There is an appointed time for everything.
-Ecclesiastes 3:1
“These early springtime weeks after Easter mark the season of Commencement at the University of Mary, when our campus should be bursting with joyous new life and the arrival of family and friends from across the nation and around the world to celebrate with our graduates.”
-the beginning of an email from the president of our university, Monsignor James P. Shea
Yeah, I suppose things should be that way, but they aren’t. I didn’t anticipate the week leading up to graduation day to be eliciting certain emotions—instead of being bittersweet, it’s just bitter. This past Monday, the UMary community received an email announcement that our chaplain of four years was being re-assigned to a parish in the Bismarck Diocese. Later that day, we got another email (the one quoted above), saying “We know it won't be long before the laughter of our students will once again echo in the residence halls and the Crow’s Nest, the noble and happy striving of athletic competition will resume, the chapels and classrooms and laboratories will again be full, and our professors and students will once more meet each other face to face.”
The culmination of reading the content of these emails, finishing classes, and marking the one-month milestone since we left campus allowed the reality to finally sink in: as of April 25, 2020, I am no longer a student of the University of Mary. In fact, for the first time since I was 3 years old, I’m no longer a student. A new chaplain on campus doesn’t impact my daily life, and I won’t soon be face-to-face with friends and faculty in the Crow’s Nest. It’s over, it’s done.
In reflecting on this, the language of Ecclesiastes 3 came to mind, even though it doesn’t explicitly say anything about there being a time for goodbyes. It does, however, insinuate them: There is…a time to die…a time to weep…a time to mourn…a time to be far from embraces…a time to lose… This certainly has been a time to weep and mourn, a time for a sort of death of the routines we once knew and the plans we once had. It’s also a time to say goodbye, whether we like it or not—goodbye to our beloved campus, goodbye to our wonderful professors, and goodbye to community life with our closest friends.
The University of Mary does not form leaders in the service of truth so that we may cling to our alma mater and spend our days giving into the gut-wrenching disappointment that our time at the university is truly finished. No, it forms leaders to go out and share the knowledge we’ve acquired and the experience we’ve gained with the rest of the world that didn’t have the privilege to be students at the University of Mary.
“A place like the University of Mary is worth nothing at all unless we are able to prepare graduates who are able and capable of having that kind of perspective, that kind of take on the world, who are then able to provide leadership for a world that is suffering, struggling, and in need of such capable, steady, calm, serene, faith-filled leadership. You can provide it, and I’m counting on you to do it. Your alma mater is counting on you.”
-Monsignor James P. Shea, from his virtual commencement speech
It seems fitting that we graduated from UMary on the feast of the great evangelist, St. Mark. At the end of Mark’s Gospel, Christ commissions His disciples to go out to all the world to proclaim the Gospel to every creature. In a similar way, the president of my university charged the class of 2020 with a great task. We must go out and share what we’ve received because if we don’t, it’s worth nothing. Our time at the University of Mary may have ended, but our adventure as graduates has only just begun.
We look to the future with hope that soon this time of goodbyes will turn into a time of hellos: …A time to give birth…a time to plant…a time to heal…a time to build…a time to laugh…a time to dance…a time to embrace… because