Santa Clara University

 

Commencement 2008

Paul Locatelli, S.J.

June 14th, 2008

Congratulations Class of 2008.

Thank you, Justice Panelli, for the kind introduction, and thank you to the members of the Boards of Trustees and Regents, and to the entire Santa Clara University community for the honor of speaking today.

Gratitude best describes how I feel about my life and this day as we celebrate your commencement. I am deeply grateful for so many things: for my family and friends, for life and health, and for the part that Santa Clara has played and will continue to play in my life and yours.
I am very grateful for these past 20 years as president of this remarkable community and for the ways it has inspired my hopes and beliefs.

Santa Clara opened up a new world for me, and it prepared me to turn a career into a higher calling. I pray it will be the same for you. And may you be as grateful for your Santa Clara experience as I am for mine.

With gratitude come some key lessons learned during times of change in my life: graduating from college, serving as president, and looking to the future.

The first lesson of gratitude came with graduation from Santa Clara – listen attentively for your greatest desires.

Today mirrors a mood similar to that of the early 60s. My senior year at Santa Clara was marked by a hotly contested presidential election. Many questioned whether a Catholic should be elected. Yet he was, and John F. Kennedy became the youngest person and the first Roman Catholic to hold our highest office, breaking new ground on the political landscape. JFK’s presidency was described as Camelot because of the excitement he created.

The race into space grabbed our imagination, the world was becoming global, and the struggle for civil and human rights gave us hope for an end to divisions over race and gender and the end of poverty. Unlike today, we had a sense of national unity and were favorably viewed by free democracies around the world.

At the same time, the world was in crisis: uncertainty settled over the world as two super powers – the West and the Communist Bloc – faced off. We were on the brink of global war when JFK ordered the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and then blocked Russian ships from bringing nuclear missiles into Cuba. The building of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the Vietnam War further polarized nations into two camps just as today the Iraq war is polarizing the world in many, more complex ways.

In the 60s, when Pope John XXIII asked the world to be at peace, we were idealistic enough to dream of a world free of conflict and violence.

History shows civic engagement is important; such engagement was a habit for us in the 60s. And I urge you also to stay involved or to become involved – starting with a commitment to vote in November for the candidate of your choice.

As our education both inspired and prepared us well for making a difference in the world, so also for you. The world is much more complex and conflicted today. But your Jesuit education has prepared you well for this time and place in history – for both a successful career and more.

Faculty and staff have encouraged you to connect your great desires with using your gifts to make the world a better place for all. Like past graduates of Santa Clara for their time, you will now enrich the world with hope and with your exceptional gifts.

In my case, my call went beyond deciding to become a Jesuit. My constant passion has become wanting to make the world more humane both for those with education and voice and for those without, for those with power to change the world and for those without.

The second lesson of gratitude is – discover those places where your greatest desires and your passion to act justly meet the needs of the world.

This lesson has helped me as president. These twenty years have been the best years of my life; they have been a time of remarkable change, not only for me and Santa Clara but also the entire world. Watching remarkable young women and men cross this stage each year – and today, you – to take your place in society, knowing that you will be smart, ethical leaders and compassionate citizens, is a great gift. It does not get any better than that.

The responsibilities of the presidency could have consumed all of my energy were it not for taking time to nourish my mind and heart – by reflecting, reading, and experiencing the lives of people who are socially and economically excluded.

Nourish your heart and mind. Turn off your cell phone and laptop often. Limit the time for text messaging, updating blogs on Facebook, and watching Youtube. Rather, spend time in solitude and reading and listening.

Solitude is a gift of quiet - whether you find it in prayer in some chapel, walking along the beach, or sitting silently watching flickering stars. And read: Read about the mystery of God and life in both fiction and non-fiction.

Let me be concrete and personal about nourishing my heart and mind in ways that affect who I have become and what I do.
I love going to Broadway plays, visiting museums and galleries, and reflecting on poetry. And dabbling with photography really sparks my imagination.

The arts and literature help us to see, at one end of the spectrum, the transcendence and beauty of God on earth, and at the other, the mystery of human adventure that redeems the pain of living and the tragedy of dying.

Photography, as with all the arts, helps us to see God’s creative power in the world, which the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins calls that “freshness deep down [in] things.” Artists capture the meaning of life in ways that others of us are unable to. Listen to them. Ansel Adams, whom I had the privilege of meeting, for example, shared his extraordinary gift of imagination about the world with the world. And Sabastiao Salgado invites us to celebrate the dignity of human life in his portraits of hunger, suffering, and poverty.

Reading discerningly about globalization and actually experiencing it in the countryside of a developing country can also awaken moral courage. That experience for me began with an invitation from Jesuits in El Salvador to visit – at the height of that country’s civil war in the 1980s.

Campesinos struggled for justice because power corrupted the rich who took away land – sorely needed for their livelihood – and denied them voice in a purported democracy.

Because ideas and justice were dangers for the power elite of the country, the six Jesuits and two women at the Jesuit university in San Salvador were martyred on November 16th, 1989. The eight crosses, fragile and plain, in front of the Mission Church represent a microcosm of the struggle for justice globally and locally. They also remind us of the importance of learning about other parts of the world and other places in our own communities and never to acquiesce in the face of injustice no matter where it arises.

To change the world intelligently and to overcome the root causes of serious contemporary problems require integrating reading critically and analyzing real life experiences. Your education at Santa Clara has provided you with practice in these skills – but it has provided you with more: I hope you leave here inspired and passionate in your care for all people and our fragile earth – and to have the courage never to be satisfied with the way things are.

Our world needs us – you and all of us here – to reverse global warming and care for the environment, to bring peace, to overcome diseases like cancer and AIDS, to advance human rights, to improve the economy, to care about the 4 billion people living on less than $2 per day, and the list goes on.

My third and final point is about our futures – yours and mine – as we leave Santa Clara. It’s this: believe in yourself.

You came to Santa Clara with great expectations. You have received an excellent Jesuit education from fine faculty and, together with the generosity of parents, trustees, regents, staff, and benefactors, you have also received much more,. You have learned how to integrate into your life the more exalted pursuit of a life of faith and justice.

May you always ask yourself: What do I believe, and how do I live my belief in the face of the world’s greatest needs?

Here are five suggested responses as we move on.

First, be grateful for your gifts, family, and friends – and recall that only 1 person in 100 has a college education. You are part of that one percent of the world’s population with the gift of an university education. To those that much has been given, much should be shared with others.

Second, listen for your deepest desires – and hear, in them, God’s call to you.

Third, be open to new possibilities where your imagination, talents, and the needs of the world converge.

Fourth, imagine a better future for yourself and others, especially the most fragile and socially excluded of our world.

Fifth, have the courage and the perseverance to act on that vision: to construct a more humane, sustainable, and just world for yourselves and future generations.

God bless you, and congratulations, Class of 2008.