WINSTON-SALEM — Be grateful and pray often.
That was the advice to 2018 graduates of Wake Forest University from Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who was in Winston-Salem May 20 to deliver the baccalaureate sermon and celebrate Mass.
What does it mean to be grateful? Cardinal Dolan explained, “Gratitude is precisely that virtue that draws us out of ourselves. Towards what? Towards God.”
Dr. Nathan Hatch, president of Wake Forest University, welcomed Cardinal Dolan, whom he has known for years through their shared ties with the University of Notre Dame. The son of a Presbyterian minister, Hatch was the first Protestant to serve as Notre Dame’s provost, its second highest-ranking position.
Though Wake Forest is now a private, independent university, it was founded by Baptist church leaders and continues to celebrate its Christian heritage. Twenty-five percent of Wake Forest students identify as Catholic.
Wait Chapel was filled nearly to capacity for the baccalaureate on Pentecost Sunday, where Dolan was also presented with an honorary degree.
“With his engaging demeanor, with his preference for conversation over confrontation, and his optimistic and clear-eyed vision for the Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Dolan has helped ignite a new passion in America’s Catholic population, especially among its youth,” Hatch noted in his presentation, also commending the cardinal’s “exceptional ability to handle contentious issues with clarity and grace” and “his work in encouraging dialogue and finding common ground and unity.”
In between quoting Dante, St. Augustine, Shakespeare and John F. Kennedy, Cardinal Dolan peppered his baccalaureate sermon with his usual self-deprecating humor. He thanked Wake Forest for the honorary degree, which was, he said, “especially appreciated by one who’s just paid off tuition for my earned degree of 33 years ago.”
“I relish commencement ceremonies like this,” he said, glancing at Hatch and faculty leaders seated behind him on the stage, clad in their academic regalia. “For one, I’m not the only one on campus in a medieval costume.”
During his baccalaureate address, Cardinal Dolan encouraged the 2018 graduates to cultivate the habit of gratitude – to their parents and everyone who has helped them along the way, but most of all to God.
“We graduates have been the recipients of lavish gifts, mostly unmerited, and that we could not have gotten here by ourselves,” he emphasized.
Gratitude enables people to reach outside of themselves and act selflessly, he said. Education can help draw people out of themselves, away from selfishness, and towards the expression of gratitude.
“A classical goal of a liberal arts education, for which Wake Forest is renowned, is that we are liberated from a life sentence of self-absorption,” he said.
“That we would gather here in this venerable chapel, on a campus of a celebrated institution of higher learning founded by those with very deep Christian roots, at a beautiful service including readings from the Holy Bible, hymns, prayers and benediction, that all makes this sentiment of gratitude particularly fitting.”
In his homily at Mass later that day in the Sutton Center, Cardinal Dolan reflected on the actions of the apostles in the Upper Room at Pentecost – and how what they did should be a model today for people, especially the 2018 graduates.
“What did they do when Jesus left them and returned to His heavenly Father? They prayed. They were scared, they were confused, they were frustrated, they were discouraged, and they knew that the Master had taught them that, boy oh boy, when you are at a critical moment in your life there’s nothing more effective that you can do than pray.”
Cardinal Dolan encouraged people to pray just as the Apostles did – patiently waiting to do God’s will, remaining active in the Church, and invoking the help of the Holy Spirit and the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
“This is a day of intense prayer,” he concluded. “How fitting, Wake Forest University, that you began this joyful commencement weekend with a baccalaureate, which is a program of prayer. How fitting that you, our Catholic family, would come together for the prayer of the Mass, and how fitting that we renew that at this conclusion of this intense time of prayer at Pentecost.”
Father Marcel Amadi, campus minister at Wake Forest University, thanked Cardinal Dolan, the graduating students, and all those who helped to organize and support the day’s events, including St. Leo the Great, Our Lady of Mercy and Holy Family parishes (particularly Knights of Columbus Assembly 2282, and Councils 10504, 9499 and 2829) and the diocesan Campus Ministry program.
Elizabeth Orr, Wake Forest’s director of Catholic programming, said students were inspired by Cardinal Dolan’s visit to campus. The 2018 Catholic graduates received a special blessing from the cardinal and Father Amadi at the end of Mass.
John Scott Galle, a 2018 graduate who read a prayer at the baccalaureate and served as a lector at the Mass, called the day’s events and Cardinal Dolan’s visit “an extraordinary honor and such a blessing.”
Galle said the campus ministry program has really come a long way since he first arrived and attended events and Mass in the basement of a campus dormitory building. The campus ministry now has its own space and a strong core of leaders under the direction of Father Amadi, and welcoming Cardinal Dolan – the first cardinal to visit Wake Forest University since Cardinal Francis Arinze in 1999 – is a sign of God’s grace at work.
“At the end of the day, it’s a great reminder that what we do is for the glory of God and His Son Jesus Christ,” Galle said.
— Patricia L. Guilfoyle, editor
