Rev. Dr. Patrick O’Neill, O.S.A., President, Members of the Board of Trustees, Faculty Members, Members of the Class of ’86, family and friends:
Never in history have there been so many opportunities, challenges, and needs as exist in the world today. There have never been so many exciting possibilities since God created Adam and Eve. But true to the return of the world, the dangers and threats, the fears and the horrors of today equal the unparalleled opportunities. With world population soaring it’s fair to paraphrase Winston Churchill by saying, “Never have so many needed the hearts, hands, courage and visions of so few...”
All of you who are graduating from St. Thomas of Villanueva tonight are the few. Why? Because you are healthy; because you are well-fed; because you are educated; and because you are free. These four realities of your lives - health, food, education, and freedom separate you from 85% of all humanity. You are members of the world’s elite - whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, whether you believe it or not, whether you do anything about it or not. You are, like it or not, among the very, very few who can change the world.
What am I talking about specifically?
I’m talking first of all about the world you’re entering, - so different than at any time in history, and about you, - a generation with the greatest challenges and opportunities and dangers in history.
Let me explain:
- The phenomenon of Instant World-Wide Communications is new. Every part of the world, every problem, every people, has become your problem and your opportunity, and mine. Hunger in Africa; racial injustice in South Africa; political and economic oppression in Latin America, in Poland, in Afghanistan, in Ethiopia; poverty in the USA. Everyone of these situations affects or will affect you. You can run but you cannot hide from these global and local problems.
- Economics has changed. The world economy now controls economic reality within every nation state. Those nations which gear their economies and business planning to the world economy are the economic miracle nations - Japan, Taiwan, West Germany. Even within the USA the economic resurgence of New England results from New England’s concentration on the information revolution in world economy rather than on production and manufacturing in the USA economy. This will affect you even more in the next fifty years.
- Population growth has changed the world. You and I are members of a minority group -white, western, northern hemisphere. Our proportion of the world’s population has fallen and will continue to decrease.
- Disease has changed the world. Everyone can “catch” everything nowadays... Whether it’s AIDS or a nuclear disease from an explosion in the Soviet Union.
- Science has changed the world. Only 211L thinking about this new world has not changed, -as Einstein told us 40 years ago. But our thinking, yours and mine, but especially yours, must change if humanity is to survive.
- National security has changed, even if “Cap” Wineberger doesn’t know it. Battleships, bombs, star wars - none of these can guarantee “security” to a tiny minority of 250,000,000 Americans awash in a world of 4 billion 930,000,000 people. We will have to find security elsewhere than in national defense. No nation alone can defend even itself anymore.
- Religion has changed. Only world religions have a chance of survival through the 21st Century. That’s why within the Catholic Church we are witnessing seismic and satisfying changes. a. from a European church with missionary outreach to a church acculturated within Latin American social realities, within African and Asian social realities, and even within Marxist, atheist political dominions
b. from a Latin-speaking church to a church or limitless tongues but only one voice
c. from a church of feudal political structure to a church where the hierarchy remains the ultimate decider of dogmatic truth but the transformation of people starts at the bottom of society not at the top of society. Basic Christian communities, God willing, will soon be every where - under Marxist as well as capitalist feet.
Into this wild, exciting, spirit-driven, spinning world you graduates of St. Thomas are entering. What can be your vocation, no matter what your work or trade?
Is there anything you can give above and beyond your work as a business person, a lawyer, doctor, priest, nun, engineer, scientist, teacher, sports executive, politician, taxi driver or beach-bum.
I think there is. And without you, this needed work will not be done.
You can be “apostles of peace”, “fools for peace”, politicians for peace, business persons for peace, housewives and mothers for peace, volunteers for peace.
Can you get paid for being a peacemaker? Yes. Not much. But you can be paid. Will you earn as much as if you concentrated all your time, thought, and energy on making money? No. Will money make you happier, your family, your wife, your children happier? Will Miami be happier J.J. you are richer? Does it make any difference whether Miami is happier or healthier or safer if you yourself are richer? What will make you happier?
Every human being has to answer that question for himself or herself. I’ve got no pat answer for you. But I’ll tell you what I’ve learned. It’s only my answer based on my experience. It may not apply to you. Some of you will laugh at what I say -- some will find it unbelievable - some will say, “well, that’s just one man’s experience.” - But here goes...
I suggest you take literally the challenge to be an “apostle for peace”. Because making peace and keeping the peace is the most critical work and vocation in the world today.
Can one person make a difference? Yes. And there are dozens and dozens of ways.
One hundred American Universities today offer courses and even degrees in peacemaking. When I went to college not even one did so.
Here at St. Thomas you have a visionary educational program for peacemakers. Why not find out about it, even now. You can participate in its graduate offerings. You can encourage undergraduates to participate in your own university’s peacemaking efforts.
Today there are dozens of Peace Corps and VISTA programs all over the world and everywhere in the USA. Find out about them. In these programs you can even get paid to work for peace. Of course, our current government will pay you more if you volunteer to learn to kill people on command - But that, too, will change ... Get ahead of the times. Pave the way for peace. Join Catholic Relief Services abroad. Join “CARE”, the Red Cross, Jesuit volunteers overseas, or Augustinian volunteers in Florida.
Join Special Olympics as a coach, a “hugger”, a financier, a transportation volunteer, an office worker. We have 40 volunteers working in our national Special Olympic Headquarters in Washington.
“Special Olympics” needs volunteers in Dade County and everywhere else in Florida. Part-time service will make you feel better. Just as physical exercise makes your body feel better, volunteer service will make your soul feel better.
What else can you do? You can work for political candidates who espouse peace. Republican leaders like Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon, and Congressman Jim Leech of Iowa and many others do not suffer from Pentagonitis, the most virulent disease now afflicting Washington. Pentagonitis threatens the entire political well-being of our nation, but Nobel Prizes are now being given to “apostles of peace” - to the:
*Physicians for Social Responsibility
*Pedro Esquivel of the Argentine
*to scientists like Sakarov
*Church leaders like Desmond Tutu.
Just this week all the Bishops of the Methodist Church in the USA unanimously condemned the nuclear arms race and the arms orgy in the USA as un-Christian, immoral, and scandalous. They condemned the nuclear deterrence theory on which our current nuclear strategy is based. They called for an end to “first strike” capabilities. They even went further than the Catholic Bishops a few years ago. I doubt that any religious denomination in the USA today supports our current arms policies and expenditures. Not one. Therefore, join a church group struggling for change in our armaments policy.
Join any group seeking inter-racial harmony in your neighborhood or city. Join the struggle against drugs and drug usage. Stop the spread of firearms, especially small, deadly pistols and revolvers. Help to stop murder on the highways caused by drunk-driving. Help prevent violence within our homes - rape, incest, wife-beating, abortion. Join the “Respect Life” movement in Miami, in the USA.
Obviously, - I could go on and on. So could you. Our cities, neighborhoods, and our country desperately needs peace makers persons who put their reputations and lives on the line for non-violent resolution of conflicts between individuals, groups, and nations. The heroes of this century are the Mahatma Ghandis, the Mother Theresas, the Martin Luther Kings, the Oscar Romeros, the Albert Schweitzers, not the Hitlers, Stalins, Hiroshitos or mongers like Idi Amin, Somoza, Khomeini, or our own super-patriots whose war cry used to be “Nuke Them into Oblivion”...
Where do these suggestions and thoughts leave us tonight? From my own life I can tell you only a few things - things which are related to what I’ve been saying - But they are very personal things. You will have to forgive me for speaking to you from such personal experience but personal experience is the most honest and revealing of all evidence.
The greatest happiness in my life has been my wife and my five children. None of them came to me as a result of my money, my brains, my work, or my education. They really came to me from God.
Tonight I say “from God” because that’s the complete truth and you are a Catholic audience. To a political or secular audience I’d say they came to me as a result of “good luck”. But truthfully, it hasn’t been “luck”. It’s been “love” - God’s love - something no one earns. It’s just given so the first thing I’ve learned is this:
It’s not what you get that counts. It’s what you give. That fact has been proved to me by God’s gift to me of my wife and my children. He has given then to me and he has given me his example to follow.
Second, no one or practically no one, has ever praised me for my money, for my home, for my education, and other such things. Instead they mention what I’ve done for others:
- The Catholic Interracial Council
- The Peace Corps
- The Chicago Board of Education
- Head Start
- The Job Corps
- The Kennedy Institute of Ethics
- Yale University
- Special Olympics
Funny thing about those “creations” or programs of mine. I never got paid for them! I was a dollar-a-year person in government and left government with less financial resources than I entered...But those are the things my family and friends remember about me.
Third - the joy I get out of living comes from my family, from my religion, from my friends, and from all those whom I’ve touched in some gentle way - Peace Corps Volunteers, VISTA volunteers, Headstart parents, Job Corps graduates and staff personnel, politicians who helped to pass into law increases for public school teachers in Chicago, or made political realities out of mere ideas like Legal Services for the poor, Neighborhood Health Centers for the poor, Community Action by and for our American Indian population... And so on.
What can all of these reminiscences mean for you? I suggest this possibility: When you get to be thirty, forty, fifty, or even seventy years old you’ll get more happiness and contentment out of counting your friends than counting your dollars. You’ll get more satisfaction from having improved your neighborhood, your town, your state, your country, and your fellow human beings than you’ll ever get from your muscles, your figure, your automobile, your house, or your credit rating.
You’ll get more from being a oeacemaker than a warrior. You’ll get more from having participated in R.O.T.C. than any other academic education you will have ever received. And you will end up a happier man or woman than you ever believed you could be.
Be peacemakers of the community and you will fulfill your wildest dreams.
