Page 14 - The Gonzaga Record 1990
P. 14
noticed, the talents not yet given proper scope in the setting of school,
not yet appreciated, not yet known, perhaps, even by those who possess
them.
We pray in gratitude for all that this class, individually and as a group,
have given to the community of Gonzaga in their time ...
Jesus, in hi s priestly prayer before entering the Paschal Mystery by
which He brought the Holy Spirit into our world, went on: " I pray not
onl y for these, but for those also who through their words will believe
. ,,
m me .
We pray not just for them but for those also who, through their words
(not just those they speak, but above all those they enact, those they live
by), will find faith in the meaning of human life, in a God who makes
sense, in the God of Jesus Christ. We pray that they will find faith in
the humanity perfected and fully revealed in Jesus Christ.
We think of all those their lives will touch ...
We think of what they will be for the world, the worlds they are moving
into.
We think of all they bring to the world now, these young men who
are truly - and the description should inspire not guilt but gratitude and
a great sense of challenge - the privileged of the earth . ..
All that they have become, all that they possess, is a gift - a gift for
the world, not a treasure to be buried in their own careers, even their
own famili es or narrow interest-groups, but given to the world.
We are gathered at a time of great hope but also great uncertainty in
the politics of our planet.
I fi nd myself thinking of a young Dutch Jewess, Etty Hillesum, herself
a distinguished graduate from the University of Amsterdam, first in law
and then in Slavoni c languages.
This exceptionall y able young woman set out on her own life-journey
full of the hopes whi ch this cla ss has tonight.
But her li fe was qui ckly overtaken by the horrors of the Second World
War and the obscenity of her people's systematic persecution by Adolf
Hitler.
Far from crumpling in se If-absorption and selfish recrimination at her
terrible fat e and the frustrati on of all her high hopes, she understood (and
she was in Westerbork concentrati on camp, facing certain death when
she wrote these words), she understood that the world's only hope is for
human beings to accept life with all its bitterness and suffering lovingly:
" You have made me so ri ch, oh God, please let me share out your beauty
with open hands".
Diaries she kept in Westerbork and Auschwitz, where she died in 1943
at the age of 29, have now at last been published.
The diaries record her desire to "be present on every battle-front and
at the centre of all human suffering". In her very last entry, she wrote:
" We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds".
''I pray not onl y for these but for those also who, through their words,


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