Mary Immaculate College

Graduation (3)

Friday 23rd Oct 2009

I am very pleased to share this moment with today’s graduands and with your families and friends.  In this conferring ceremony your gifts, your work, your achievements are recognised by the University of Limerick and by all who have contributed to your education here in Mary Immaculate College: the academic staff, the administrative staff, the support services and of course your fellow students.  As I congratulate you who are graduating, I also want to share the joy of all who have shared the ups and downs of those years with you – your families and friends who are celebrating with you, whether they are present, or here in spirit.  But above all, to you who are graduating I express my congratulations and my pleasure at being here to share your achievement.

The fact that so many people have been involved in your progress to this day is an indication of the fact that education is not an individual thing; it is the enterprise of a community. Your parents and families and neighbourhoods had already begun to educate you before you ever went to school, not to mind college.

Education is the transmission of a tradition – not as something unchanging and static and closed in on itself but as a living reality.  Often enough in history we have seen how that process can be betrayed – how loyalty to one’s own culture can deteriorate into fear or contempt for the culture of others; how patriotism can be taught more as a hatred of other countries than as love of one’s own.

The College Mission Statement commits us to promote “a sense of identity enriched by an awareness of its Catholic tradition (and) the cultures, languages and traditions of Ireland” and at the same time to “respect cultural diversity”.  “Respect” here does not mean “tolerate” in the sense of “believe what you like, It’s of no interest to me”.  It means a positive willingness to try to understand and to learn from other cultures.

That kind of respect for others contributes to the growth of understanding between people’ and cultures. The Catholic tradition of the College, however, adds another dimension.

Each human being is created in the image and likeness of God.  Each human being expresses that image in a unique way.  No other human being is an image of God in precisely the way that you are, or I am.  The achievements of other individuals and societies in literature, or science, or technology, or in its history or language or educational efforts all open up ways of insight into the ultimate Truth, who is God. Pope John Paul said on one occasion; “the search for truth, in the last analysis, is a search for God.” [1]

You  might say, therefore, that a basic purpose of education is to foster peace and understanding between people, so that the aspects of Truth which are to be found uniquely in each person and each civilisation may mutually enrich those who are involved in the common human search for truth. Understanding can only be based on truth. Falsehood and ignorance produce bigotry.  As Chesterton said, “Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions” [2]

In spite of all the efforts at education down the years, in spite of the fact that communications now unite every part of the world with an immediacy that was never possible in the past we have a world in which wars are more brutal, more likely to bring death and suffering to women and children and innocent people who have no part in the conflict; we have a world in which inequalities grow and sources of resentment fester.

All of that could lead to a feeling of despair.  What’s the point? It will all be the same in a hundred years. Nothing will ever bring about peace.

But this is where the biblical tradition, our Judaeo Christian heritage, challenges us. The vocabulary of our culture is one of rights and entitlements, self-expression and self-fulfilment, belief in our own capacity to bring about a better world, belief in peace which too easily turns out to be my peace, the peace of my group rather than the peace of all humanity.

The Biblical language in the words of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks “referred to meanings beyond the self, to moral communities beyond the individual and to relationships more enduring that temporary compatibility” [3].

The Christian vision of life and of education is inspired by hope. It is a hope which is not a hope for particular outcomes.  It is deeper than that; it is a hope in Someone.  One great French philosopher summed it up as “I hope in Thee for us” [4]

And that Christian hope is a community hope.  It is a hope for the whole human family. As you have learned here, and as I hope you will go on learning throughout your lives, there is a great enrichment in entering into the culture and the achievements of others and of making them your own – perhaps even adding a new perspective or dimension or expression of the truth.

What Christian hope offers is that enrichment infinitely extended.  The vision of God will also be a vision of all God’s gifts in their infinite expressions throughout the universe and in particular throughout the history and the cultural diversity of humanity.  Our efforts to build up universal understanding and harmony will be limited, will often fail, will always be impermanent.  But they are new insights into the destination of human life. Our joy will be in our recognition of the greatness of God’s gifts and the variety of their expression;

St Thomas Aquinas described that sharing:

“…each one will possess all good together with the blessed, and they will love one another as themselves, and they will rejoice in the others' good as their own" [5]

The education that you will have the privilege of sharing with others during your lives will, please God, be founded on that hope which is unshakeable and that is constantly inspiring.  The young people of today need a hope that is big enough to enable them to face a world changing even more rapidly than ours has done and offering challenges that no generation has faced before them.

I wish you well in that responsibility.  I hope that the values and the commitment to truth that you have developed here, the vision of Christian hope and openness that is an essential quality of this College will flourish in you. I pray that your lives may lead you to welcome and spread the most fundamental of all Christian truths, that God is love.

Comhgáirdeas libh uile is go n-eirí bhúr mbóthar libh.

______________________

1 JOHN PAUL II, Angelus December 13, 1998
2 CHESTERTON GK, Heretics, Filiquarian Publishing edition 2007, p. 208
3 SACKS J., The Persistence of Faith, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1991, 33
4 MARCEL, G., Homo Viator tr. Craufurd, E., New York 1982 p. 60; cf. BENEDICT XVI, Spe Salvi, 48
5 AQUINAS, Collationes super Credo in Deum 12.