2025 Commencement Distinguished Alumni Award, Mother Mary Concepta

0:06It is with great pride and joy that we present the 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award to Mother Mary Conchepta, class of 2015. Well, good afternoon and congratulations, most especially to the graduates graduates and to all your family and friends gathered here today. I warmly greet your excellencies, Bishop Burbridge and Bishop Laverde and esteemed honorees and trustees that are with us. And I thank you father Sikorsky and all of your faculty and staff for this kind honor. Thank you so much. It's a blessing to be here having graduated now ten years ago from what was then known as the Institute for Psychological Sciences. And I'm very grateful for that time of study and the great deepening in my understanding of the human person, body, mind, and soul.

0:58Every bit of my education has assisted me with ever greater depth and capacity to live the charism of the sisters of life, to protect and enhance the sacredness of every human life, which is our fourth vow. Each of you graduating here today has given yourself to a healing profession. You desire for each person entrusted to your care the full flourishing of their humanity. And this is evident in the very name of your institution and according to its mission statement, which was mentioned to you by bishop Burbage, that the university is dedicated to the renewal of the Catholic Christian intellectual tradition and the integration of the theoretical and empirical basis of psychology with a Catholic view of the human person, which makes a unique contribution in today's world of psychology.

1:52It goes on to say that we view reality and each person as a gift. We recognize the primacy of God's gift, which humanity is invited to receive and to give in turn. Therefore, we seek to promote and participate in an authentic culture of life at the university and in the broader culture. And the sisters of life are so happy to be coworkers in the vineyard with you in building a culture of life, one heart at a time. We affirm like you that the human being has been created in the image of God, and so every person has transcendent dignity. And so in upholding this sacred dignity, you will be instrumental in helping people to pick up the pieces of their scattered lives. It is an honor, a gift, and also a sorrow to hear stories of pain, yet it is also a wonder to allow the lord to draw us into his own work of transformation, to be a facilitator of his ordering, restoring, and healing work in another human person.

3:04What a sacred entrustment that each of you have been given and that you have fully received. God trusts you to assist the person before you from darkness to light, from disorder to order, from bondage to freedom, and you are not alone in this great work. I have taken our blessed mother Mary as my model and guide in the gift and privilege that it is to accompany those whose lives and hearts may be broken in pieces. She invites me and each of us to to stand with her at the foot of the cross of another suffering, pain, and confusion and to hold that person with our hearts as she held tenderly the broken body of Christ, imaged in Michelangelo's Pieta. We collaborate with her who shares in the mission of Christ, the divine healer, as she embraces all of God's suffering children as her very own.

4:03And she does not fear wounds, our own or those of others. Rather, Mary lives in hope and can see in them already within the full potential of each person the promise of glory. At the Easter vigil, the priest celebrant prepares the paschal candle and says, by his holy and glorious wounds, may Christ the lord guard us and protect us. By his holy and glorious wounds, may Christ the lord guard us and protect us. Christ does not prevent us from being wounded. He himself suffered every wound possible to save us. He references our wounds and by them draws us close in intimacy to himself. Within the mystery of his being, his his own glorified wounds sir will serve to guide and protect us. Our wounds are held in his, and our wounds are healed in his.

5:09Only he can transform our brokenness into glory through the redeeming power of his love poured into the entirety of our stories. Through your studies, you have been given the human tools to help others embrace the truth of their story, of who they most deeply are and created to become, to be freed from the lies in which they may have lived and to begin to see themselves as God sees them. And in the words of Cardinal O'Connor, who's the founder of the Sisters of Life and a great champion of the sacredness of human life, he says to you, you have to see that you are the pearl of great price of which our Lord speaks, that you are made in his image and likeness. The whole world is in you. You have The whole world is in you, that same sunlight that played in Eden.

6:08And Christ walks with you and talks with you. And Christ brought you into being in his image and likeness because he loves you for you. Not for your talents, not for your potential, not for any money you may have, not for your educational experience even. He loves you for you. When we begin to see the whole story of a person, we are overcome by the unspeakable glory of each human soul. This work you have entered upon is very arduous, of course, yet the promise of Easter brings certain hope. We have a savior who has descended into the dead to free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. And like the first apostles, we are called to be witnesses to the resurrection, to the reality that Christ can come into the messiness of any life and transform it with his grace.

7:04In Christ, suffering is transformed by love and into love. This year as Sisters of Life, we're also celebrating a twenty fifth anniversary of our founder Cardinal O'Connor's passing. And in time, we hope we'll have a biography and a documentary to present to the world, so stay tuned for that. But I leave you with his words. I see in each one of you whatever may have been our your past, whatever your circumstances at the moment, the reflection of the sacred, the image and likeness of almighty God. I see you as sacred persons to be loved, persons of priceless dignity and worth. Indeed, I may very well see you as being far better persons than some of you may see yourselves to be. To underestimate you is to underestimate God, for each of you is sparked with his divinity.

7:59I pray that the Lord blesses each of you with a humility and contemplative gaze to receive the person before you always as a gift and to stand in awe and wonder before a mystery that is being revealed. This will infuse every encounter with authentic delight and the joy of discovery. May the Holy Spirit guide you through all your gifts of nature, grace, and hard earned knowledge and skills in leading others to full flourishing in love and in life. Thank you, and God bless you.