Dear members of the Class of 2008:As I was thinking of you and what to say to you this morning, I remembered two things: a song and a cartoon. The song is from a musical some of you are familiar with, Avenue Q, sung by the fresh college graduate, Princeton:
What do you do with a B.A. in English,
What is my life going to be?
Four years of college and plenty of knowledge,
Have earned me this useless degree.
I can't pay the bills yet,
'Cause I have no skills yet,
The world is a big scary place.
But somehow I can't shake,
The feeling I might make,
A difference,
To the human race.
The second thing I remembered was a cartoon strip from the popular series Cathy. Cathy, filling up a job application, is telling her friend Andrea: “How about if I put down that my goal is to be president of a major corporation and make a $100,000 a year?” Andrea, looking puzzled, asks: “I thought you wanted to get married and live in a little white house with 2 cute kids?” Cathy answers with rising enthusiasm: “That’s my goal too! I want everything Andrea! I’m going to do it all!” The last image shows Cathy, suddenly coming down to earth, saying: “All I need now is a job and a date.”
Friends, I remembered this song and this cartoon because I think they capture the mix of feelings many of you are probably feeling on this very important day in your life. I suspect that many of you feel at least three feelings. First, relief (which, incidentally, I believe your parents, who had to pay all the bills, feel this even more than you do!): tapos na!; wala nang exams; wala nang projects; most importantly, wala nang Dacanay! Second, hope: like Cathy or Princeton, a sense of “Now I can make my dreams come true! I’m going to make a difference! My life is about to start!” Third, fear or at least anxiety: “Yes—but first, I’ve got to pay the bills, I need to find a job—and maybe find a date, too. Baka pagkatapos ng lahat ng philo orals at Bobby Guevara exposures, ang bagsak ko call center agent pa rin!”
Relief, hope and anxiety: not abnormal emotions at all, because today something is truly ending in your life and something else beginning. On this day then, when your life is changing, perhaps more than you know, we pray for you. We pray that you go “down from the hill” with three gifts for your life ahead, three gifts inspired by today’s Gospel reading.
First, we pray that your relief may deepen into gratitude. Yes, it’s all over. You made it. But if you look more deeply, you might recognize, like the disciples in today’s Gospel, that the achievement of these past four years was not simply the result of your striving, but a gift much like the miraculous catch of fish that surprised the unsuspecting disciples.
I certainly see this more clearly from the perspective of twenty-eight years after my own graduation from the Ateneo. For the past week, I have been working quite intensely with our Jesuit Commission on the Social Apostolate, analyzing our present national crisis and searching for ways to respond. What struck me most the other day was how so many of us in that committee, both Jesuits and lay, were products of the Ateneo and were doing what we were doing precisely because of what the Ateneo gave us beyond our expectations. Dr. Jing Karaos was our president in AtSCA; Fr. Bobby Yap was president of CLC and one of the co-founders of SOA; Dean Antonio La Viña was our classmate in philosophy and fellow member of ACIL; Dr. Benjie Tolosa was one of the freshmen we senior members of the Sanggu eyed as promising leadership material. Here we were almost three decades later, all middle-aged; yet the capacity to think critically and in a nuanced way, the passion to serve our country, the Christian faith that motivates that passion to serve, and our friendships that have endured over the years were all gifts of the Ateneo to us, things we received rather than achieved. I look at you and I am sure you have received the same gifts we did: rigorous intellectual formation, a passion for nation-building, deepened faith and spirituality, and really life-giving friendships. Thus, our first prayer: may your relief deepen into gratitude.
Second, we pray that your hope be broadened by responsibility. What do I mean? I’m glad that what you have received from the Ateneo will enable you to fulfill your hopes and dreams for yourself and your loved ones. But, as Pope Benedict has reminded us in his recent encyclical: “Our hope is always essentially hope for others. . . . we should never limit ourselves to asking: how can I save myself? We should also ask: what can I do in order that others may be saved and that for them too the star of hope may rise?” (Spe Salvi, 48). Thus, our second prayer: that your hope be broadened by responsibility; that you expand your dreams to include always a deep sense of responsibility for the future of our country and our people, especially the poor. The disciples in today’s Gospel began fishing for themselves and for their own livelihood; they ended up becoming fishers of men and women, drawing in the net for the Lord. So, we pray, it may be with you.
Just think of this last dramatic year of your life in college. For a while, so much attention was taken up by the sometimes silly and self-absorbed debates about the dress code. These gave way, thankfully, to larger and more real concerns. So many of you supported the Sumilao farmers, marching with them into the Ateneo from Cubao, applauding them as they entered our campus, walking with them to Malacanang, visiting them at the DAR offices. So many of you were moved by how their heroic sacrifice of walking thousands of kilometers in scorching heat or in the midst of a terrifying typhoon, was inspired by the simple but profound dreams of the poor: land, security, a better life for their children. Many of you too found yourselves in the midst of yet another national crisis, found yourselves moved to rally for truth along Katipunan or in the streets of Makati, sharing the shame many of us feel that Ateneans are among the forces of deception and self-interest that have caused the suffering of our country, sharing the pride too that other Ateneans have been on the side of truth and reform. I believe that all of this has been part of your Ateneo experience to remind you that our lives, in the end, are not about ourselves, and to invite you to dream and hope not just for yourself, but in responsibility for the future of our country and our people.
Finally, we pray that your anxiety may be tempered by faith, a faith that is really a deep trust in the One who is always near but whom we often don’t recognize, as the disciples in the Gospel did not recognize him as he stood by the shore at daybreak.
Your anxiety and fear are all too human, and, I am afraid, justified, I wish it were not so, but we are sending you off today into a world that is complex, often crazy, shot through with darkness and danger. You’re graduating into a world of unstable financial markets, of global terrorism and fear, of political instability and corruption. The days when you could just put down “Ateneo” on your resumé and be assured of a job are, I’m afraid, over. There are so many more choices before you, and commitments will be harder to make or maintain. And yet, whatever lies ahead of you, we pray that you walk in the confidence of faith. The great German Jesuit theologian, Karl Rahner, said it very simply: Keine zufall, nur gnade. “There are no accidents; only grace.” How you ended up in the Ateneo, from one point of view, is the result of sheer chance and contingency: your family background, your ambitions, a lucky break. But from the point of view of faith, your having been part of the Ateneo is part of a provident, caring plan for your life; a plan of love, divine love. I guess that’s really what I want to say to you: there is a plan for your life, even if you don’t see all the succeeding steps so clearly now. Whatever lies ahead of you beyond the hills of Loyola, then, you can walk without fear, for if you but open yourself to your God and seek to listen to his voice speaking in the everydayness of your life, you will be led to your deepest happiness and your greatest fruitfulness.
Dear graduates of the class of 2008, relieved, hopeful, anxious friends, these then are our prayers for you as you leave the Ateneo today: may your relief deepen into gratitude; may your hope broaden into responsibility; may your anxiety be tempered by faith. Grateful, responsible, faithful Ateneans, may you thus be for our world and our time truly Lux in Domino, Light in the Lord.
Before I end, I wish to name a final feeling that I believe some of you feel and that I have not mentioned till now: sadness. Last night, I read a poem of one of your batch mates on his Multiply site, and it seemed to me a very sad poem. Of course. The Ateneo has been more than a school for many of us; it has become a home and it is always sad to leave home. I don’t think there’s anything I can say to take away that quiet sadness: it’s just there; college is over. Allow me to address that sadness though with a scene from a novel.
I began with Avenue Q and Cathy; allow me to end now, hopefully with a little more intellectual respectability, as befits the Ateneo, with Dostoyevsky. In the final chapter of his great novel, The Brothers Karamazov, the monk Alyosha, the good and gentle brother, says goodbye to a group of boys he has befriended and mentored. They are sad because they must part. In their sadness, Alyosha invites his young friends to remember: to remember always the days of their friendship and camaraderie. I ask you to remember always, he tells them. Because, he says in a memorable phrase, a good memory is the best education. We will leave each other and go our separate ways. Life will happen to us and change us, sometimes, not for the better. But, Alyosha adds, if life tempts us to become cynical or bitter or cruel, if we remember these golden days of our friendship, if we remember how we dreamed together, how we were kind to one another, how we were good, then maybe, just maybe, that memory will save us, and draw us away from the forces of darkness that are always threatening to vanquish and capture us.
“A good memory is the best education.” This then is the final wish of all of us here in the Ateneo who bid you farewell and Godspeed today. Remember. May you always remember the “joys and tears, the laughing years,” the friendships and dreams of your days at the Ateneo. May these memories bring you joy, bring you salvation, take you back home. God bless you always.
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