Rev. Louis Garaventa, S.J. Delivers Commencement Address

As Xavier President Jack Raslowsky put it in his introduction of 2015 Commencement Speaker Rev. Louis Garaventa, S.J., "Fr. Garaventa is a true New Yorker." The Bay Ridge native, who celebrates the 50th anniversary of his graduation from Brooklyn Prep as well as his 50th year as a Jesuit in 2015, has been in a particularly reflective mood as he celebrates his jubilee year. The longtime Xavier teacher, who once taught English teacher Margaret Gonzalez at Loyola School and Dean of Academics Luciano Lovallo at Canisius High School, welcomed the Class of 2015 to the alumni community and urged them to use the tools they gained at Xavier to make a difference in the world.

He was the perfect example to send them forward. "As a scholar, photographer, priest, and brother Jesuit, in his work, his study, and his ministry, Fr. Garaventa has placed his gifts—simple and profound—at the service of others for God's greater glory," Mr. Raslowsky said in his introduction. "We are all better for it."

Below is the text of Fr. Garaventa's Commencement Address: 

Members of the Class of 2015! I salute each and every one of you on this glorious night that marks the awarding of your Xavier High School diplomas. I honor each of your individual journeys that have brought you to this evening. I honor your struggles and your triumphs, your gains and your losses, your successes and your failures. I honor your discoveries of the wider world you have found in high school, of who you are and your hopes of what you will become. Tonight I welcome you with the greatest pleasure as you become members of the great family of alumni and alumnae of Jesuit schools, colleges, and universities. We stretch to almost every corner of the globe and across over four and a half centuries since the first Jesuit school was founded in Messina, Sicily in 1548. We’re quite a family, and I proudly welcome you as one of us!

On another night almost exactly fifty years ago, I sat with my Brooklyn Prep classmates on the stage of the Walt Whitman Theater at Brooklyn College for my high school graduation. I don’t think it matters whether it’s 1965 or 2015; I’ll bet that you are feeling some of the same joyful and challenging things I felt on that hot and muggy evening so very long ago. I really was jubilant that night because I had successfully completed four very difficult and challenging years. My high school education let me begin to see the world through a wide angle lens. My eyes were opened to bigger things that let me see my many successes and failures in a new light. I grew in the knowledge and acceptance of myself not only for who I was, but more importantly of whom I was meant to be. That night also put before me the astounding reality that I was about to embark on what would turn out to be my life’s adventure, my longest journey, and my greatest love—for six weeks later, on a Friday in late July, I would walk through the doors of St. Andrew-on-Hudson in Poughkeepsie and become a novice in the Society of Jesus.

But along with all the accolades of that night, I had a strange feeling deep down in my gut about that last item on my list—entering the Jesuits. It was about the future, and that night I was just a little apprehensive and more than a little scared about what that future would bring. After all, I was just a tall, gawky, and inexperienced kid from Brooklyn who, eight years after they left, was still mourning the departure of the Dodgers. I was seventeen years old and I hadn’t yet lived through many futures. Was I making the right choice? Why was God calling a kid like me? Would I be happy in my vocation? How could I even be making that choice? What did I know about praying? What kind of teacher would I be? What did I know about life or love? What kind of priest would I be? Would I even last? I craved certainty that night, but all there seemed to be in front of me was risk. I was quickly to learn that, in life I could not nor would not go anywhere without taking risks.

I imagine that many of you are thinking about your own futures tonight and maybe you too have that anxious feeling inside your guts about all the tomorrows to come. What I came to know in that last summer of my youth when I was trying to put away the things of a child, is what many of you here are already keenly aware of tonight—in order to step into our futures we have to leave the comfortable places where we are right now. It’s a lot like the Israelites’ sojourn beneath God’s presence at Mount Horeb. They were reluctant to leave behind this presence but God told them, “You have stayed long enough at this mountain; turn and embark on your journey, and go take possession of the land you have been promised.” You and I are like that, aren’t we? A lot of the time, we just love the familiar and the comfortable so much, or maybe the future just seems a bit too risky that we don’t want to hear about it just yet.

In the very dark days of February 1941 when England stood alone against the Nazi juggernaut, that great statesman, Winston Churchill, sent a message to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Churchill was bold and brash as he asked for help. He knew that the future of the free world depended on what FDR would do. He said, “Give us the tools and we will finish the job.” What an amazing request! I’d like you to think about that request for a moment in light of your four years at Xavier. When you arrived here on 16th Street, we gave you and empty box and began to fill it with all sorts of tools. Think of what your have learned in your courses, of what you have learned about yourselves on Kairos and Magis retreats, of how your world view was widened by Christian service, that you were introduced to mathematics and science, to literature and history. What about the amazing world of robotics or photography, or writing, or stepping before a microphone for the first time? How about athletics where you learned what struggle and team work really meant?

In the wider world of Jesuit school graduates that I mentioned a few moments ago are men and women who are or have become Saints, Popes, Prime Ministers, heads of state, a president of the United States, magistrates dispensing justice impartially across our world, clinical scientists laboring in cancer and AIDS research, physicians who have committed their lives to help the poor, another doctor, a graduate of Fordham Prep, who literally saved my life last year on the operating table, fathers and mothers raising children and grandchildren, rich and poor people who have lived and witnessed the gospel, and thousands of graduates who teach in schools all over the world, who serve, and hand their students some of the tools they need so that they can take their places in the world. All of these graduates were once themselves given the tools and answered the call to generosity to give and not to count the cost. What they have been given, they passed on to others. Each of us here has done the same thing for you, and we leave you tonight with just this one question: “What are you going to do with these tools we have given you?”

In a few minutes you will hear the declaration proclaimed that you have indeed graduated from Xavier High School, and then each of you will come up to receive your diploma. I hope that you will realize that you will be holding in your hand the passport to your future for the formal words that are inscribed under your name signify not an end but a beginning. You have been given the tools, and now it is up to you to step up and take your place. Just like the Israelites of old, it is now your turn to leave the comfort of the mountain and tread the verge of the Jordan River and cross it to begin the struggle of settling your promised land.

After the blessing is given and the school song is sung, the trustees, administration, faculty and staff will lead you down the center aisle of this glorious cathedral, through the bronze doors and out into the noise and bustle of that wonderful world that God pronounced at its creation very good. And there you will receive Xavier’s last gift: we will let go of you—

To go forth into the world in peace;
to be of good courage;
to hold fast that which is good;
to render to no one evil for evil;
to strengthen the fainthearted;
to support the weak;
to help the afflicted;
to honor everyone you meet;
and to love and serve the Lord,
rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Choose life, then, so you may live—and all will be well...all will be well...all manner of things will be exceeding well!

Photo Credit: Harisch Studios