Baccalaureate Mass 2004
We gather together at the end of this academic season and at the end of your years of undergraduate life as we have with each class for more than two centuries.
This Mass also marks the conclusion of the distinguished service to Georgetown of Fr. Kevin Wildes. It is difficult to imagine any member of our community better loved by students or held in greater esteem by his peers. Teacher, mentor, counselor, administrator, friend, Kevin Wildes has excelled at every role and responsibility that Georgetown has asked of him. His work in the Kennedy Institute and the College Dean’s office, in his Hoya Columns, or in his New South apartment, his great personal warmth and generous heart have buoyed many a sagging spirit on this campus.
As a charismatic teacher and scholar, he has awakened students to the profound ethical challenges our world faces as we explore the limits of human creativity in life sciences research and the demands and challenges of modern medicine. In this, our last gathering together this weekend, let us share our gratitude with Fr. Wildes for his many contributions and the special legacy he leaves for this community.
In the tradition upon which this University is built, we believe that God is here, right now, present among us, and has been present throughout our two centuries. When we are asked about the nature of this institution, at the deepest level, we hold that the Spirit is at work here. And has been at work in all of the hustle and bustle, chaos and confusion, late nights and early mornings, in our group projects and club activities, in victories and defeats, in our friendships, in our classrooms and concert halls. In all that we do.
There is something mysterious about the presence of the Spirit. We don’t always have the confidence – the faith – in this presence. We don’t always have the words, the vocabulary, the syntax, the grammar to capture this experience. But at different moments, sometimes in the most unlikely times and places, we have a feeling, deep within ourselves, that we are not alone. We have a feeling, deep in our bones, of consolation, of peace, of joy, the feeling of love and knowing we are loved.
Here, we sustain a tradition that attempts to give meaning to these moments – to provide us with a capacity to experience them more deeply. In this tradition, we believe that one way of deepening this capacity is to come together, just like this, and together feel this presence and find sustenance from each other.
During four years on this Hilltop, we hope you have deepened your self-understanding of these moments. As you move through the next decades of your life, when you are in need of sustenance and consolation, when you struggle and doubt, when you look into your own soul, we hope you will find yourselves back here, remembering this feeling, a feeling you may have at this very moment or have had at different moments during your years here.
There is no more fitting way to bring your commencement to a close than in this celebration of the Mass. In this gathering, we come together acknowledging our common, shared belief, our faith, in a God that sent forth the Holy Spirit, so that we could know “the hope that belongs to his call.”
You are now going forth. Know as you do so, that you bring with you this Spirit. Know that you are forever linked to a University community shaped by a shared commitment to this understanding. It is now your time.
There is always a touch of sadness in a commencement. But remember, wherever and whenever you find yourselves feeling the Spirit, experiencing the presence of God – it may be in the smile of a loved one, or in a moment of unimaginable suffering, or at the moment of the birth of a child, or a moment that demands a deep reservoir of courage – in these moments, you will be right back here, back here on this Hilltop.
And you will know that you are living the “promise” of the “hope that belongs to his call.”
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- Mass Reflection