May 18, 2008
Good morning and welcome to our 90th Commencement Exercises. On behalf of Providence College, I want to congratulate all of our graduates on their achievement. Most of you have gone the traditional route of 4 years of undergraduate studies, supported by your parents, to achieve your degrees. Some of you have gone to school at night over many years, balancing families and careers, to receive a bachelor's degree or a master's degree. What you all have in common is now a Providence College degree, and the hope and promise of a thoughtful and meaningful life.
Today, as we send you forth, we offer you many words of wisdom and advice about the future. I hope and pray that somewhere in this ceremony, God's Holy Spirit will teach you one more lesson from Providence College. The Spirit works where it will, so it may not be from me. But since I get to go first, I am going to give it my best shot.
I have one, simple, parting hope for you that I want to approach in a backhand way by starting with something obvious and seeming trivial: your clothing. One of the distinguishing features of graduation is that you wear unusual clothing. We all wear caps, gowns, hoods, and cords that signify academic achievement. Our clothes say something about who we are and what we have achieved. They make a statement about what we have done academically. I wear my doctoral hood from the University of Toronto, but I also get to wear a Providence College robe with the biggest hat, four stripes on my sleeve, and a medallion around my neck because I am the President.
Underneath your robes, however, you have all dressed differently. None of you looks the same. You have each expressed your individuality by choosing clothes that express your personality. So the kind of clothes we wear say something about us as individuals at the same time that they say something about us socially. Underneath my robes I wear a Dominican habit. That says something more enduring about who I really am. Finally, clothes have a functional value: they protect us from the elements. As human beings, we need such protection from wind, sun, and rain.
So why am I talking about clothes? It is because I recently read about Dr. Randy Pausch, a Computer Science Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who is dying from pancreatic cancer. He retired from Carnegie Mellon and gave an address last September to students, faculty, and staff that has become an Internet phenomenon on Youtube as the "Last Speech." It will soon be published as a book. In fact, however, it was an address to his children about what is most important in life. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he distilled the essence of the Last Speech into one simple admonition about life: tell the truth.
I think he is right about what matters most in life. But I want to put it differently to you this morning, in a more Dominican way. You have spent four years at a school whose motto is Veritas, or truth. It is because the Dominican Order believes that God is truth. I do not want you simply to tell the truth, I want you to live in the truth. Metaphorically, and in this I am following one of St. Catherine of Siena's mystical insights, I want you to clothe yourselves in the truth for the rest of your lives. She ends her Dialogues with the prayer of "clothe with me Eternal Truth." Truth is a cloth that we wear in life, it protects us and speaks of who we are. Clothed in the truth, without pretense or lies or evasions, we speak who we are and we find our deepest refuge and security in the world around us. Catherine prays: "Such a heart is so open that it is false to no one; everyone can understand it because it never says something different with its face or tongue from what it has within."
That is how we Dominicans want you to live your lives: clothed in the truth. It will make you free. The alma mater, with which we will conclude, begins Mother of Truth. If we have mothered you in truth, you have the greatest gift to give to others. May you live in it and give it a hundredfold.