Br. Christopher Fadok’s
2006 Commencement Address
Fr. Chancellor, Fr. President, Members of the Board of Trustees, Members of the Governance Council, Members of the College of Fellows, Esteemed Faculty, and, my fellow students. . .
I am truly honored to have been asked to speak to you today. But I must warn you, I’m in a mood. You know how philosophers get. If you don’t, you will soon find out.
I want to offer to you today the simplest of meditations. This meditation has its roots in a conversation not too long ago. And deeper roots in the glass of beer I was drinking at the time. You see, I was in a mood that day. You know how philosophers get. To give you an idea of the mood, the name of the beer I ordered for me and my friends was…
DEATH AND TAXES.
I was thinking THEN about what I might say TODAY. And I was talking to my friends. Of course, I wanted to be clever today and to say something new and exciting. But I was in a mood. And echoing one of my favorite biblical voices, I said,
“Ah, there’s nothing new under the sun. Vanity of vanities! Naught but
DEATH AND TAXES.
Indeed, there’s nothing new under the sun.”
Just then one of my wise friends said to me, “Oh, but there is something new.”
“What’s that?” I replied.
And he said,
“By the good pleasure of God the Father, the only-begotten Son and Word of God and God, who is in the bosom of the Father, consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit, before eternity, without beginning, who is in the beginning, and is with God the Father, and is God, he who is in the form of God inclined the heavens and came down, that is
he lowered, without lowering, his INALIENABLE EXALTEDNESS,
and descended to be among his slaves in an ineffable and incomprehensible descent (for that is what descent means), and being perfect God he became perfectly human and accomplished…
the newest of all new things…
the only new thing under the sun.”
My friend sounded an awful lot like John of Damascus.
Graduates, today is the day we re-enter the world to fulfill our mission in the Incarnate Christ, who IS the one new thing. No secret codes, no hidden gospels. We preach openly the truth of Jesus Christ with which we have been entrusted.
The truth is that the newest of all new things, the only new thing under the sun—the INCARNATION—has redeemed us all.
By assuming human nature, the Son of God has blessed all that we have accomplished in the past few years through the gifts of our own nature which he himself gave us.
If Christ is new, then we are new. If we are new, then so is the mission to which we have wedded ourselves by our study of philosophy and theology at this fine Catholic institution.
Brothers and sisters, accepting a degree from the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology means accepting a mission. A mission to bring the truth to a world that is in sore need of it. You have been taught—and you must continue to learn—many ways to tell an old and jaded world the truth.
The truth is that there is one new thing under the sun.
The newest of all new things.
And he in turn will make all things new.
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