"Reverend Father President, Distinguished Members of the Platform Party, friends of the college, and, above all, members of the Class of 2009.

Some of you may know that the emeritus president of our university, Father Theodore Hesburgh, is named in the Guinness Book of World Records as the person holding the most honorary doctorates. When my youngest daughter heard that I was to receive such an honor at this institution she sent me an email saying: “Hesburgh 177; Cunningham, 1. Let the race begin!”

I have no desire to compete with Father Hesburgh but cannot thank you enough for this signal honor. To receive an honorary degree is a signal honor for an academic. It is especially significant for me and for this institution because this year we celebrate the 900th anniversary of the death of Saint Anselm of Canterbury that distinguished monk, scholar, and prelate for whom this historic college is named. To Anselm I will return in a few minutes to draw a few thoughts from that luminous person who, born in Northern Italy, lived as a monk in Normandy and then served as the archbishop of Canterbury.

Let me at the offset address my words to the members of this graduating class. I have sat through enough commencements to know that it is easy enough to drag out the usual clichés for such an occasion. My intention, however, is to give you some quite specific advice.

Both the word “commencement” and the word “graduation” point towards the future – commencement means we are beginning something new and graduation (from the Latin gradus) indicates that a stage has been reached and a new step is to be taken. However, before we turn to the future let us take a few moments to look back into the more recent past. 

First, this is an occasion whose center of attention is you the Class of 2009 of Saint Anselm’s College. Perhaps it is a bit audacious to put upon you an obligation rather than heaping praise upon the accomplishments that brought you to this day. However, I do suggest an obligation you should tender: take time today to express as best and as exuberantly as you can a heartfelt sense of gratitude to your families who have supported you over these years, to give thanks to this college which has nourished you in your education, to acknowledge those professors who will bid you farewell but will be ready to continue their work for the next class to graduate, to salute the monastic community whose selfless witness for over a century gave birth to and animates this place of learning, and, finally, embrace your classmates who have sustained you with their friendship.

Nobody in this class can honestly say that he or she has done it by themselves. A confluence of support, financial, educational, and social has made it possible for you to walk away from here with your diploma. It is only going to be with the passing of time that you will realize how much these years have formed your life in so many ways. You have a debt of gratitude to pay.

Second, gratitude for the gift of your education implies that what you have received will be put to good use. Only the boorish under appreciate great gifts. This college does not exist simply to give you marketable skills even though it surely does that. However, Saint Anselm’s has as its goal to educate you. Education is at the heart of what monasticism is all about; Saint Benedict calls his community a “school for the Lord’s Service “ in his Rule. The word “education” is related to the Latin educare which means to draw out. The best way you can show yourselves to be educated is to reflect the values for which this school stands. In your professional life let it be said that you will be sensitive to and proactive about those virtues which make our common life possible.

We are now going through a tough time in this country and many of our problems have their origin in a kind of restless greed and a sense of ideological egocentricity that has shown either an indifference to or even a hostility towards the common good. Saint Anselm’s surely wants you to be a success in life but a success that takes seriously into account a need for ethical judgment, an awareness that we are all made in the image and likeness of God, and a grasp of the truth that, as Jesus said, the whole of the gospel is to be found in the twin demands of love of God and neighbor. Such values may seem abstract as I have enumerated them but you will soon learn that there will be many occasions in your professional and personal life when you will confront issues where they will demand a response from you.

If there is one thing that Saint Anselm wrote that every student of theology knows it is his famous definition of theology: “Faith seeking understanding.” In fact, that definition has been a reference point and a guiding principle for my own professional life. It might be useful on this auspicious day to underscore two words from that famous definition that goes beyond the subject matter of theology.

Saint Anselm says that theology seeks understanding.

'Seeking'– This college has given you a serious education but graduation does not mean that education is finished; in fact, it has only just begun. In your chosen profession you will find that there is much to learn; many issues and problems with which to confront; deeper truths to be grasped; and many moments in which you not have an answer but will be prepared to seek an answer. Our life is a pilgrimage towards an end so both life and the challenges it presents to us is a form of “seeking.”

What, Saint Anselm, does the person of faith “seek” She seeks understanding.

'Understanding.' The Latin word is intellectum which is not a word about knowing lots of things – the world is full of such people. Smart people are a dime a dozen; intelligent or wise people are a precious commodity. Understanding is that state in which we take into the heart and the mind that which does justice both to knowledge and to interior fulfillment. True understanding is what King Solomon prayed for when God promised him any wish he desired:: Give to your servant an understanding heart…” (I Kings 3:9).

Two points occur to me in my meditation on understanding understood as an “understanding heart”: we should pray for such a heart in our own lives and we should cherish anyone we meet who possesses it. Knowledge points to competency but understanding points to wisdom and, wisdom, let it be stipulated, points to the One who is Wisdom – God. In this seeking for wisdom in our lives we can be the beneficiary of something Saint Anselm wished for every human being: “Let it be your sole endeavor wherever you may be to live in a way befitting a good person and a servant of God; and be assured that God will provide for you whatever is good for you.”[1]

Let me reduce what I have said above to four brief commandments for you to carry away from this school on this day:

Be grateful!

Continue to learn!

Be seekers”

Pray for wisdom!

If you do those things you will never be far from God  

All of us live in a set of concentric communities – we radiate out from families to communities of companions to the world of citizenship and as sharers of our common humanity made in the image and likeness of God. One way to think of those inter connected rings of community is to say that we are bound to others in friendship either real or possible. The fullest expression of our common humanity is that we be friends of God and friends of each other. On that note of friendship real and potential let me conclude these remarks by reading part of a long prayer with which Saint Anselm concluded his famous work the Proslogion. I have amended this prayer so that it reads as a plea and a blessing on the soon to be graduated members of this Class of 2009. This prayer which I offer for these young men and women is a prayer, I  think, everyone in this audience today will share and I invite audience to pray for these graduates as I recall Saint Anselm’s words:

Lord,
Let them receive that which you promised through your truth, that their joy may be full..
God of Truth,
I ask that they may receive it, so that their joy may be full.
Meanwhile, let their mind meditate on it,
Let their tongue speak of it,
Let their heart love it,
Let their mouth preach it,
Let their spirit hunger for it,
May their flesh thirst for it, and their whole being desire it,
Until they enter into the joy of the Lord, who is God forever and ever.
Amen.

Class of 2009: Congratulations and God speed!"