Commencement Remarks

May 18, 2008

Rev. Mark T. Cregan, C.S.C. '78
Greetings in Somali, Tagalog, Cape Verdean and Haitian Creole, Portuguese and Spanish.

Your Excellency Bishop Coleman: Honored Guests, Members of the Faculty, Staff, Alumni and Administration of Stonehill College; Parents, Family Members and Friends of the Graduates; AND Members (and now Graduates) of the Class of 2008.

As we conclude this wonderful event, I simply want to add a word of congratulations to those already spoken and invite you to take one more reflection with you as you leave the College.

One of the many ways I drive our students (and our staff) crazy here at Stonehill College is to remind them of how many months they have left until they celebrate this day. When they arrive at First Year orientation, I say to them that for most of them they will have 47 months until they graduate. Then when I run into them at different moments during their careers, I ask what year they are and then give them the total months left. By the time they are seniors, I have often seen looks approaching melancholy (or in some cases fear bordering on terror) at the thought of leaving the academy and facing the world of work; graduate orprofessional school; or, perish the thought, adult responsibilities. As they remind me constantly, why would we want to leave THIS for THAT!!!

I do this to remind them how short their time is here and how much there have (and want) to accomplish. Well, dear graduates, sad to say, in few moments, you are "out of here" and WILL, like it or not, be on your ways to new and exciting chapters in your lives.

But I want to remind you of something else I said to you at orientation. I made you a promise that your time at Stonehill would be a period of your lives when, if you engage and embraced what Stonehill has to offer, you would:

1. Receive a first-rate education and would be challenged and supported by a superb faculty; be offered opportunities to enhance your class work by opportunities to intern, study abroad, participate in community-based learning and leadership opportunities offered through the Student Affairs and Mission Divisions; and develop other opportunities to explore and expand your intellectual horizons. Looking at so many of your resumes, it is clear that, as a class, you have taken advantage of those opportunities and have explored often the "wideness of the world" to quote our own Fr. Robert Kruse.
2. Be prepared for the next steps in your journey whether it was employment (Iuse that word gently!!!); further study or full-time service. My conversations with so many of you this year confirm that you are ready for and excited about your future possibilities. And where we look at where you are going and what you will be doing it is amazing!!!
3. Make friends that you will have for a lifetime. From watching all of the "group photos" taken last night at the dinner-dance, it is clear that you have made deep and abiding friendships here and they have helped to form you as much as all of the "organized" moments of your collegiate experience.
4. And, remember when I asked you to stand up and look around at orientation because you might be looking at someone who might become a "significant other" in your life. Well, I have to say that in, more than a few cases, that has happened. (And I will leave it at that and not say I told you so.)

Now, I want to you to remember something. All of those things happened not just because we at Stonehill have a "master plan" to "program" your lives. They happened because YOU engaged the experience and worked really hard to take advantage of the opportunities presented you. I hope and I pray that these college years are a "blueprint" for how you will approach the next "moments" of your lives. In order to experience the same satisfaction and sense of accomplishment that you experienced here, you must:

1. Take risks: Be willing to try new things and step out of your comfort zones.
2. Work hard: Your achievements have not come without great effort on your part. You trusted that, with your family's and our support, you could do great things AND YOU DID. And you will continue to do so if you maintain the same trust and confidence.
3. Do everything with integrity: Don't take shortcuts which will compromise the trust others place in you. Your genuine goodness is and will be your biggest asset in all that you accomplish. Like our honorees today, you can do great things but, at the end of the day, it is who you are as a person, that will truly matter.
4. And finally, seek to build "communities of faith" as you journey forward. None of us can succeed without the help of others but, with others all is possible. Allow others into your circle of friends and accept the invitation of others to be part of theirs.

Yesterday in the Baccalaureate homily, I highlighted that, for Pope Benedict XVI, the pursuit of truth that gives rise to authentic Christian hope requires three elements: a personal encounter with God, the pursuit of knowledge in all of its complexity and witness to the truth by one's actions. My prayer for all of you, the graduates of the class of 2008, is that your lives may be guided by those elementsas your pursue the kind of truth of which Pope Benedict speaks; that your personal encounter with God; your pursuit of knowledge; and your witness to the truth of God's love in your lives be sign of authentic hope for our world.

To use words that are part of our ritual in the Catholic Church: May God who has begun this good work in you bring it to fulfillment.

Congratulations Class of 2008!!!!!!!