St Vincent College

LaTrobe, PA

"Congratulations are most assuredly in order, to you graduates of St Vincent College class of 2012, for your hard efforts and achievement today, a day of great joy! And we offer double thanks to your families, especially your moms, those living and those gone before us, on this beautiful mother's day weekend!

At the same time, today is a new beginning for you in your life’s journey, and those of us who are proud of you want to also prepare you for the courses you will now take in the school of life. This school is also aptly called, "the school of hard knocks". I hope you will see the importance of having a double major: in faith and in humanity.

Deep inside of each of you a journey is being traced. The journey is a dance with many partners: You, God, the deep molding life works on you, and the wonderful mystery of goodness, and the insidious presence of evil.

The movements of this dance bring choices to you. Your ongoing choices shape your destiny, You life story has very deep dimensions, alternating between comedy and tragedy. Tragedy in the sense of critical suffering and the danger suffering brings, comedy in the sense of the ability to heal, resolve, and unify, and grow, in other words, the opportunity the suffering brings.

Comedy fills us with hope and courage, with dreams and song, and speaks joyously of our Provident God. Tragedy devastates us, make us confused and cynical. Some of us never get up again. Tragedy turns harmonious song into discordant lament, and mocks that God has abandoned us.

The real art of living in faith is about how to deal with tragedy in life. If we manage this wrong, tragedy will seed self disdain and blame, false voices within us will lead us to deny what we know, what we feel, and what we are. This inner betrayal leads is to dulling and destructive behavior, destroying ourselves and all the good that might be real through us, making us, although sill alive, stillborn to the vibrancy and vitality that could mark our lives.  Lost in this darkness, toxic to ourselves and to those around us, unable to see another light. Not even knowing we are in the dark, we become victims and servants of a culture of death, spawned by the denial of the God.

Our rich and practical Catholic tradition, reinforced for you here by the illustrious St Vincent College community, offers much support to you for this journey. She offers medicines, balms, and nourishment for well being your soul as you walk a difficult path through a world that tries to uproot and deny the soul, a world that sees you basically as a cost center, a world which will devalue you fast and even unto death if your productivity and economic value declines, if you don’t literally measure up against the gold standard of money and power.