The Freedoms We Hold Dear – Commencement Address to the Class of 2022
Photo credit: BBC World Service
Dear Parents, Teachers, Students, Relatives, and Friends of our School,
At the end of a Catholic Mass in southwest Nigeria today, on this Solemnity of Pentecost, dozens of faithful lost their lives in a violent terrorist attack. We pray for the victims and their families, and we entrust these holy souls to Our Lord’s loving embrace.
Photo credit: BBC/OLUMIDE OWADUGE
We could not have a more compelling or stark reminder, as we gather today to honor our students and congratulate them on a year of outstanding accomplishments, of the freedoms we hold dear and the gratitude which we must express. I would like to express my deep appreciation for the commitment you have each made to Trinity Academy and to the ideals of faith and freedom.
We must not take our freedoms lightly: the freedom to worship God, the freedom to honor our country, and the freedom even to be educated. Do not take the gift of your education lightly. Millions in this world never experience the privilege of even one day in a school with outstanding formation.
Many years ago, when I began to teach in a school in India, I became aware that these students never wasted time in class. One day I asked one of the teachers why they never wasted time, and he pointed out that it was because the "chance to be educated was considered a priceless gift."
May we all be grateful for the freedoms that we enjoy - the right to be taught that there are two sexes, male and female, the right to be taught the founding principles of our nation, the right to learn our Catholic catechism and live our faith openly. Along with these freedoms comes our responsibility to strive. To strive – a strong word with strong Middle English roots. In the dictionary it is defined in two ways – “to exert much effort or energy” and “to struggle or contend.”
Mother Teresa often taught us the value of striving. She always insisted that striving lies at the heart of true success. The world measures success by final results – Are you a CEO? And do you own a BMW? – but Mother Teresa reminds us that when we come before Our Lord to be judged, He will not ask us how much money we made, He will ask us how we strove to develop the special talents He gave us.
Robert Louis Stevenson stated this brilliantly when he said: “It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.” The greatness lies in how we handle the struggle to get there.
In our curriculum at Trinity Academy we study Alfred Lord Tennyson’s great poem “Ulysses.” In it, Tennyson portrays the great hero not in his youth but in his age, making the decision not to rust away in his last days but to gather his crew and set sail for yet another adventure: “To follow knowledge like a sinking star / Beyond the utmost bounds of human thought.” The last line of the poem sums up his great spirit as he resolves “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
All of us are called to strive. Until that day when we, like today’s Nigerian martyrs, are called home to be with Our Lord and to hand over to Him our lives, our gifts, and talents, offered in His service.
We conclude with the famous wisdom of Robert Browning: “Ah, that a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, / Or what’s a Heaven for?”
Our school, Trinity Academy, is striving. You are striving.
Go forth and strive for our ultimate and Heavenly goal - or what’s an education, a life of freedom, our faith, a Heaven for?
May God bless you profoundly.
Delivered at the Trinity Academy Marian Grotto Pentecost Sunday, June 5, 2022
