Baccalaureate Eucharistic Celebration

Remarks by John J. DeGioia
Baccalaureate Eucharistic Celebration
Commencement Weekend 2009
McDonough Arena
Georgetown University
May 17, 2009

We gather in this last act of our Commencement, as we have for more than two hundred years on this Hilltop, in a ritual that began in a simple room in Jerusalem, with a small group of friends, providing us with a practice that orients us, grounds us, holds us together as a community. When we come together like this, we remind ourselves of the larger community of faith to which this community is, and always has been, connected. And it is fitting that in these last moments of Commencement, we come together like this, in an act that always serves as our touchstone.

This week is always an incredible capstone to one’s years at Georgetown. So many different opportunities for celebration and reflection. Over these past days, I have been in a number of conversations with many of you, always asking about the faculty member who had the most formative influence on you, the course, the service experience. Often, one of you would ask in return: “What do you remember most about your undergraduate years here at Georgetown? What is the most powerful memory you have of those first years for you, here on this Hilltop?”

It is the experience of a feeling, a feeling with which I know you can identify. A feeling that emerged in four different contexts, each context ever deeper. A feeling of consolation. A feeling of wholeness. A feeling that I am, in that very moment, my very best self. A feeling I came to understand during my undergraduate years here on this Hilltop.

The first context was in athletics. I was a student-athlete when I was an undergraduate here at Georgetown. But as any of my classmates who are here today will, it is not false modesty when I say I didn’t have much talent or ability. You just couldn’t have told me that. Despite obvious indications, I was the last one to understand the limits of my skills. Yet everyday, I was out there and everyday I was practicing and competing, and from time to time, something very special would happen. After all the work, every so often I would find myself doing things that I didn’t know I could do. It was fantastic and the feeling that came with it was incredible.

Well somewhere in my sophomore year, near the end of the semester, I was writing a paper and I had that feeling again, only this time it wasn’t on a field, it was in a quiet classroom, late in the evening in Healy Hall. I began writing and I didn’t know where the words were coming from. I had read the material, I had studied the work as hard as I had ever practiced a sport, and there it was, that same incredible feeling—so hard to describe, and so incredible. I had that feeling, only this time it was by engaging my intellect and as I continued in my studies, I had that feeling again on a few more occasions. I know you can identify with this feeling.

A third context—where I could be my very best self—was in the friendships, the relationships that I discovered here. The experience wasn’t new, but understanding that here, I could have an experience I first had as a boy, a feeling I had growing up, a feeling I experienced first at home—with my Mom and Dad, with my brother—the feeling that comes with knowing you are loved—a feeling that comes in our deepest relationships. A feeling we have when we love one another.

And then there were moments like this, when we gather together as a community in celebration of the Mass. Why? What is it about these moments? The words are right there for us in today’s readings. It is here, when we gather together in prayer, in the sacrament, in celebration, in community, that we know we are loved. We are loved by God, a God who “is love.” A God who “sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him…”

The extraordinary promise that is offered us, is that this experience of being our best selves, where we have that feeling of coherence, of depth, that feeling of consolation—this feeling is always available to us, right here, together, when we gather like this. All we have to do is “ask”—“ask the Father in my name,” and we can, we will know, we are loved.

In the years ahead, when you gather in your parishes, or in small prayer groups, when you hear the words…or when you experience a moment of truth or beauty…or love…when you have that feeling of being your very best self, when you know you are loved, perhaps in that moment, you will find yourselves right back here, right back here on this Hilltop.