Baccalaureate Homily 2005 | Press Releases

Delivered by Rev. Paul Carrier, S.J.

"Nothing is too wonderful to be true".

These words of Michael Faraday, 19th Century chemist and physicist are especially meaningful for us on this feast of the Most Holy Trinity, your Baccalaureate Mass, as we celebrate mystery, not as in Agatha Christie, but the experience of mystery that you have had in your lives as sons and daughters, friends and companions, students and scholars.

Consider this: the universe has waited 19 billion years for you; each of our bodies has 10 thousand trillion cells; if all the stars in the universe were only the size of a pin they would fill Giant Stadium to overflowing more than 3 billion times! In the face of such mystery, it is not certitude we embrace, but awe, amazement, wonder and humility. The Sufi mystic Rumi wrote,

"so let us not be sure of anything,
crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,
we shall be saying finally
with tremendous eloquence, Lead us.
When we have totally surrendered to that beauty
We shall be a mighty kindness ."

Embraced by that beauty, we come to a sense of appreciation and responsibility for what we experience as coincidence, chance, or luck in the flow of human life and history. We are moved by the purpose and meaning of the universe.

Nothing is too wonderful to be true!

Like the mystery of God, Three in One, Trinity of love, Merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, that tremendous and fascinating mystery.

Our God does not sleep, our God hears the cry of the poor.

Poets, mystics, theologians plumb the depth of the mystery.

Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, "the world is charged with the grandeur of God."

Philosopher Alfred North Whitehead defined God as " the tender mercy in the universe that nothing is lost."

And St. Ignatius Loyola invited us " to see God in all things."

God who is with us, a fellow sufferer who understands.

Erma Bombeck tells the story of a small child in church who was turning around smiling at everyone. He wasn't humming, kicking, tearing the hymnals apart, he was just smiling. Finally his mother jerked him about and in a stage whisper said, "stop that grinning, you're in Church". As tears rolled down his cheeks, she added, "that's better, and returned to her prayers."

Have we in all our sophistication and grown up seriousness forgotten the God of our childhood, the happy God, the smiling God, the God who had to have a sense of humor to have created the likes of us.

The children in our lives remind us of that happy, smiling God. The truth of their insight can disarm us. One young child age ten wrote this letter to God, "Dear God, thank you for my parents, my sister, for grandma and grandpa. They are warm and special. I forgive you for my brother Phil, I guess you haven't finished working on him yet. " An eleven year old wrote, "Dear God, my dad thinks he's you, please straighten him out."

Nothing is too wonderful to be true!

Like the mystery of parents' faithful love. To be a parent, it is said, is to have your heart forever run around outside your body. That running heart always feels gratitude for having a glimpse of God everyday; for having a hand to hold, usually covered by jam; for taking training wheels off the bike; for removing a splinter; for the power to patch a broken heart!

Feeling, as Oprah describes her time in Africa, " going to bed fatigued with happiness", or other times fatigued with concern and care, with a prayer in your heart and a lump in your throat.

Like the Reilly's, as they continue to pray faithfully for the recovery of their son Sean, your friend and classmate, prayers which we too offer with them.

Nothing is too wonderful to be true!

Like the mystery of each of you, Class of 2005. We celebrate the mystery of how you have grown and changed these past four years. You are not the same people you were four years ago. So how have you grown?

You've grown in your ability to study, to be able to reflect and scrutinize life and the world around you with all the powers of your heart and mind. What you study changes you, makes you more human. Jesuit education is the school from which you never graduate, it is lifelong learning. We remember the example of Michelangelo who in his 87 ^th year was able to say. "I am still learning."

You've grown in your ability to deal with pressure, learning how to relax and celebrate the simple moments of life. Nietzche states, "the problem is not planning a party, but finding people who know how to enjoy it." You've grown to know yourselves, your strengths and limitations so as to be good companions and friends for others. Remember, some people brighten a room by leaving it.

Finally, you've grown in your ability to love, to really love, the kind of love that flows from a Jesuit liberal arts education, from the vision of St. Ignatius Loyola, to truly be women and men for and with others, always reaching out to embrace the world, ever widening your circles of care, compassion and love whether here on campus, in Bridgeport, or Appalachia, Haiti, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Mexico.

Sometimes, our hearts once fired with this love, can become cold and frosty, by what author David Kundtz calls DDD, "delight deficiency disorder." Symptoms are anger, irritability, impatience. The only known antidote, is to enjoy life, to laugh, to become comfortable with how little control we really have. We don't want our epitaph to read, "Got everything done, died anyway."

Before you walk up the Bellarmine stairs tomorrow, take time to thank the people who share the mystery and miracle of your life. As a favorite songwriter of my generation, your parents generation, James Taylor sings, "shower the people you know with love, show them the way that you feel."

Don't miss the moment, let the truth be told.

And never forget what a privilege it has been for us to be with you as you asked key questions about love and life and faith, and grew towards answers meaningful for you.

But, one more question as you graduate, a question asked by poet Mary Oliver in her poem "The Summer Day":

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do,
with your one, wild and precious life?"