LATROBE, PA – Dr. Jerome C. Foss, professor of political science in the Alex G. McKenna School of Business, Economics and Government, delivered the Commencement Address at Subiaco Academy on May 17.
Subiaco Academy is a boys’ high school connected to Subiaco Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in northern Arkansas. Like Boniface Wimmer, founder of Saint Vincent College, the Swiss Benedictines who settled in the Arkansas River Valley wished to serve the German settlers who had moved to the United States.
The school celebrated its 138th graduation this year.
Foss told the students that much in life seems to have changed since his own graduation twenty-five years ago, but that the most important things in life do not change.
“We have different toys and tools today, but the heart of life—the things that really matter—the things we really need—the way of living that is truly fulfilling and happy—has not changed,” Foss said.
Foss is the Endowed Professor of Catholic Thought and Culture at Saint Vincent, where he teaches classes in political science, directs the Center for Catholic Thought and Culture, and directs the SVC Core Curriculum. He was invited to deliver a message to the 30 graduates consistent with their Catholic, Benedictine, liberal arts education.
Read the full text of the address below:
I am very happy to be with you here today on this momentous celebration marking a tremendous milestone on your journeys.
Thank you to Dr. David Wright for the invitation to join you. My sincerest greetings to the monks of Subiaco, to the distinguished faculty and staff of this fine institution, to the families who have gathered here today to celebrate, and especially to the graduates of the Class of 2025.
Gentlemen, congratulations on your hard work, your dedication, your struggles, your prayers and your successes. You have proven yourselves capable of excelling whenever you dedicate yourself to a task.
I could tell from the cheering that:
Everyone here is proud of you!
Everyone is excited about your accomplishments!
And everyone is looking forward to your continued growth and flourishing as you go forward!
I am particularly happy to be with you today because, like you, I am in a celebratory mood. You are celebrating your high school graduation. And I am celebrating the 25th anniversary of my high school graduation. Twenty-five is one of those numbers that causes one to pause and reflect. I remember thinking it was really something to graduate in the year 2000. Your parents will remember the fears people had when we left 1999 and entered the new millennium. People thought that all the computers would crash and that we wouldn’t know how to live without them. And people were a lot less dependent on technology then than they are now.
To the eyes of many, life has changed quite a bit since 2000. Would you believe that I grew up without a computer in our family home? When we finally purchased one, it was a real production to connect it to the internet. To check my email, I would have to run a phone line from my parents’ bedroom, down the hallway and into a spare room where our computer took up most of a desk. After signing on to the internet, I would go make a snack while the computer made all kinds of strange robotic beeps, as though connecting to the World Wide Web was hard work. It took several minutes, but it was usually ready by the time I finished my second sandwich. I would have to hurry and do whatever it was I intended to do online before someone in my family needed to make a phone call. Afterwards, I would have to unplug the phone cord, roll it back up, and put it away in the closet for next time. This was hi-tech living!
Most of my peers were in the same position. No one in my high school had a cell phone. Every family used a landline for phone calls. If you wanted to call a girl up and ask her on a date, you had to call her house and hope her father didn’t answer the phone. If he did, you tried hard to sound manly and respectful—you prayed your voice wouldn’t crack!
By the time I finished college, most people had made the plunge and bought a flip phone. People did not text. They still called one another. Texting cost extra. And texting was hard to do. Most of the time it was easier to call up your friend to make plans or to say hello.
By the time I finished graduate school, many people, but not everyone, owned a tablet or a smartphone. Landlines were becoming less common. WiFi made dial-up internet seem like ancient history. Getting on the internet became ubiquitous, commonplace, hardly an event at all. People now do it almost constantly, every time they look at the smart-watches on their wrists. Running a long phone cord down the hallway now seems equivalent to the horse-and-buggy-days of yesteryear. But it was only 25 years ago!
From one standpoint, life has changed quite a bit since I graduated from high school. Technology has given us all kinds of new ways of doing things. It has put the world at our fingertips, which is extremely convenient. It has also made courageous phone calls to the girl of our dreams unnecessary. Far from having to worry about her father answering the phone, you don’t even have to worry about her answering the phone. You only have to hope that she will respond to your text. The world seems to demand less courage of us than it once did.
Indeed, the world seems to demand less of us in general. Don’t get me wrong, we are still encouraged to excel in our work, whatever that might be. We can excel, but we are not expected to be excellent. There is a difference. To excel is to be good at some thing we do. Excellence is more about who we are than what we do. Excelling is about our skills. Being excellent is about our character—it’s about our souls. We are excellent when we flourish as a human being, when we become the person that God is calling us to be, when we respond with generosity to our vocations.
And this gets us to the point. Yes, life has changed a lot in the 25 years since I graduated from high school. And new technologies like artificial intelligence will bring about even more changes. Perhaps in 25 years your children will find 2025 to be the ancient past. But my message to you today is that, actually, the most important things in life have not changed in the past 25 years, or in the past 2500. Nor will they change in the next 25 years, or 2500 years. Human life, at its core, is stable. What matters most is constant across time and space.
Consider this: What you felt today as you crossed this stage and received your diploma, I felt 25 years ago. Students will feel it 25 years from now. New technologies do not change the pride we take in our accomplishments.
And that bittersweet feeling you have today, knowing that you will be saying goodbye to teachers, friends and an accustomed way of life—I felt that too. And students 25 years from now will feel it. New technologies do not change the complexity of human emotions.
The love your parents have for you today, my parents had for me 25 years ago. Those of you called to be parents will have that love for your children in 25 years. New technologies do not change parents’ affection for their children, especially as they see them grow into adulthood.
Nearly 2500 years ago, Aristotle described courage, temperance, justice and prudence. These cardinal virtues are as relevant for us today as they were for the Athenians of his time. He also talked about the importance of friendship. He understood that life without virtue and without friends would not be fulfilling. That certainly hasn’t changed.
Fifteen hundred years ago, Saint Benedict talked about the importance of prayer and work. You know from your time here at Subiaco that the balance of ora et labora remains vital. Saint Benedict also recognized the importance of stability and community. Isn’t it amazing that, in this world of rapid change, men in black robes are still praying the daily office just as men in black robes did in the days of Saint Benedict?
The great lie of our times, gentlemen, is that you live a different kind of life than your ancestors—that your generation is somehow fundamentally different from that of your parents. That human nature has changed—which is to say that there is no human nature. But this is not the truth.
Yes, we have different toys and tools today, but the heart of life—the things that really matter—the things we really need—the way of living that is truly fulfilling and happy—has not changed.
Courage is still courage. Justice is still justice. Friendship is still friendship. Truth is still truth.
If anything, new technologies have made the world hungrier for authentic virtue, friendship and truth. The world needs good men, grounded in reality. The world needs you.
Maturity involves a process that takes most of us a lifetime. It is not easy. But the best things in life are often difficult. And you are blessed to be surrounded by friends and family who are eager to help you become the men you were created to be.
Growing in virtue takes a community. That is part of the wisdom of Saint Benedict’s Rule, to which the monks of Subiaco bear testimony.
You too, by coming through this academy, bear that testimony. You are not a group of disjointed individuals. You are members of a community and part of a tradition that reaches back in time and that looks forward to being transmitted to future generations. A torch has been given to you. You are torchbearers, bringing light and stability to a world enamored by constant change.
Congratulations on this honor! And may God bless you as you continue your journey on the path that is laid before you. Carry that torch. And strive not just to excel in what you do, but to be, in the very depths of your souls, excellent!
