Red Cross, an emblem of compassion and solidarity, that rushes to assist disaster victims. Rabbi Norman Cohen, Class of ‘72, urges us to be “God’s partners in making the world a better place. It comes through,” he says, “in studying and working hard, and appreciating who you are and what your potential is.” What could better express the ideal of the Holy Cross graduate?
So we are, whatever our backgrounds, people of the Cross, called to be filled with the fullness of God, as St. Paul prays in today’s second reading; and inspired by Isaiah “to soar as with eagle’s wings” in the challenges of our lives, to renew our strength, “to run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.”
Women and Men of ’08, you have lived almost a third of your lives in the shadow of 9/11. The issues of tragedy and violence, the meanings of patriotism and faith and justice, are persistently immediate and frustrating, just as they were on the night of Martin Luther King’s assassination, when Robert Kennedy groped for words in front of an Indiana audience: “It is not the end of violence,” he said. “It is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder…. Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country, and for our people.” To which, I suppose, the only responsible answer is yes.
All this implies that Holy Cross does not end tomorrow. Graduates, you belong to Holy Cross. Forever. If the cross of Christ can empower you; if the traditions of this College can inspire you; if all that has transpired in these past four years can influence your conduct, then you will be truly great. You will be women and men for others. You will stand forth among your associates as representatives of Holy Cross—as persons who have been educated —and not merely informed.
Brothers, Sisters of ’08, with faith in God, with confidence in each other’s support, and with gratitude for our gifts, let us continue on the course we have set. And may we be blessed with God’s own knowledge and power, in all its breadth and length and height and depth. Amen.