Share Kindness

Here is what Father Boyle said to the Creighton Class of 2009 (shout out to our own Blue Jay, Caballo de Guerra) What Martin Luther King said of “church” could well be said of your time at Creighton (or Nerinx or Cor Jesu). “It is not the place you go to. It is the place you go from.” And you go from here to create a community of kinship, such that God might recognize it. You go from here to bend the world to grace. You imagine a circle of compassion. And, then you imagine nobody standing outside that circle. And, to that end, you walk to the edges of the circle and you walk with those on the margins. And, you stand with the poor and the powerless and the voice-less. You stand with the easily despised and the readily left out. You stand with those whose burdens are more than they can bear. You stand, in fact, with the demonized, so that the demonizing will stop. You stand with the disposable, so the day will come when we stop throwing people away. You seek, as you leave this place, a kind of compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry, rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it. And, a great many people will look at you, standing at the margins and will accuse you of wasting your time. The Prophet Isaiah writes, “In this place of which you say, ‘It is a waste,’ there will be heard, again, the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voices of those who sing.” You go from Creighton University (or Francis Park in St. Louis) to make those voices heard – in a sense new belonging and kinship.