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Michael Spath, University of Saint Francis
August 28, 2002
I want to begin with a personal word:
I arrived at school very early this morning, while it was still dark
and went down to my cave in the bowels of Bonaventure Hall. As the first
hints of sunlight began to rise, I left the cave and walked to every corner
of the campus –
I walked past Doermer and headed to the Rolland Center. I visited the
ball diamonds and soccer field and walked past Achatz, took the gravel
road with a sunrise view of the cemetery, on past the football complex
and the dorms and the “temporary buildings” 5, 6, and 7. I
walked up to the corner of Spring and Lindenwood and down past the drive
in front of Trinity Hall, the Bass Mansion, and the statue of St. Francis.
I spent some time on the island and on the little bridge before I walked
past across the causeway and back in to my cave again. And all the while,
I kept Mirror Lake in my view, with its teeming life, if one had eyes
to look that closely.
It was a glorious morning, a still and deep sunrise, a peaceful walk.
And I thought about how much I love it here. But as beautiful as it was,
it is not ultimately Saint Francis, and it is not what I love the most.
It is you who are Saint Francis. And it is being here with you that I
love.
So I stand here this morning, looking out over a sea of faces, students
many of whom I don’t know, some of whom I’ve had in class,
and some from whom I’ve learned much. I see coaches and staff people
who do their jobs here often unheralded for their labors. I see the Sisters
of Saint Francis whose precious legacy of 113 years of sacrifice and dedication
to education we have received. And I see my faculty colleagues many of
them from whom I’ve already learned so much – about the profession
of teaching, about what it means to love teaching and love students, about
being a friend and having faith, about collegiality and being a community
of scholars. Students, I don’t if you really realize the extraordinary
quality of the faculty before whom you sit on a daily basis.
So, as I stand here as one of the family of Saint Francis, wondering
about the tracks we will leave here at this place and in the lives of
our students, let me offer three – there are more, but let’s
let three suffice. We at the University of Saint Francis, imperfectly
at times, but always in good faith, strive to be a place where:
intellects are challenged;
vocations are formed; and
souls are nurtured.
1. First, the University of Saint Francis is a place where intellects
are challenged.
We understand – and perhaps it’s a strange thing for a university
to admit – that there is no way that we can teach everything there
is to know about a thing, not even if you stay for a Masters Degree, and
neither can anyplace else. Information, technologies, advancements and
innovations in every field of human endeavor make change a constant companion
anymore.
But we see this as an exciting challenge, because it frees us up to teach
not only “stuff” – we will do that, teach the basic
factual stuff in our fields, but we realize that wisdom is not mere mental
regurgitation. So even more, we will also teach you how to analyze and
synthesize information, to learn how to learn; how, in the absence of
easy answers, to ask the right questions; how to think on your feet; how
to know where to go to find what you need to know. We teachers are asking
you students to seek us out – we’re ready to listen, to advise,
to guide you – seek out the resources you need to be a success!
You can be a success here!
This means, of course, that you will be challenged to grow, and growing
always – even when it sets you free – involves growing pains.
Sometimes in your classes you will hear things that you have never heard
before, things that challenge deeply held values, convictions, attitudes,
what you believe about the world. That’s a good thing because this
very challenging, this very stretching of your mental and moral and religious
and psychological muscles – this very challenging of cozy worldviews
will make you stronger and better-equipped to face the world no matter
whether you accept what the professor has to say or not.
Most of us teachers understand that many of you students are here at
great sacrifice, that you are juggling many different parts of your life
– jobs, family responsibilities, and other things – along
with your classes. But you must also understand that a university education
is serious business – we take what we do here very seriously –
and we will demand excellence and a real commitment from you…of
energy and resolve and especially a commitment of your time to your studies.
A university education – at least at this place – cannot be
had without such an investment of your self. We will not let you cheat
yourself of this opportunity.
2. Second, the University of Saint Francis is a place where vocations
are formed.
I need to make another odd, but nevertheless, important, admission to
you – we do not do job training here. Now, do we teach the knowledge
and skills to be successful in entering the workforce when students graduate
from here? Of course we do! Do we prepare our students to compete with
graduates of other programs at other institutions for high quality jobs
in their fields? Most certainly we do! But – and I guess I want
to say this as clearly as I can – job training is not our primary
concern. Training you can find lots of places. It is a concern, one concern,
but it is not our primary concern. We do vocation formation here, which
includes, but is certainly not limited to, job training.
It goes without saying that we are entering into a different world than
a generation ago, a different world than just a few short years ago, even
one year ago, as the looming first anniversary of September 11 reminds
us. Somehow, everything is changed.
The Dow Jones is volatile, the stock market burps up a couple of hundred
points one day and belches back down the next, and businesses, both big
and small, have been put under the microscope.
Politicians, doctors, lawyers, corporate executives, teachers, even
religious leaders– people who not so long ago enjoyed a certain
prestige and moral leadership in our country – are being closely
scrutinized because they have lost the public trust.
The face of health care is rapidly changing, attempting to balance what
is technologically possible, what is cost- efficient, what is legal, what
is ethical, attempting to balance what is best for the one with what is
best for the many. How do you decide?
Families are disintegrating at an alarming rate, daily we hear of a
new “Amber Alert,” people are more medicated for depression
than ever, and there is increasingly more dissatisfaction with “organized
religion.”
We are a nation of immigrants, and live in a tremendously diverse community
– yet we are still trying to understand what this really means,
because this time our neighbors are coming not just from Europe, but from
other regions of the world, with other religious and cultural traditions.
And we stand in the middle of a strange and different kind of war, and
on the brink of another even stranger, even more morally messy war, still
trying to figure out as a nation what it means to be a superpower that
has moral, as well as economic, responsibilities and therefore, a need
for a moral vision in our foreign policy.
Now, you tell me, in a world like this, how can the kinds of things we
teach here –
embracing nature, like St. Francis, as brother sun, sister moon, mother
earth, brother fire, sister water;
promoting a lifestyle of humility and simplicity;
concern for the poor, for justice and peace;
reverence for all life and the dignity of every human being –
you tell me, in a world like ours, how can these values not be radically
counter-cultural, what I’ve been calling “radically Franciscan”?
How can they not be?
And – especially in these days – how can they not be exactly
what the world needs to hear?
The extra thing, the “added value” we offer here is an understanding
that what we do with our lives – no matter what field we’ve
chosen – has meaning and eternal validity as we use it to make a
difference, to serve others, to be – well, let me just say it –
people with a moral vision, to be godly. We not only focus on the doing
here, but even more on the being. Do well! But be first, then do!
3. Finally, the University of Saint Francis is a place where souls are
nurtured.
Let me be honest – this is what makes us not for everybody. We
believe, we who work here (and we’re a diverse bunch with many different
values and religious and cultural traditions) – we believe that
our love of wisdom, our search for wisdom, finally leads us to the Fount
of Wisdom, which is the heart of God.
I have spent quite abit of time in the last number of years living and
traveling in the Middle East, and throughout the Mediterranean world,
in Greece and Egypt and Turkey.
I have walked the streets of ancient Jericho … and in the footsteps
of Jesus in Bethsaida and Capernaum on the
Sea of Galilee;
I’ve stood before the red rock tombs of Nabataean Petra in Jordan
by a full moon … and under the portals
of the Parthenon in Athens … in front of Rameses II in Luxor …
and I’ve riddled with the Sphinx;
I’ve prayed in Rome’s St. Peter’s Cathedral …
at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem … in the Mosque of Suleyman
the Magnificent in Istanbul … and at Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall
…
I’ve smiled at the first sight of my children … and I’ve
also had my heart broken;
I know what it means to love and be loved … and I know what it means
to be utterly alone;
I’ve wished upon a star … and I’ve wept at my mother’s
grave …
... and each time – each place – it doesn’t matter –
I have found myself wondering the same thing:
What lives on after we’re gone? What will we be remembered for?
What is it that is really lasting, that nothing can destroy, that won’t
ever fail us? What really lasts? What is forever?
The Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, put
it like this:
“When you die and go to heaven and you meet God, God is not going
to say to you, ‘Why didn’t you become a saint? Why didn’t
you discover the cure for cancer? Why didn’t you change the world?’
No, all God will ask you at that holy time is, ‘Why didn’t
you become you?’” “Why didn’t you become you?”
I often tell my students, “Nothing will be enough until you are
enough.” Not money, not prestige, not success, not even your family
and friends gathered around you – “nothing will be enough
until you are enough.” You think about that! “Keep your eyes
on the prize,” Martin Luther King said, but the prize, you see –
he knew it – is nothing less than your soul.
Because we believe that in the end, every House of Wisdom is built upon
– it’s always built upon – Love.
Have you ever known:
a Love that is unconditional,
a Love that gives you integrity and strength, and makes you enough even
when you don’t feel enough,
even when everyone else and everything else in the world wants to make
you believe that you aren’t enough,
that is, have you ever known the Love that comes from God?
Nothing will be enough until you are enough! Can you believe that you
are enough, because God is enough, so then everything can be enough …
all because Love is enough. Friends, if Love is not forever, then please,
tell me – you tell me – what is forever?
Perhaps it was the Catholic scientist-priest, Teilhard de Chardin, who
said it best:
“Someday when we have mastered the air and the winds, the tides
and gravity;
someday when we have mastered the inner workings of the atom and the deepest
parts of space,
we will harness for God the energies of Love.
And then, for the second time in the history of the world,
we will have discovered Fire.”
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