Fr. Jonathan DeFelice, O.S.B.
President of Saint Anselm College
May 22, 2004
Your Excellency, Bishop Joseph,
Abbot Matthew
Distinguished Honorary Degree Recipients,
Members of the Graduating Class of 2004
Parents and families,
my Benedictine confreres and sisters,
members of the Saint Anselm faculty, staff, and trustees,
guests and friends:
I welcome you to Saint Anselm College's 111th Commencement Exercises!
To our honorary degree recipients, I extend a special welcome and the thanks of the entire Saint Anselm College Community for honoring us with your presence. Certainly all of you have distinguished yourselves in careers, in service to your communities and our nation, and also in the way you have chosen to live your lives.
In a very special way, I welcome our Commencement speaker, Mr. Brian Lamb, and thank him for accepting our invitation to be here today. He is living example of how one person can make a difference in our democracy, a message we all need to hear and to live.
To the parents, spouses, and families of the class of 2004, my greetings and congratulations! I know that none of our graduates would have succeeded without your support and encouragement and, in many cases, your sacrifices. The joy of this day is rightfully yours as well. In the name of all at Saint Anselm College, thank you!
Annually I take a moment at Commencement to recognize those senior members of our College Community who will be retiring this summer. Today I offer congratulations for a job well done and our thanks for decades of service to one member of our faculty. A man of great capacity for learning, great skill for teaching and great personal faith, Professor James O'Rourke helped to build a first-rate philosophy department that has contributed immensely to bringing distinction to the college. With tremendous gratitude for all the good he accomplished, I offer him our prayers for continued health and happiness in the years ahead.
My dear members of the Class of 2004, it is a pleasure for me to offer you a few final thoughts from what will soon be your alma mater.
One of the lessons that I believe you learned over and over again during your years here is that people make a difference. As a Catholic College, we know and proclaim to the world that every human life is sacred, every human person made in the image of a loving God. And every human person is worthy of our respect and our concern. You know that prejudice of any kind is something that has no place in the mind or heart of a Saint Anselm College graduate.
Sometimes it is easy to think about the concept of "human person" without thinking about the reality of what that means, without putting a face or a story or a name to the person. But in your humanities program you learned that people can make a difference, that an individual person can make a contribution to society that is remembered throughout history.
But making a difference, fulfilling your mission in this world as graduates of Saint Anselm College, does not necessarily mean that you will end up being a "portrait" that is studied in the sophomore year at some future date when your great-great grandchildren are here. No, it means that you must do whatever you do with an excellence and integrity that reflects the greatness of the God who created you.
Today you have before you three men and a woman who will receive honorary degrees at your commencement. These are people who have done just what I am talking about -- as you will hear in the citations that will be read shortly. You have before you also on this platform other men and women who have dedicated themselves, sometimes in addition to very demanding careers, to the work of advancing Saint Anselm College in many ways.
These are real people who can be models of what it means to live well in this world, and to share what you are and what you have for the good of others.
During the last four years, you walked in and out of buildings on a daily basis that bore names of people you probably never knew. Hilary and Bradley, an Abbot and a Bishop, the founders of our College; Geisel and Davison and Goulet, local businessmen who with enormous generosity supported our mission and literally helped build our college; Faltin who lived within a few blocks of the College for 92 of his 98 years and left a significant inheritance to help students who could not afford to come here; Bertrand and Dominic, Gerald and Nivelle and Bernard, who gave their lives to God as Benedictines and helped create the Saint Anselm of today. All of these people - and so very many more -- reaching back through the one hundred and fifteen years of our history, -- all of them helped you get to this remarkable day.
Every one of you can distinguish yourselves as well as you leave this now familiar place - as graduate students, in your first job, in your family life as spouses and parents. As I hope you learned here, there is no reason and no excuse for mediocrity. To become less than you are you meant to be, is to dishonor not only yourselves, but the God who created you for greatness. You can be the models for others in our society of what it means to live a good life. You can be the newest members of our alumni who help others to follow you here. As you learn new names and make new friends, never forget the names and the friends from Saint Anselm College; they will inspire your life if you let them.
Today I salute your accomplishments and I pray that you will be ever grateful to all made this day possible.
I shall miss the many of you that I have gotten to know well and will pray for all of you that the grace of God who loves you in Christ will sustain and support you all the days of your lives.
God love you all!