Georgetown College Commencement 2009

Remarks by John J. DeGioia
Georgetown College Commencement
Healy Lawn
Georgetown University
May 16, 2009

I wish to thank Gwen Ifill for her thoughtful insights, and for helping to make this already special day even more memorable. And I wish to express my gratitude to Dean Gillis and the Faculty of Georgetown College for all of their extraordinary efforts during another successful academic year.

I also want to congratulate Dean Gillis on his new appointment. As most of you are aware, Chet Gillis—our Joseph and Winifred Amaturo Chair in Catholic Studies; the Director of the Program on the Church and Interreligious Dialogue in the Berkley Center; and a former Chair of the Department of Theology—has ably served as interim Dean of Georgetown College for the past year, and was recently appointed Dean.

Chet, over your many years of service to Georgetown, you’ve inspired your students…expanded the depth and breadth of our academic program…and enriched our university with your service. We look forward to the continued leadership and scholarship you will bring to our community in your new role. Congratulations.

To all of today’s graduates—congratulations. You’ve worked very hard to be here this afternoon, and the entire Georgetown community is proud of your achievements. You came here with your dreams…and your skills…and your passions…and we’re also very proud of the women and men you’ve become.

You’ve been educated in a context that is animated by a spirit—a spirit embodied in a tradition. This tradition is boundless in its resources, and it will always be available to you as you continue your journeys, now beyond this Hilltop. At its best, it’s a commitment to freedom—an interior freedom. This interior freedom allows you to go deep within yourself, to discern your own calling, your own vocation…and to find the kind of engagement in the world that will resonate with your deepest values, your deepest commitments, your deepest sense of self.

A second dimension of this tradition is captured in the words of one of the great Jesuit spiritual leaders, Father Pedro Arrupe, that we seek to be “Women and Men for Others.” Never has this imperative been more crucial. In this moment of unprecedented uncertainty in our global financial system—as challenging as we may all find it—this crisis is having a disproportionate effect on the poor. As many as 100 million more people will fall into poverty this year as a result of the global financial crisis.

We must be “Women and Men” for them.

A third dimension of this tradition is that by virtue of your talents and gifts, the force of your characters, and the quality of your minds, you are asked to push at the boundaries, to live out at the frontiers—at the frontier of a “new humanity in our world.”

This is a frontier where we take as our responsibility the suffering in our global community…

This is a frontier where we take as our responsibility the health of our planet…

This is a frontier where we acknowledge the bridges that need to be built across our differences…

This is the new humanity that needs to be built—and this frontier will be the challenge of your lifetimes.

When the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola, sent one of his closest colleagues, Francis Xavier, to the East, he told him to “Go, set the world alight.” This is now your task.

This is your moment. This is your time. We’re honored to be celebrating with you today, and we look forward with hopefulness to the truth you will discover, the beauty you will create, and the good you will bring to our world.

Congratulations on this very special day.