After almost 15 months since the start of COVID-19 restrictions, Bishop Dennis Sullivan praised the Diocese of Camden’s high school graduates who have “emerged from one of the hardest, stressful, unusual periods in the modern history of our country,” and urged them to take their next steps with confidence, “brave … unafraid of the future (and) aflame for life.”
Bishop Sullivan delivered his message personally to students at each of the graduation ceremonies for the five diocesan high schools: Gloucester Catholic; Wildwood Catholic Academy; Holy Spirit High School, Absecon; Camden Catholic, Cherry Hill; and Paul VI, Haddonfield.
The 2021 Baccalaureate Mass and Commencement Exercises throughout the Catholic Community of South Jersey brought a sense of normalcy for the students, their families and the school’s faculty and administration in attendance. Capped and gowned, jubilant students took selfies with their friends, sans face coverings, while proud families feted their graduates with gift bags and mylar balloons, and faculty and administration donned their colors.
The joy of the occasion was boosted by the hope that the uncertainty, hardship and sacrifices of the year of lockdowns, masks, virtual learning, and 2020 drive-by graduation ceremonies are ending.
In his final words before the graduates embarked on other paths, Bishop Sullivan left life lessons, learned after a trying year.
Learn to trust God, was one. “We are not ultimately in charge.’
Another: remember the “heroes and heroines among us”— the caregivers, women and men in uniform, public servants, hospital staff, cleaning crews, supermarket employees. In their lives, we see that “the service of others requires grit and commitment,” he said.
Being together with others and forming communities, reaching out to our neighbors in need, and understanding that all “life is a gift from God who is the origin and destiny of life,” were more bits of wisdom he imparted.
Bishop Sullivan told all to ponder the words of psalm 23, which begins with the familiar phrase, “The Lord is my Shepherd. …”
In the “dark valleys” and “suffering” that will inevitably touch all of them, he reminded them that “God has been walking with us these past pandemic months … remember you are not alone. God is with you.”
The Camden bishop ended with the closing verses of Amanda Gorman’s “The Hill We Climb,” recited at this year’s Presidential Inauguration:
When day comes, we step out of the shade,
Aflame and unafraid.
The new day dawns as we free it,
For there is always light.
If only we’re brave enough to see it.
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