Published May 17, 2025
The following lecture was delivered at the 2025 Christendom College Commencement.
A few days ago, I returned from two weeks in Rome covering the run-up and conclusion to the recent conclave. It was an extraordinary experience. On the day before Cardinal Prevost was elected, a colleague asked me what I thought a new pope should take as his pontifical name. I said Augustine. More than Benedict or Dominic or any other saint, Augustine is the obvious patron for our age. Of course we didn’t get a “Pope Augustine.” But we did get an Augustinian. I think – and I hope — that’s significant. And I’ll try to explain why toward the end of these brief remarks. So, let’s begin.
For most of my adult life I’ve carried around four quotations as a kind of framework for my day. I read them every morning and every evening. And they have one, very simple function: memory. They never let me forget whom I claim to serve as a Christian, and what I claim to believe.
The first quotation is from the great Russian Orthodox writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The second is from the Catholic convert, apologist, and friend of the Maritains, Léon Bloy. And the third is from the French Catholic author, François Mauriac. All three are beautiful reflections. And I’ll be happy to share them later, with anyone who’s interested.
The fourth quotation is a bit more eclectic. It’s from that great Chinese theologian, Mao Zedong. Yes, it’s true: Mao was a mass murderer and very far from a saint. Nobody’s perfect. But he had an extremely keen strategic mind. He wrote that weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive factor. Weapons are necessarily wielded by people. Thus, it is people, not things, that are decisive.
His words fit very comfortably with our purpose here today. C.S. Lewis described Christianity as a “fighting religion” because that’s how the Word of God describes it. We’re engaged in a struggle for the soul of the world. Our weapons are charity, mercy, patience, and courage, not hatred and violence. But spiritual conflict is an unavoidable part of our reality. And struggles need good leaders because in the end, most people aren’t converted by doctrines and abstract ideas. They’re converted by other people who embody those ideas and doctrines; people who witness their beliefs by living, teaching, and preaching Jesus Christ with confidence, clarity, and joy.
In our family, our oldest son, Matt, attended West Point, and his time there taught him how to form and lead other people. That’s what the service academies do: They’re hatcheries for leaders, and the practical skills of leadership they teach are hugely valuable. But the questions of why to lead and where to lead are even more important than how to lead. And they can only be answered at the deeper levels of character, conscience, and conviction.
Talent can be a blessing or a curse; a means to serve others, or a tool to abuse them. It’s a person’s sense of purpose, the truth or falsehood of what he or she believes, the things that rule one’s life, that make all the difference. The central issue of our age is anthropological. In other words, who and what is a human being; where does our dignity come from; what’s our purpose, if any, as creatures. And this, for me, highlights the genius of Christendom College. Whatever its other strengths, Christendom speaks to the beauty and sanctity of the human person as a child of God. It takes the words of John 8:32 — You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free — and shares them with young men and women in a way that forms them as deeply Catholic believers, with the moral substance and intellectual skills to form and lead others.
The proof of an education is the people it produces. And I’ve seen the impact of this college again and again over the decades of my own career. Simply put: Christendom College is a treasure very rare in the academic world because — at its best — it produces whole, fully human beings, grounded in something more than intellectual fashion.
So, for the parents here today: Thank you for the sacrifices you’ve made in giving this gift to the children you love. And for the students: Take a moment of pride today in the fact that all of you as graduates, whether you fully understand it yet or not, have the vocation and the ability to be extraordinary men and women in God’s service. The Church needs the college that formed you, and she urgently needs each one of you personally — because, in the words of our mercifully deceased Chinese friend, it’s people, not tools or weapons or even resources, that are decisive. And any effort at “restoring all things in Christ” – which is the mission of this college and its graduates – begins with conversion, reform, and a personal zeal for discipleship in each of our individual hearts.
So, I’ll close with a few final thoughts.
Looking back on the Francis pontificate, I wonder if one of its main, if unintended, functions was to provide a clean break between the immediate post-conciliar period and its conflicts, and something living, organic, and new in the Leo papacy. We live in a turbulent time. It’s similar to the Reformation — not in its historical details, but in its underlying impulses and dynamic. It’s a deep re-formation of how we think about the world, the organization of society, and what it means to be human – all driven by technologies that make Gutenberg’s printing press look like a toy.
In effect, we’re at the end of one age, and the start of another. And that’s exactly where Augustine found himself as bishop of Hippo, as the ancient Roman world fell apart. Augustine was always a realist, but also a man of hope. He stayed with, encouraged, and faithfully served his people in a very difficult time, while producing some of the most brilliant and fruitful thought in human history. If Leo XIV can deliver a fraction of that richness through his Augustinian formation, the Church will heal and thrive. And the Christian witness of today’s graduates will have the kind of harvest Jesus talks about in the Gospels.
We need that witness, and we need that harvest. We need them because many of us – too many of us — live our faith mainly as a useful code of moral behavior, and a healthy system of social ethics. But that’s not Christianity, and we don’t really need Jesus Christ or his cross for any of it. Catholics in this country have historically been outsiders and unwelcome. So, we’ve worked very hard over the past century to be accepted into American culture. In a sense, that’s become our real religion. And we’ve succeeded exceptionally well at it — so well that many of us are much more faithfully “American” than we are “Catholic.” The result is predictable.
A lot of American life today is a blend of vanilla spirituality that doesn’t make many demands on our time and attention, and a pervasive, practical consumer atheism that does. The decline in our Catholic numbers nationwide is simply the truth forcing its way to the surface through layers of self-deception that we’ve accumulated as a Church over half a century or more. The truth can be painful, but it’s never bad. The truth makes us free: free to change; free to remember who we are as Catholics and why we’re here; and free to do better.
My point is this: What we choose or don’t choose, what we do or don’t do, does matter. Augustine said that being faithful in little things is a big thing, and the little things we do can have very big consequences. Our job isn’t to succeed, but to witness. Recovering a humility about our own silent apostasies, the need for our own deeper conversion, and clarity about the challenges for Catholic life in our country that lie ahead — these things begin the renewal of our Church and our nation. And we can thank our current media and political leaders for pushing that process along with the unintended gift of their mendacity.
History is a great teacher, and one of its lessons is this: Under pressure, the tepid leave. But the faithful grow stronger, more committed to the truth, and thus more profoundly free. That’s always been the story of the Church. And God always wins. Always. Despite all the malice directed at the Church down through the centuries; despite her own worst periods of bumbling and corruption; despite our own sins and failures and most ingenious acts of self-sabotage as disciples: Here we are today — in God’s name, by his grace.
Augustine also said that people are always complaining about the darkness of the times; but we are the times; we make the times — and if we don’t make the times better in the name of Jesus Christ, then the times will make us worse in the name of lesser and uglier gods. As graduates, this is why your lives and your service to the Church matter. I’ve worked in and around the Church for 47 years. It’s been great privilege. I’ve seen a lot, done a lot, and learned a lot. But here’s the catch. The same things that make people good at what they do, can also make them blind to other possibilities, other solutions, other ideas. And that’s why graduates like you, need to learn from the dinosaurs that came before you — dinosaurs like me, but hopefully smarter than me — without being captured by our mistakes and limitations.
Most of us here today will never be asked to shed our blood for anyone or anything, including our faith. But we are asked to live for God and to live for others, each day, every day, whatever the cost. A life in Jesus Christ is not a collection of “duties and don’ts.” It’s a love story; a family of friends bound together as brothers and sisters by their love for God, and their love, encouragement, and support for each other. That experience of Christian fellowship has been the core and consolation of my marriage and family. It’s made our lives infinitely rich with friends who share the mission. And I can wish no greater joy and no greater blessing for each of you in the life you now begin.
There’s a great passage in Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings where Samwise Gamgee says “The great tales never end, do they Mr. Frodo?” And Frodo answers, “No, they never end as tales — but the people in them come and go as their part’s ended.” It’s now your turn, as graduating Catholic adults, to take center stage in the greatest story ever told. The story’s Author loves each one of you, uniquely and infinitely. He’s made you for a purpose that belongs to you alone. And if you give him your heart and your life, he’ll never let you down.
So, congratulations on this day of achievement. You’ve earned this moment of joy. Stay the course that Christendom has placed you on. And may God bless each and every one of you.
Francis X. Maier is a Senior Fellow in the Catholic Studies Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Mr. Maier’s work focuses on the intersection of Christian faith, culture, and public life, with special attention to lay formation and action.
