Readings: Jeremiah 29:11-14; Philippians 1:3-6, 8-11; John 15:9-17
We began in boxes.
We didn’t think we would,
but then on August 6, 2020
we got the word:
classes for the Fall semester—
for most of you, your first semester—
would all be online.
So there we sat on Zoom,
staring at each other in our little boxes,
swallowing our disappointment
and wondering if we
would ever get out of them.
And we did get out of them,
slowly at first:
during the Spring semester
in our boxes only half the time,
meeting every other class in person
in spaces too large for real connection
and with masks hiding our faces.
We didn’t think we would,
but then on August 6, 2020
we got the word:
classes for the Fall semester—
for most of you, your first semester—
would all be online.
So there we sat on Zoom,
staring at each other in our little boxes,
swallowing our disappointment
and wondering if we
would ever get out of them.
And we did get out of them,
slowly at first:
during the Spring semester
in our boxes only half the time,
meeting every other class in person
in spaces too large for real connection
and with masks hiding our faces.
But eventually
we left our boxes behind
and we got into regular classrooms
and around seminar tables,
and the masks came off
and friendships formed,
and we began to learn together.
we left our boxes behind
and we got into regular classrooms
and around seminar tables,
and the masks came off
and friendships formed,
and we began to learn together.
This is the story of the Class of 2024,
but in some ways, it is the story
of every undergraduate class
that I have ever taught
in my thirty years at Loyola.
They have all begun enclosed in boxes:
boxes of their limited experiences
and certain ideas they have
about themselves and their world,
boxes that may seem
comfortable or comforting
but are also constraining and isolating.
And what we who work at a university
try to do over the course of four years
is get our students out of those boxes.
but in some ways, it is the story
of every undergraduate class
that I have ever taught
in my thirty years at Loyola.
They have all begun enclosed in boxes:
boxes of their limited experiences
and certain ideas they have
about themselves and their world,
boxes that may seem
comfortable or comforting
but are also constraining and isolating.
And what we who work at a university
try to do over the course of four years
is get our students out of those boxes.
This is, I think, true of every university,
but it is true in a particular way
at a liberal arts university like Loyola.
You arrive in the box of thinking
“I’m not a STEM person”
and we will make you take math.
You arrive in the box of thinking
“I’m really focused on becoming an accountant”
and we will make you take philosophy.
You arrive in the box of thinking
that you know something
and, well, we won’t tell you that you know nothing,
but we will show you that what you know
is but a tiny speck compared to what you could know.
but it is true in a particular way
at a liberal arts university like Loyola.
You arrive in the box of thinking
“I’m not a STEM person”
and we will make you take math.
You arrive in the box of thinking
“I’m really focused on becoming an accountant”
and we will make you take philosophy.
You arrive in the box of thinking
that you know something
and, well, we won’t tell you that you know nothing,
but we will show you that what you know
is but a tiny speck compared to what you could know.
We call them “the liberal arts”
because they involve cultivating the skills
necessary to live as a free person,
which includes the skill
of overcoming our isolation
by becoming curious about human experience
in all its variety.
The ancient Roman writer Terrence,
who began life as a slave from northern Africa
and ended it as a celebrated playwright,
famously said, Homo sum,
humani nihil a me alienum puto.
For those whose Latin is a little rusty,
this means, “I am a human being,
I consider nothing that is human alien to me.”
We want you to be free,
and so we have pressed you to get out of your box
and live your life against a broader horizon,
the horizon of all of human thought and experience.
because they involve cultivating the skills
necessary to live as a free person,
which includes the skill
of overcoming our isolation
by becoming curious about human experience
in all its variety.
The ancient Roman writer Terrence,
who began life as a slave from northern Africa
and ended it as a celebrated playwright,
famously said, Homo sum,
humani nihil a me alienum puto.
For those whose Latin is a little rusty,
this means, “I am a human being,
I consider nothing that is human alien to me.”
We want you to be free,
and so we have pressed you to get out of your box
and live your life against a broader horizon,
the horizon of all of human thought and experience.
But Loyola is not just a liberal arts university;
we are a Catholic and Jesuit liberal arts university,
which means that the education we offer
is set against a horizon far vaster
than even the totality
of human thought and experience.
Your education has been set against
the horizon of the infinite love that lies
at the very heart of existence,
the love that, as Thomas Aquinas would put it,
people call God.
When St. Paul writes
to the Christians at Philippi
that his prayer for them is
“that your love may increase ever more and more
in knowledge and every kind of perception,
to discern what is of value,”
he is not praying that they will study math,
as good as that is,
or that they will read philosophy,
as good as that is,
or that they will come to appreciate
the vastness of the world of human experience,
as good as that is.
He is praying that the love that is God
would come to possess them,
so that their lives might expand
beyond the limits of the human
into the divine.
He is calling them out of the box
of the humanly possible
to live in the dizzying freedom
of the children of God.
This is the most important thing
that Loyola had to teach you.
This is the magis, the “more,”
of which St. Ignatius spoke—
not simply the endless striving
for human achievement,
but the ever-greater glory of God.
The great Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner
said that the Christian is one before whom
the abyss of existence opens up,
one who knows that he or she
“has not thought enough,
has not loved enough,
has not suffered enough.”
The magis at Loyola
is not about a smooth path
of continuous quality improvement,
or rising U.S. News rankings,
or the implementation of strategic plans;
and for our graduates
it is not about higher salaries,
or bigger houses,
or more fame and recognition.
The magis means
thinking and loving and suffering
until we find ourselves
lost in the wilderness of God,
out of all the boxes in which
we have packaged ourselves,
confronted by Jesus,
the one who in living and dying
shows us that being possessed
by the love that is God
asks from us
nothing less than everything:
“No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
If we have not taught you this
then we have taught you nothing,
and you are still in the box you arrived in.
This might sound kind of harsh,
and pretty terrifying,
as if all we have prepared you for
is a life of hardship and sacrifice,
which is what most people
go to college to avoid.
But here is the mystery,
the mystery revealed
in Jesus’s cross and resurrection:
it is precisely in laying down your life
that you can take it up again in freedom.
The ultimate box in which we encase ourselves
is the illusion that freedom means
being in charge of our own lives,
rather than giving those lives away
in love of God and neighbor.
And to emerge from that box
is finally to find a life worth living:
not a life of higher salaries
or bigger houses,
of more fame and recognition,
but a life that brushes up against
eternal love.
and pretty terrifying,
as if all we have prepared you for
is a life of hardship and sacrifice,
which is what most people
go to college to avoid.
But here is the mystery,
the mystery revealed
in Jesus’s cross and resurrection:
it is precisely in laying down your life
that you can take it up again in freedom.
The ultimate box in which we encase ourselves
is the illusion that freedom means
being in charge of our own lives,
rather than giving those lives away
in love of God and neighbor.
And to emerge from that box
is finally to find a life worth living:
not a life of higher salaries
or bigger houses,
of more fame and recognition,
but a life that brushes up against
eternal love.
God says through the prophet Jeremiah,
“I know well the plans I have in mind for you…
plans for your welfare and not for woe,
so as to give you a future of hope.”
God’s deepest desire for all of you,
and most especially for our graduates,
is that you emerge from your box
to know that love for which
you will lay down your life,
so that you might truly have
a future of hope eternal.
I pray that God’s desire for you
might be fulfilled,
and that God, who is merciful,
might have mercy on us all.
“I know well the plans I have in mind for you…
plans for your welfare and not for woe,
so as to give you a future of hope.”
God’s deepest desire for all of you,
and most especially for our graduates,
is that you emerge from your box
to know that love for which
you will lay down your life,
so that you might truly have
a future of hope eternal.
I pray that God’s desire for you
might be fulfilled,
and that God, who is merciful,
might have mercy on us all.
