The Most Important Decision in Life | Bishop Robert Barron

well thank you President Aaron for that that was lovely and uh chairman Sajak thank you thanks everyone for inviting me the trustees and the faculty the administrators here it's uh it's a thrill to be here at Hillsdale College which I've heard about for a long time it's my first visit here came last night had a wonderful dinner a tour of the campus and then the culmination of the evening was this remarkable concert in the chapel which ended with mahler's First Symphony played by our student Orchestra here and it was just really marvelous so it's been a terrific visit to Hillsdale I know it might be on the minds of some I heard people actually talking and writing about this before I came here is why would this historically even famously Protestant College invite a Catholic bishop of all people to give the commencement address well I Applause you for your ecumenical openness but let me say this I talked a course in the Reformation for many years when I was a theology professor read The Works of Luther and Calvin the other reformers with great interest and I do think the questions they raised these great 16th century questions that still divide the churches are important but I always say this when I'm in a conversation with my ecumenical friends right now the needful thing is not debating those questions so much because right now all of us who believe in God all of us who are Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ have a common enemy and we've got to make common cause I'm talking about this agnosticism atheism and their attendant nihilism which are deeply affecting our culture and especially the minds of younger people and I think it's very important for us to join together in this common cause against that common enemy and so it's very much in that spirit that I come before you today can I just Echo too what the president said to all the graduates and it's a great day for you and congratulations to you we're proud of you a word of thanks to the faculty the administrators who've made this college very impressive place in our American culture so congratulations to all of you also to the parents it's been said but I'll say it again it's a great day for you you who have contributed so mightily to these young people coming to this day it's a day of celebration for all of us well it's a permanent honor of this college that it was founded more than 170 Years Ago by Free Will Baptists committed to the abolition of slavery your Founders were on the right side of the most compelling moral debate of the 19th century and it's worth remarking that the leadership of the college today finds itself on the right side of the most pressing ethical argument of our time namely the protection of The Unborn Frederick Douglass a former slave who became the most eloquent advocate for abolition in the 19th century spoke here as you know in 1863 just after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in the course of his lecture which was entitled popular error and unpopular truth he remarked and I'm quoting there's no such thing as new truths error might be old or new but truth is as old as the universe close quote at the heart of the curriculum at Hillsdale College is a presentation of those truths epistemic moral and aesthetic that are indeed as old as the universe these permanent things that participate in the eternity of God now what I want to do in very brief compass in this Commencement Address is to examine just one of those truths the articulation of which occurs over and again in the Great Western intellectual tradition it's excess typically by means of a question not the question of what we are to do as important as that is but rather what kind of person we ought to be do we hunger and thirst for righteousness or do we seek our own advantage in a way and I'll say it especially to the graduates there's no question in the moral and spiritual order more fundamental than that now a Locus classicus for the entertainment of this question is in Plato's dialogue the gorgeous gorgeous and his friends paulus and caloquies are suffice which is to say experts in teaching the art of persuasive speech their concern is not being truthful or just but rather in instructing students how to speak in such a way that they appear truthful and just and hence become convincing to others such professors were obviously enough enormously useful to prospective lawyers and politicians in ancient Greece and it should be equally obvious that their intellectual descendants are rather thick on the ground today now Socrates counters this office along these lines if a rhetorician teaches a politician to do what in fact is unjust he does that man and his City far more harm than good but Paul is Answers by means of a taunt wouldn't Socrates leap at the opportunity of having power over life and death no says the philosopher in response for to put someone to death unjustly is in fact no power at all and it is at this point that Socrates enunciates one of his most enduring teachings representing a watershed in the moral consciousness of the West it is better he says to suffer wrongdoing than to do wrong oneself it's better to suffer wrongdoing than to do wrong oneself at this point California calculus can no longer restrain himself giving voice with admirable Clarity to a position that endures very much to the present day the Safa says that what Socrates is calling justice is nothing but the constraints placed on the few Strong by the many weak it's a sort of guilt trip imposed by the powerless to limit the capacity of the powerful to get what they want if you notice a tight connection between this point of view and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche you're not wrong Socrates argument for his position is simple surely suffering Injustice is terrible but what is far worse is the corrosion of soul that takes place when one commits an injustice in other words being unjust is far more damaging to the moral structure of one's personality than enduring the slings and arrows visited upon one by the Injustice of someone else so there's the question young brothers and sisters my fellow graduates today what kind of soul will you have what kind of person will you be will you do whatever it takes to get what you want or will you accept even great suffering in order to do what is right everything else in your life will flow from how you answer that question I know that Hillsdale College is committed to the study of the Graco Roman intellectual tradition and it's for this reason that I commenced with Plato but you're also an above all committed to the scriptures the Bible gets at this very same issue but it does so not so much through philosophical argumentation as through the prophetic language of idolatry and right worship for the biblical authors it's never a question of religion versus secularism first of all they were not trading what we call religion and secondly they knew that there really is no pure secularism rather they understood that the world is basically divided between those who worship the true God and those who indulge in idolatry or false worship Even in our supposedly secular society we can appreciate the appropriateness of the biblical terminology for everyone even the most secular the most unchurched operates under the Aegis of something he or she considers Supreme some sumam bonum some highest good no one would in fact get out of bed in the morning unless he believed in some value that's ultimately motivating his actions and decisions now this might be bodily pleasure or fame or material Goods or one's country or one's family but if it's functioning as the prime mover of a person's activity it's playing the role of God and is being effectively worshiped so the biblical form of the question that we've been considering is whom or what do you worship what's the highest value for you again graduates everything else in your life will flow from how you answer that question there are a numberless Biblical texts that would be odd REM here but I'd like to look at a particularly clarifying and dramatic one namely the scene described in the first book of Kings regarding Elijah and the priests about all we recall the setting Elijah had challenged King Ahab for his worship of false gods proposed by his wife Jezebel he subsequently challenged the avatars of those deities to a kind of duel on Mount Carmel standing alone against the 450 devotees of ba'al he proposed that he and they should erect altars to their respective deities and see who would respond all morning long the priest cried out I'm quoting out from the scripture answer us but there was no voice and there was no answer at this point Elijah mocked them again I'm quoting from the scriptures cry aloud surely he's a God either he's meditating or he's wandered away or he's on a journey perhaps he's asleep and must be awakened close quote then in their frenzy and frustration the priests of all proceeded to cut themselves with swords and lances until the blood gushed over them but it was to no avail then of course Elijah calls out to the Lord and the fire falls consuming the sacrifice and vindicating the prophet now I want to emphasize this is much more than simply a jingoistic story of my God's bigger than your God in point effect it's an incomparably Rich presentation of the Dynamics of true and false worship the altar erected to Baal should be taken as standing for all the ways in which we order the infinite longing of our hearts to something less than God when we do this and fellow sinners in this space we all know this when we do this the fire never Falls because merely worldly things cannot even in principle satisfy our hungry Souls and furthermore when we persist in worshiping falsely we find ourselves in short order caught in an addictive pattern hopping as it were obsessively around the altars of pleasure or power or fame Desperately Seeking a satisfaction that will never come the self-harm inflicted by the hapless priests about all speaks eloquently to the self-destructive quality to which any addict can attest and all of us sinners are addicts only when the fondest desire of our soul is directed to the infinite God will the Fire Fall and addiction be avoided so once again my young friends my fellow graduates the question is simple at which altar will you worship your whole life will unfold for wheel or for woe from that decision now if we want to see the place where Plato and Elijah come together we need look no further than the cross of Jesus which Saint Paul described as a Divine weakness stronger than human strength and a Divine Folly wiser than human wisdom where could we find a clear instantiation of the principle that it's better to suffer Injustice than to commit it than in Jesus crucifying sinless blameless he nevertheless took upon himself all the sin of the world hatred cruelty stupidity violence institutional corruption betrayal denial all of it but rather than lashing out and answering violence he said father forgive them they know not what they do laboring under the full weight of human Injustice and wickedness his soul remained and violet and that's why to the consternation of all the Advocates of Might makes right from calistities to Nietzsche we hold up the cross and we say again ironically with Pontius Pilate eche homo behold the true man my intellectual hero Saint Thomas Aquinas said that if we want to live a happy life we should love what Jesus loved on the cross and despise what Jesus despised on the cross now what did he despise but all those objects of false worship to which we tend to erect altars many of us worship wealth but on the cross he was utterly poor stripped naked many of us worship pleasure but on the cross he was at the limit of suffering both physical and psychological many of us worship power but on the cross he was nailed in place unable even to move many of us worship honor but on that terrible cross he was the object of scorn and ridicule in short the crucified lord said no as radically as possible to the idols and what did he love on the cross he loved doing the will of his father therefore the cross function as the altar on which the sacrifice of his life to the father took place and that's why the fire fell can I close with a little reflection on my favorite movie which is Man For All Seasons that wonderful 1966 film about Saint Thomas Moore based on Robert Bolt's play of the same name I probably first saw it when I was about 15 and I watched it certainly every year in my life since then showed it to my students over the years it's shaped my moral thinking in so many ways more of course was a man acquainted both with classical Antiquity and a man in love with the Lord Jesus one of the last scenes of the film depicts the dramatic trial of more under accusation for high treason Richard Ridge who was a young man had been Moore's friend and protege falsely testifies against him perjuring himself and practically guaranteeing that Moore would receive the penalty of death as rich as leaving the courtroom Moore notices that the younger man is wearing a chain of office inquiring of the judges what the symbol at the end of the chain meant Moore receives the answer I'm quoting Master Rich has been appointed attorney general for Wales close quote more grass dependent and with a look more pitying than indignant comments you know Richard it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world but for whales Moore was not so much blaming rich as noticing with infinite sadness the kind of person he had become a man with a corroded soul and it might have been otherwise in a lesser-known scene from earlier in the film Moore offers Rich a job as a humble teacher but Rich ambitious for Glory at the king's court bogs Moore says you could be a good teacher perhaps even a great one his Protege retorts angrily and if I were Who would know it the wise more patiently responds yourself your friends your pupils God not a bad public that this exchange actually provides a third way of asking our question to which audience finally are you playing a lost soul plays to the endlessly fickle audience of the world hoping thereby to acquire the fleeting Goods that the world can provide the uncorroded soul place to God and to the Friends of God seeking to please them alone Saint John Paul II in his writings on the moral life observe that in every particular ethical Choice a person makes he's doing two things simultaneously he's performing a moral act with definite consequences and at the same time he's making his own character crafting little by little the person he's becoming I have The Confident hope graduates that your years at Hillsdale College have prepared you above all to shape your characters to become the kind of persons who would endure Justice rather than commit Injustice who would never dream of worshiping at the altar of an idol and who wouldn't surrender the Integrity of your souls for the whole world and if you become the persons God intends you to be you will succeed in lighting a fire upon the Earth God bless you all thank you thank you

Channel: Hillsdale College

Views: 126,674

Keywords: hillsdale, politics, constitution, equality, liberty, freedom, free speech, lecture, learn, america, bishop robert barron, commencement, address, graduation

Id: VFJYF3MiZLU

Length: 19min 55sec (1195 seconds)

Published: Wed May 17 2023