Baccalaureate Mass 2010
Every few years, the Sunday in which we celebrate Commencement corresponds to this Sunday in the calendar of our Church – Pentecost Sunday – and there may be no more appropriate day in the life of our Church for us to celebrate this day – your Commencement. For our Law students, with our Mass together this morning, we begin your day of celebration. For our undergraduates, this marks the final event of Commencement.
If there is one message to leave here this morning – one message to carry with you on this day of Commencement – on this day in which each of you begin anew – moving forward from this Hilltop – if there is one message to leave here this morning it is this: we do not go forward alone.
We have a tradition. By virtue of our membership in this community we are heirs to a precious resource – a tradition. A tradition is a way of thinking, a way of interpreting, a way of framing our world. Values shape a tradition. The beautiful banners all over our campus describing the Spirit of Georgetown capture these values of our tradition and offer a distinctive way of looking at the world. Ours is a tradition with origins back to the founding of the Jesuits more than four hundred and fifty years, to the establishment of this university by the man who would later become America’s first Bishop. A tradition is a living, dynamic, unfolding process. Each generation must re-imagine what our tradition demands of us in our time. When you see our community fostering inter-religions dialogue, or engaging issues of migration and immigration, or tackling the HIV/AIDS pandemic, know that you are seeing a community that is at work, seeking to understand what it means to be living our tradition.
We are not alone. We share in a tradition. A tradition that demands our continuing engagement as we step forward from this Hilltop.
We have this place. Yesterday in my brief reflections I said that I hoped that this will always be another home for you to come back to. One of the most meaningful comments about this place anyone ever shared with me took place a few years ago. We were hosting an important Muslim/Christian dialogue and one of the participants and I were walking on the campus and said to me: “I like this place. I like the feel of this place. It feels prayed in.” We have this place. A place we can always come back to.
We have each other. Something was forged here that will forever connect you to one another. Some of the people around you, will be with you for the rest of your life.
We have a tradition, we have this place, we have each other.
And most important of all – on Pentecost Sunday, we are reminded that we go forward with the gift of the Spirit. Just as Jesus “breathed” on his disciples, so too, he breathes on each ofus. To each, we are given the Spirit, the “one Spirit”, the “same Spirit.”
In mid-September our Church will celebrate the beatification of John Henry Newman. On another Pentecost Sunday, Cardinal Newman spoke words that are as true today as they were on the day he spoke them:
…the…Spirit…has ever been the secret Presence of God within Creation; a source of life amid the chaos, bringing out into form and order what was at first shapeless and void…the voice of Truth in the hearts of all rational beings… (this is) the “life giving” Spirit…. (p. 363)
We are not alone.
We are heirs and participants in a tradition.
We always have this place.
We are forever bound to one another.
And whenever we are together as we are now, in celebration of the Mass, we can remember that it is our faith, it is what we believe, that wherever we go, we go forward filled with the Holy Spirit, a Spirit of “Peace.”
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