A Solid Commencement Address

A Solid Commencement Address

In pursuit of the truth - http://www.cinopsbegoneblogspot.com - Trinity Sunday, June 15, 2014

By George Weigel delivered to the Class of 2014 of the University of Dallas, Excerpts:

"Here you have learned that "tradition" is neither a synonym for dullness nor the enemy of human progress, for here you have learned that "tradition," as the great Chesterton noted, is "the democracy of the dead," the willingness to think that those that came before us - Homer and Virgil, Augustine and Aquinas, Dante and Milton and Shakespeare - may have important things to teach us.

Here, you have learned that the tradition of the West is built on the three pillars of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome: biblical religion which teaches us that life is a pilgrimage in which we are called to follow the God of Israel and the Church on the path He is taking through history: the Greek faith in reason's ability to get at the truth of things that are embedded in the world around us; the Roman conviction that the rule of law is superior to the rule of brute force.

Each of those pillars is under assault throughout the western world today. In the 19th century, what Henry de Lubac called "atheistic humanism" jettisoned the God of the Bible and declared that western high culture would hence-forth be a God-free zone. In the 20th century, the deconstruction of humanities in an aggressively secular academy led, not to liberated minds, but to minds chained in the prison of uncertainty, skepticism, irony and cynicism, in the 21st century, and a result of what happened in the 19th and 20th centuries, the "dictatorship of relativism" prophetically analyzed by Benedict XVI now threatens the rule of law from Anchorage to Kiev and all points in between.

So you the class of 2014, have your work cut out for you. and the work is nothing less than the exhilarating, challenging and sometimes dangerous task of giving the West a new birth of freedom lived for the common  good in solidarity with other pilgrims through history....

"I think there are two reasons why John Paul II was a magnet for the young. The first was his transparent honesty.There was no falseness in the man,  no hedging, none of the ambiguity that is often a postmodern mask hiding deep confusion. He did not ask young people to do anything he had not done. He did not ask young people to bear any burden he had not borne. He simply asked them to let him, and the Church, accompany them on the pathways of life, in moments of failure as moments of success, so that those pathways might eventually become a pilgrim's progress toward sanctity.

And the second reason why John Paul was a magnet for the young was his challenge. Unlike 21-century popular culture, John Paul II did not pander to young people. He challenged young people, because he knew, from his experiences with his young friends in Cracow, that young people want to be summoned to live lives of heroism - that young adulthood is a time to dream great dreams, to imagine how things ought to be, and to bend heroic efforts to fixing what is broken in our own lives and in society....

John Paul said the same thing to millions of young people in Rome, Buenos Aires, Compostela, Czestochowa, Denver, Paris, Toronto: Never ever settle for anything less the spiritual and moral grandeur that the grace of God makes possible in your lives. Never settle for less than that. You will fail as we all do, but that is no reason to lower the bar of expectation. Get up, dust yourself off, seek forgiveness and reconciliation, and try again. But never, ever settle for anything less than the spiritual and moral greatness that is available to you, and of which you are capable by God's grace. Don't ever settle for less than that.

If the generation of which this Class of 2014 is a part is going to meet the challenge of giving America and the West, a new birth of freedom, it will do so because it becomes a generation of saints: well-educated, thoughtful and articulate saints, compassionate and merciful saints; saints for the new millennium who refuse to surrender to the tyranny of low expectations, personal and public saints in the image of the young Pole who never imagined himself pope, but whom the Church and the world know as Pope St. John Paul II.

He is now more than an image to ponder, an example to emulate. He is your powerful intercessor. And St. John Paul II will not fail to support you as you go out, today, from this great university to the ends of the earth, contemporary witness to the ancient and enduring truths you have made your own here. Godspeed on your journey."

George H. Kubeck