I’ve sat through a lot of commencement addresses, from Steve Case warning us about the internet crisis in Africa (you’re right, that’s the crisis we should worry about) to Alan Page extolling the virtues of affirmative action (irrelevance was the least of his issues). The only thing I remember my high school commencement speaker (Congressman Tom Davis) saying was that he remembered his commencement speaker saying he wouldn’t remember anything from that speech. Yes, I see the irony.
I sat through another yesterday, all filled with inspiring words about changing the world and following your heart (no joke—the day after I published that bit about not following your heart). I didn’t love everything she said, but it got me thinking about what I have to say to my kids, my babies who are going off into the world. I haven’t been able to protect them from much, but at least I’ve been around to help patch them up afterwards. Now I can’t do anything and it breaks my heart.
Every year that I’ve taught, I’ve kept the last ten minutes of the year to offer my last pieces of advice. It looks something like this:
As you go from here, I have so many hopes for you.
I hope you know that you are strong, you are beautiful, you are good enough, you are loved.
I hope you live for something. I don’t care what it is, Christ or music or family or whatever, but I hope you don’t just drift through life. I hope you live a life that means something, that when people look at you they see honor and integrity and love.
I hope you fight and struggle and question, that you never stop striving to be great.
I hope you conform to no one but Christ.
I hope you live in the Sacraments, that you remember what Christ sacrificed for you and never skip Mass Sunday. I hope that you never stop repenting, confessing, and striving again to be a saint. I hope you trust in the mercy of a God who loved you enough to die for you and never stay away from him out of fear or shame.
I hope you hunger for God, for Scripture, for the Bread of Life, that you pray every day, even when you don’t feel anything.
I hope you trust his Church but fight to understand all she teaches.
I hope the crosses you carry transform you. I hope you embrace the cross, that you find Christ in suffering. I will not hope that you do not suffer because I know that it is enduring suffering that makes you great, but I hope that when you suffer you cling to God and let him make you whole again.
I hope you find people who love you for who you are but want you to be better. I hope you are accepted and challenged, that the people you love are worth fighting for.
I hope that you’re caught up in a love so great it spills over to those around you.
I hope you dream big and ignore impossible.
I hope the world is a better place because of you.
I hope that when this life draws to a close you discover that all along you were led by a love that calls you deeper, that makes you greater, that brings you home.
And when you find yourself on the edge of eternity looking into the eyes of that love, I hope you throw yourself with abandon into his arms to be loved as you deserve.
I hope I see you there.
Congratulations, Class of 2012. Go out there and set the world ablaze!
