Father Augustine Wetta, O.S.B.
Congratulations, gentlemen.
As of today, the Feast of Saint Bede, the Venerable, you are
freshmen. In two years, you will be
driving. In three years, you will receive
a gold ring that bears a coat of arms registered with the College of Heralds of
Great Britain. You will take your SATs, write
a thesis, go to prom, dig your very own mud pit…and exactly four years from
today, your valedictorian will stand in this very church and give a speech that
will sound something like this (I’ve edited out the boring parts, and will just
sazy blah blah blah instead:
Parents, faculty, monks, and esteemed students of the Saint
Louis Priory School, it is a great honor to be here blah blah blah we will
always be brothers blah blah blah ups and downs, blah blah blah insert funny
story here blah blah blah something about God blah blah blah never thought we’d
make it blah blah blah but with a Priory education you can do anything so long as
you to put your mind to it. Blah blah
blah Thank you.
I’ve heard a lot of graduation speeches. And not all of them sounded exactly like
that; but enough did that I finally sat down and wrote my own graduation
speech. Predictably, I’ve never been asked to give it.
Until now.
So in leau of a sermon, here it is: my graduation speech to
the class of 2023:
Parents, faculty, monks, and esteemed students of the Saint
Louis Priory School, You are all going to fail. Over
the next few years, you will all, inevitably, have your hearts broken,
experience loneliness, miss a major opportunity, lose a game, lose a job, lose
some money, be abandoned and ridiculed, be humiliated and scorned. You, my friends, are destined for
failure. And that is very, very
sad. But it’s also ok because your God
had his heart broken and was ridiculed by his friends. Your God was humiliated and scorned and
abandoned. And that means that your
dignity is not bound up with your success.
You are a child of God. You have
been divinized. And in the end, when you
lie on your deathbed as we all inevitably do, without trophies or diplomas or
accolades or even your bodily health to comfort you, ALL that will matter is
your existence as a child of God, and it will be enough. That will be more than enough. That will be everything.
Laus Tibi Domine
Praise to You, O Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
