I’m delighted to be at Holy Cross. It has taken me fifty years to get here, for it was exactly this year, fifty years ago, in 1934, that I entered Yale instead of Holy Cross, as a Freshman. Can you believe that? Fifty years to get to Holy Cross, a college you were all smart enough to choose when you were only eighteen.
So why am I talking to you? I should be listening to you to find out how you all got so smart so young.
So, why am I talking to you?
One answer is that Father Brooks just wanted to humiliate a Yale man. Forcing him to expose his ignorance before this large audience would prove that a Holy Cross education is better. Or, maybe he just wanted to embarrass a certain Sophomore who’s related to me -- a handsome, popular, rugged, athlete; brilliant student; and celebrated beer drinker. Or, maybe he just chose me because my wife is intelligent, beautiful, dedicated, and a Trustee!
Whatever the cause of my presence, let’s all agree it’s nerve wracking to face Professor Flynn, Father Healy, Professor Shaff, Professor Vannicelli, and especially Professor Dewey.
They hand out those “C’s”, “D’s”, and “F’s” without batting an eye. So, tonight I have just one request: Please pray for me. I don’t want to flunk this test.
Now let’s start this talk with Good News: 1984 is the best year in history to be a Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, or Senior at Holy Cross. 1984 is also the best year in history to be a member of the Faculty at Holy Cross, or to be President or Vice President or Dean at Holy Cross. The only years which may be better for Holy Cross are, 1985, ’86, ’87 and the other years, stretching out to and beyond the year 2000.
In one sentence, therefore, let me say George Orwell was wrong. Despite his forebodings in his famous book; despite all the evidence of Big Brother at work in so many parts of the world; despite the corruption of language by Newspeak, Doublespeak, and Pentagonspeak; despite the threat of nuclear war and the waste on military armaments; despite the glorification of greed without accountability, of sex without responsibility, of power without restraint; despite all the arrogance and pride of us citizens of the First World, 1984 is still the best year in history to be eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, or twenty-two years of age. Never have opportunities been so numerous, so varied, so widespread. Never have challenges been so profound, so inviting. Never have business, finance, medicine, law, biology, physics, communications, politics, art, architecture, theology, and religion been so open for creative minds as today, right now, 1984!
Am I just another Norman Vincent Peale or Jerry Falwell, a revivalist promising that every day in every way we are getting better and better?
Not at all.
I’m just a fellow who’s been around long enough, seen enough, met enough people, listened enough, read enough, and been disappointed enough to know who’s going to win, what’s going to win, and why. I’m not telling you the answers now. But I’ve got them and will disclose them later.
That’s the Good News.
Now here’s the Bad News.
There’s no easy road to victory.
One charismatic leader had to undergo torture, insults, mocking, desertion, and death on a Cross to win His victory. Another, named, Laurence got cooked on a griddle; another named Sebastian got shot to death with dozens of arrows; millions in the Gulag Archipelago got starved and flogged to death; the Nazis ridiculed their victims before cooking them in ovens.
It’s sobering to see those giant ovens, big enough to take in carloads of victims at one time. Everyone who has a chance should visit Auschwitz-Birkenau, or Buchenwald or Belsen. Down in Central America they are efficient at raping and at shooting in the back, and in “disappearances”... “unaccounted for disappearances” by the thousands.
Holy Cross men and women may not have to face such physical tests, or tortures. Personally, I’m glad to be here, not there. I couldn’t take spiders crawling all over me, or wild dogs eating my flesh, or starved rats let loose to feed off my face. Those are a few of the preferred tortures today. Not to mention brainwashing in psychiatric hospitals!
Faced with these tortures, faced with hunger in many parts of the world, faced with poverty, disease, terrorism, and political oppression, how can anyone say 1984 is the best year to be alive?
Here’s why. Wherever you look, if you look hard enough, you will see a revolution taking place. Every one of these revolutions reveals that:
First: The so-called Age of Enlightenment and Reason is over - What started with Hobbes, Locke, Riccardo, Rousseau, Voltaire and others is finished. And so is the spiritual energy of the Reformation, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, Isaac Newton’s physics, Charles Darwin’s survival of the fittest, Adam Smith’s economics, and Karl Marx’s scientific materialism, his Marxist economics, his Marxist theory of history, his Marxist theory of the nature of man. All of that is finished, over with, done.
Second: A new age is dawning. It’s already operating in biology and physics, in economics, business and finance, in medicine, in law schools, though not yet in law practice, and even in our own Catholic Church.
Third: Like all the most profound revolutions, this one has started at the lower, levels of the biological, physical, social, and ecclesiastical existence. It’s growing at the grass roots and rice roots, at the genetic and molecular roots. Only rarely does it appear in skyscraper offices, or in executive suites with elite thinkers, movers and shakers.
Fourth: Women as well as men are making this revolution; but we don’t even know their names, and they don’t care.
Fifth: All peoples are in the revolution - - Blacks, Orientals, Indians, Mesitizos, Semites, Arabs, Whites ...
What am I talking about?
I’m talking about what we are learning about community and communion; about reciprocity and relationships, at the most fundamental levels of science, society, and spirituality. I am talking about community versus individuality; communion versus isolation; reciprocity versus competition; spirituality versus materiality.
Look at biology at the molecular level. We have discovered just in your lifetime that there is no particle of living matter which lives by itself. There is no “life” in the most minute components of what we traditionally called, “living matter”.
The smallest, molecular particles group themselves into “pairs”. These are known as “base pairs”. Each half of a pair is impotent without the other half. All of these pairs are stranded together to make the famous DNA chain - which is the essential structure of all biological life. DNA itself is nothing but an intricate double-strand, composed of these “base pairs”. No one knows how or why these pairs become pairs; but we do know that a minimum of three pairs is necessary to create even one amino acid. We know there are 21 amino acids, several hundred of which have to be bonded together to get even one protein. Even those proteins are not alive; they are not ‘living matter’.
Thousands must join to produce what we call “life”, even the simplest form of life.
See what I mean! At the ultimate, biological base of existence, any particle taken alone is lifeless. It’s dead, impotent. No thing lives alone. No one lives alone. Not even God. He has revealed His own Nature. He, She, The Force, The Power, The First Cause, The Unmoved Mover, call God whatever you will, he or she or it, is a Trinity, three in one. Not even God is alone!
Through molecular biology, we are thus re-discovering something very old: We are getting new insights into the nature of God and into our own nature, too. We are rediscovering that God is a community. We are discovering that each one of us is composed of a huge community of microscopic particles bonded together, working together to provide us with our biological existence. We, as biological individuals, are the result of a community ... in fact, biologically, each of us is a community.
Shift now to physics.
The smallest particle of matter known to theoretical physics is a Quark. No one has ever seen a Quark; no one can even locate a Quark. No one can even prove that a Quark exists. But Murray Gelman, the Nobel Prize winner, has demonstrated that if Quarks do exist, as he believes they do, they explain much about the nature of the physical universe.
For example, a Meson to be as it is and to act as it does can be explained by postulating that it is composed of two Quarks. No other theory can explain a Meson.
Notice that two Quarks are necessary to form a Meson. One Quark by itself seems unable to do anything or be anywhere or become anything by itself! Quarks have only fractional charges of electrical energy; one Quark cannot even be thought of having one unit of anything by itself.
Quarks are held together by Gluon. But no one knows what Gluon is. Gluon is not electrical; it does not seem to be physical. All we know, or think we know, is that Quarks exist, that they are held together by Gluon, and that together Quarks make up the tiniest components of all matter: -the Mesons, the nucleons, the protons, electrons.
It’s clear then that the most material substances we know of, or can even dream of are not solid matter. The hardest, toughest, substances in the world -- steel; diamond; tungsten -all seemingly solid material things are, in reality, composed of measureless numbers of un-seeable particles held together in an inanimate community.
Thus, and this is the point, physical matter, just like living matter, exists only as a community. There is no single, molecular particle alive alone; nor is there any single, solid locatable unitary Quark. Physical matter like biological matter exists only in community.
Shift to economics. ...."By now it is clear to everyone who can read or watch television that the American economy has entered a new era”...
These words are taken from Professor Gar Alperovitz’s new book, entitled, “Rebuilding America”. One doesn’t have to agree with all of Alperovitz’s ideas to sense he is correct. Others like Robert Reich with his New Industrial Policy, and Felix Rohaytn with his calls for a new Reconstruction Finance Agency to refinance and rebuild America, are just two other examples from business and academia who say we are already in a new economic era, which requires new ideas, new structures, and possibly new laws. And, the Japanese are proving it to us daily. Their capacity to work together is challenging our individualistic theories of economic productivity and creative invention as never before in our history.
Ronald Reagan has his answers to this challenge: Get the Government off our backs. Lower taxes on the rich. Get rid of “welfare cheaters”. Open up competition by relaxing anti-trust enforcement; loosen up controls on the banking system; pump money out by lowering the Federal Reserve rates; force feed money into the economy by running up huge deficits; open up the public lands in the Western States for business development and exploitation; minimize labor safety and health regulations; put pressure on the unions. Borrow and borrow, spend and spend, elect and elect is his new version of the old motto.
That philosophy appeals to millions of Americans. We were weaned on it, and lived according to it, almost without interruption from 1865 to 1932. Reagan wants to reinstall the economics and philosophy of that era, and millions of us like that prospect. Reagan is not proposing a Reagan Revolution as some of his followers maintain. Instead, he is offering a Reagan Restoration, a return to the good old days. He wants to wipe out Roosevelt’s New Deal, Truman’s Fair Deal, Kennedy’s New Frontier, and Johnson’s Great Society. In their place he wants a Reagan Restoration of the old economic practices, the old religious practices, the old social practices. Individualism in economics, in religion, and in social relations.
Now you know why Reagan is so popular with so many of your parents! Most popular -- with the oldest parents probably -- but popular with all who want the old, prosperous days back, and the old customs back. Most Americans, especially older Americans, have had things pretty good. We live in the safest and most prosperous nation in the world. We don’t want revolutions at home, or abroad.
Well, I don’t blame those who are seeking a Restoration! By definition, revolutions upset things; restorations put things back as they were. If you are well-to-do or prosperous, you don’t want any revolution. If you’re content with the way things are and have been, you don’t want any change. But the young economists and political scientists and the brightest businessmen know that conditions never remain static. That’s why new theories are appearing to deal with the new economic problems, generated by the new world-wide interdependent economy.
Gar Alperovitz calls for a new “community economics”, -- An economics which treats “the principle of community as an organic part of the way we plan our future”. For Alperovitz, community does not replace competition, but it mitigates competition by establishing a value higher than survival of the individual who is fittest. Social Darwinism is dead according to Alperovitz and Reich and Tobin.
And so is economic Darwinism. Ours is a country we try to develop together - in union with one another -- socially.
Thus in economics as in biology and physics we see the people as a whole and even the avant-garde calling for community and for community values. Martin Buber wrote ..."A nation is a nation to the degree it is a community of communities...”. That’s what the new economists are arguing for. And that’s a quotation to remember.
Let’s shift to business.
Have you ever visited a shopping center which had only one shop? I have. It’s G.U.M.'s Department store on Red Square in Moscow. Not another store nearby and not much to buy for that matter in G.U.M.'s. Very little life there. But in a truly modern shopping center there are dozens, even scores of stores, cinemas, restaurants, auto service stations, medical offices, etc., etc.. Why? Because businessmen learned long ago that isolation doesn’t produce commerce. Note that word “commerce”. It comes from the same Latin root, “communio”, from which we get the word “community”.
Look at Sears, Roebuck & Co. I remember when Sears was only a mail-order, catalogue business. A big book like a telephone book arrived at your home or place of business, and you then ordered by mail your choice of the products advertised in that big catalogue. There were no Sears retail stores in those days. Now there are hundreds of Sears stores, most of them in shopping centers. And what’s being sold in those stores? Clothes and shoes and household appliances, yes. Just like old times - 50 years ago. But now Sears sells stocks and bonds and insurance and houses and buildings, not just clothes and household products.
A Sears store has become a center of commerce within itself.
Together with other merchandising and financing and banking centers, Sears now forms a marketing community, and they have begun to call themselves precisely that: -- a community.
In business we see also the growth of trans-national business - businesses so variegated, differentiated and complex they can hardly be called “a” business anymore. They are conglomerates or corporate empires. Their internal cohesive fore is the benefit they gain from the synergistic life and efficiency of the conglomerate or corporation itself. They have become communal, not individualistic, entrepreneurial enterprises. Their strength lies in the reciprocal strength of the component parts. United internally they stand strong even against nation-states.
Shift to Government - at least to some parts of modern Government which I happen to know pretty well.
Look at the Peace Corps. When we started the Peace Corps what was our largest program? Community Development.
What were we trying to publicize or exemplify? We were trying to tell the poor and impoverished overseas to work together, to join their efforts in a common effort to achieve economic and political and social progress.
Did it work? Of course it worked. Was the Peace Corps popular? Of course it was. Why? Because it worked with people on their own problems at their own level. Peace Corps Volunteers were not, and are not, “bosses” or “big shots” who go overseas to tell everybody how to do this or that. They are co-workers within foreign communities, not outsiders trying to force communities into some new shape designed in the U.S.A.. Peace Corps Volunteers are like yeast in a loaf of bread: -- you cannot see the yeast but it’s the ingredient which makes the bread rise.
Everyone seems to admire Peace Corps Volunteers. And they should. Barry Goldwater voted for the original Peace Corps legislation, and even Ronald Reagan has recently come around to support the Peace Corps. He probably thinks of it as an organization of individual volunteers working alone and doing good things in far away places. That’s the old-fashioned idea. But, in truth, the vast majority of Peace Corps Volunteers work in groups, with groups of foreign peoples all struggling together for the social and economic and cultural progress of the whole community.
The same reality was and is true of the Community Action Agencies here in the U.S.A.. They did not exist 15 years ago. Not one of them. They were created by the “War Against Poverty”.
You’ve heard, I suppose, that the “War Against Poverty” was a failure. You’ve heard that all those “social programs” were failures. You know that Reagan pledged to get rid of them all. He guaranteed to smoke out all those lazy bureaucrats in Washington and close down the wasteful boondoggles.
Well, it’s true he wanted to. But he couldn’t. Not because of politics played by Democrats, but because all those hideous programs turned out to be popular! They weren’t Washington programs at all. They were community programs!
The Community Action Agencies started by the “War Against Poverty” now number 948. They consist of more than 10,000 poor people who manage them and administer the programs under their care. They serve 33 million poor people, supervising the expenditures of approximately $2.7 billion. Their overhead cost is 8%. Check that number for cost-efficiency with any private enterprise of comparable size.
One of those community-based programs is “Headstart”, another enterprise started by the “War Against Poverty”. 450,000 children are now in “Headstart” programs in communities everywhere. “Headstart” parents formed themselves in a national association. They’ve got fifty thousand active members, all working together.
“Foster Grandparents” was started by “the War Against Poverty”. The bright idea in this program was to put elderly persons who had no jobs to work helping orphans who had no parents. Simple idea, you may say. And it was, and is a simple idea. But it’s an idea which can be carried out at the community level by ordinary people, even the poorest of people, working together to help one another. And that’s what “Foster Grandparents” does. There are 18,350 Foster Grandparents all previously unemployed elderly poor persons. They take care of 54,300 children daily!
The same community idea, the same idea of cooperation to solve problems rather than competition to beat the other person, lies at the heart of VISTA (the domestic Peace Corps), at the heart of the Job Corps, at the heart of the 586 Neighborhood Health Centers, at the heart of all the Legal Service Centers nationwide. These are all community programs, financed in part by the Federal Government, yet relying on community leadership and support.
The ironic fact is that they were all created by the infamous “War Against Poverty” - allegedly such a great failure. Now Nancy Reagan sponsors “Foster Grandparents"; David Stockman supports “Headstart"; Orrin Hatch fights for the Job Corps; and George Romney is Co-Chairman of Friends of VISTA!
Only Ed Meese remains as the number one enemy of the poor. He continues to fight the Legal Services program, which was also established by the infamous “War Against Poverty”. That program seeks justice for the poor; and they need it! The President, however, is seeking the whole Justice Department for poor Meese, and he doesn’t need it! Nor does it need him...which reminds me. John F. Kennedy said he appointed his brother, Bobby, Attorney-General, so he could learn some law before he had to practice. Reagan is trying to appoint Meese Attorney-General so he can learn some law after he’s been in practice. No wonder Meese needs the job: -- How else will he ever learn enough law to make enough money as a lawyer to pay his debts?
Which brings me to the law? –
“Newsweek” magazine last week published a large story under the headline: “Competition And Greed Take Over As A Once Genteel Profession Meets The Iron Law Of The Marketplace”....
Yes, it’s true. Competition has become intense among law firms. Yes, it’s true that greed plays a big role in corporate law practice. Yes, it’s true there are ruthless lawyers. Yes, law firms are adopting new public relations techniques to attract new clients and keep old ones. But the extraordinary reality is this: --.nearly all lawyers still practice their profession in partnerships! They are bonded together legally; they work together professionally; they socialize together often; they are legally liable for one another’s mistakes; and they profit from one another’s victories.
Are there changes in the profession? Yes. Will the popularity of lawyers establishing themselves as individual, professional corporations change the practice of law profoundly. I believe not. For these reasons:
- Individual, professional corporations are only creatures of the tax code; they are devices to minimize taxes, not better ways to practice law professionally.
- Even those lawyers established as individual professional corporations continue to practice in partnerships.
- Many of the best lawyers continue to teach. Yes, many highly-paid, highly-skilled lawyers from private law firms teach in law schools. Why? Because they believe they have a social responsibility as lawyers and because they can keep abreast of new thinking about the law by association with professors of the law.
So, for many reasons, lawyers continue to exemplify community and cooperation in their lives as lawyers.
The adversarial process remains our preferred Anglo-Saxon method of resolving legal questions; but the over-arching, commitment to “justice” as an abstract but genuine goal of our legal system remains the number one objective of our legal system and of true, professional lawyers. The future lies in that direction - the direction of re-establishing justice as the primary reason and goal for lawyers.
When I went to Yale Law School there was no course on “Justice"; none in “Jurisprudence” either. Those dreamy abstractions had disappeared from law schools with the arrival of the case method, and philosophical positivism. Now a course in “Justice” is required at Harvard Law School. Even Ethics, not etiquette, is being required. Soon we may see moral philosophers and moral theologians back in law school classrooms. The leaders of the Legal Profession are rediscovering community and cooperation are integral to the law, just as biologists and physicists and economists are finding such communion at the basis of their science and professional lives.
Where do all these speculations and examples lead us? I believe they lead us right here to Holy Cross.
What does it mean to be a member of the Holy Cross community as compared, let’s say, to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Duke, Vanderbilt, or Brown?
I think it means a lot, and it could mean everything.
The most obvious fact is that those other colleges were named after rich men seeking personal fame. Vanderbilt and Duke Universities got millions from those railroad and tobacco fortunes from which they also got their names. Stanford was founded and endowed by a fabulous merchant, lawyer, and railroad man who named that university for his son, Leland Stanford, Jr.
Nicholas Brown who graduated from Rhode Island College spent his life and his money building up his Alma Mater. He did so well the Trustees in 1804 named the college for him while he was still its Treasurer! There’s an example of how to get to the top: Mind the money! Yale and Harvard rank as the best investment dollar for dollar. Elihu Yale gave only 562 pounds to the Collegiate School at Saybrook, Connecticut; and John Harvard gave only 780 pounds and 320 books to establish a college in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The authorities in both places were so overjoyed they named those institutions Yale and Harvard. (Everything was less expensive in those days).
The very names of those institutions hearken back to the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries and to the philosophy and values of those times. But Holy Cross is a name which goes back to an earlier time and a different philosophy.
Is your name out-of-date? Or, does the name Holy Cross express something for the future as well as something from the past?
I believe it does speak to the future because the ancient past and the future are coming together.
Molecular biology and particle physics now show that the very nature of the universe is complimentarily not individuality. Economics and business and finance show that future progress lies in mutuality of effort and planning. The IBM’s, Royal Dutch Shell’s, Exxon’s and the entire Japanese miracle are based on internal cooperation and trans-national expansion bringing many different people into one commercial fold. Law partnerships expand. Medical research, practice, and progress is conducted more and more by teams of scientists, not by individuals working alone. The best, most popular, political programs are those which touch, help, and empower ordinary people to work together. Even in the private sector the most successful initiatives are community-based and community-supported. Look at the huge growth and popularity of “Special Olympics” with millions of participants and hundreds of thousands of volunteers. “Special Olympics” was spread worldwide. It reaches across the Iron Curtain into Poland and even into Cuba. “Special Olympics” there are no boycotts, no nationalism; no racism; no sexism; just cooperation for humanity’s sake.
Cooperative human endeavors succeed more quickly and with less rancor, argument and distress, showing that the future belongs not to the Vanderbilts, Dukes, Stanfords, Harvards or Yales, but to institutions with a community base where cooperation rules rather than vanity and individualism.
The very name, Holy Cross, speaks loud and clear to this new, emerging era. It tells of the victory of a man who laid down his life for the entire world community, for every man and woman and child in history, because He Himself had made those persons and that Community. His Act was not only inspiring and courageous and honorable like the actions of Mohatma Ghandi or Martin Luther King. He was not assassinated as they were or as John and Robert Kennedy were. Instead He volunteered for death, knew it was coming, and accepted every detail of it.
Why? Because He believed His death would unleash a New Spirit, a Holy Spirit who would transform the world and all the people in it!
That transformation started with just twelve men plus a cadre of one hundred and fifty men and women known as disciples. We have seen that Community grow in every century and produce extraordinary men and women over and over again. Francis of Assissi and Mother Teresa; Thomas a Becket murdered in his Cathedral in England 500 years ago and Oscar Romero murdered in His cathedral in El Salvador five years ago! These are only four out of a host of unbelievable heroes and heroines who have given their lives for this new Community which some unknown person first called “Christian” about 1800 years ago.
Your name, Holy Cross, reminds us of these historical facts. But it speaks to us also of something more modern. We can see just by reading the newspapers and magazines that something new is happening in this community of Christians.
We know that a Polish student, sportsman, actor, and worker has emerged from an atheistic Marxist society to become the world’s most popular and significant spiritual leader. In the past 2000 years that has never happened before.
We know that the Jesuits selected last year, as their newest leader, a Dutchman who years ago chose to become a priest of the Armenian Church and live all his life in the Middle East. He says Mass in Armenian, and he speaks and writes fluent Hebrew, Syrian, Arabic, English, French, Latin, German, and Dutch. That’s never happened to the Jesuits before!
We know that the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris is a Jew whose mother survived Auschwitz. That never happened before in France. Remember the Dreyfus case!
We know that an aboriginal native from one of the most primitive tribes in .the Philippines is now Rector of the most advanced Theological Institute in the Far East. He’s a Jesuit and a Bishop! That never happened before!
We know that a Black African, native now occupies the third most powerful position in the Vatican as a Cardinal in charge of selecting all Bishops world-wide. That never happened before.
We know that all over South and Central America, in Africa, in many parts of Asia, even in the Soviet Union, in Hungary and East Germany, basic Christian communities are springing up. 14,000 such communities now exist in Brazil alone. They have no church buildings or physical places to call their own. But they exist at the community level everywhere.
Some observers say that these basic Christian communities are almost exactly like the original Christian communities in the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian empires. They exist outside of the political structure, separate from economic power, and sometimes underground as in the catacombs of Rome. Your own, eminent Holy Cross Professor, Bernard Cooke, has written about them. writes: -
...God is working with these groups of people; people in base communities are growing in “grace” and in maturity of religious understanding they could not attain before. Any claim that this cannot or should not be happening is confronted with the simple fact that it is happening...”
It is happening in South America. And it can happen here. That is my message tonight. It can happen here, and it will happen here.
George Orwell was true to his experience and his spirit. He was a rationalist and a socialist of the English school. He saw the threat and power of absolutism and of Stalinism, of materialism, and technocracy. He described that world so well that to read his words can make one’s flesh crawl, make one’s spirit cringe, make one’s sleep a nightmare.
But you can read those words undismayed if you are truly a Crusader living in the spirit of Holy Cross. This place, and that Cross, teaches you, and all of us, that the way of the Cross may be painful, humiliating and lonely but for those who walk that way, the end is victory, victory for yourself, over yourself, and even in spite of yourself.
Big Brother cannot defeat you. You need not love him as George Orwell’s hero finally did! You have some one else to love, and that person guarantees you your victory on your cross, just as He guaranteed Christ His victory on His Cross.
Is that victory worth it? Is all that pain and ignominy and disgrace worth it?
Well, all I know is this.
Jesus Christ said to his followers: “I promise you that you will sit at my table in my kingdom and that you will eat and drink with me, forever...”
Can you believe it? What a blow-out that will be! What beer, what wine, what men, what women, what food, what conversation, what knowledge; what spirit of joy - total victory over all evil; total and permanent happiness, sitting at His table - not someplace in the rear of the room; not behind the goal posts, but right there on the 50-yard line -- in the President’s box, and even better, in a genuine “sky box” along with the person who made the whole universe and everything and everyone in it.
That’s what Holy Cross promises. That’s what you can achieve simply by following the Holy Cross way.
As a Yale man I envy you the education and inspiration you are receiving, and most of all your chance to remake the world in the light of the Holy Cross.
