WEBVTT 00:00:06.400 --> 00:00:18.615 It is with great pride and joy that we present the 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award to Mother Mary Conchepta, class of 2015. 00:00:18.915 --> 00:00:26.375 Well, good afternoon and congratulations, most especially to the graduates graduates and to all your family and friends gathered here today. 00:00:27.280 --> 00:00:34.580 I warmly greet your excellencies, Bishop Burbridge and Bishop Laverde and esteemed honorees and trustees that are with us. 00:00:35.120 --> 00:00:39.600 And I thank you father Sikorsky and all of your faculty and staff for this kind honor. 00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:40.740 Thank you so much. 00:00:41.625 --> 00:00:49.245 It's a blessing to be here having graduated now ten years ago from what was then known as the Institute for Psychological Sciences. 00:00:50.025 --> 00:00:57.410 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. 00:00:58.110 --> 00:01:11.645 Every 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. 00:01:13.065 --> 00:01:18.365 Each of you graduating here today has given yourself to a healing profession. 00:01:19.465 --> 00:01:25.710 You desire for each person entrusted to your care the full flourishing of their humanity. 00:01:26.650 --> 00:01:51.375 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. 00:01:52.610 --> 00:01:57.750 It goes on to say that we view reality and each person as a gift. 00:01:58.450 --> 00:02:05.350 We recognize the primacy of God's gift, which humanity is invited to receive and to give in turn. 00:02:06.515 --> 00:02:14.215 Therefore, we seek to promote and participate in an authentic culture of life at the university and in the broader culture. 00:02:14.675 --> 00:02:23.180 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. 00:02:23.800 --> 00:02:32.860 We affirm like you that the human being has been created in the image of God, and so every person has transcendent dignity. 00:02:34.715 --> 00:02:42.575 And so in upholding this sacred dignity, you will be instrumental in helping people to pick up the pieces of their scattered lives. 00:02:43.995 --> 00:03:04.090 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. 00:03:04.975 --> 00:03:10.275 What a sacred entrustment that each of you have been given and that you have fully received. 00:03:11.455 --> 00:03:24.460 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. 00:03:25.800 --> 00:03:34.865 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. 00:03:36.125 --> 00:03:52.800 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. 00:03:53.820 --> 00:04:02.495 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. 00:04:03.915 --> 00:04:08.735 And she does not fear wounds, our own or those of others. 00:04:09.515 --> 00:04:18.040 Rather, Mary lives in hope and can see in them already within the full potential of each person the promise of glory. 00:04:19.220 --> 00:04:31.765 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. 00:04:32.865 --> 00:04:38.965 By his holy and glorious wounds, may Christ the lord guard us and protect us. 00:04:39.960 --> 00:04:42.620 Christ does not prevent us from being wounded. 00:04:43.720 --> 00:04:47.100 He himself suffered every wound possible to save us. 00:04:47.640 --> 00:04:53.420 He references our wounds and by them draws us close in intimacy to himself. 00:04:54.535 --> 00:05:02.795 Within the mystery of his being, his his own glorified wounds sir will serve to guide and protect us. 00:05:03.575 --> 00:05:08.475 Our wounds are held in his, and our wounds are healed in his. 00:05:09.640 --> 00:05:17.180 Only he can transform our brokenness into glory through the redeeming power of his love poured into the entirety of our stories. 00:05:19.160 --> 00:05:35.555 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. 00:05:36.495 --> 00:05:52.480 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. 00:05:53.315 --> 00:05:58.935 The whole world is in you. 00:06:02.195 --> 00:06:07.255 You have The whole world is in you, that same sunlight that played in Eden. 00:06:08.390 --> 00:06:11.290 And Christ walks with you and talks with you. 00:06:11.510 --> 00:06:16.650 And Christ brought you into being in his image and likeness because he loves you for you. 00:06:16.950 --> 00:06:24.745 Not for your talents, not for your potential, not for any money you may have, not for your educational experience even. 00:06:24.885 --> 00:06:26.825 He loves you for you. 00:06:27.765 --> 00:06:34.825 When we begin to see the whole story of a person, we are overcome by the unspeakable glory of each human soul. 00:06:36.390 --> 00:06:42.970 This work you have entered upon is very arduous, of course, yet the promise of Easter brings certain hope. 00:06:43.590 --> 00:06:52.065 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. 00:06:52.865 --> 00:07:03.365 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. 00:07:04.065 --> 00:07:08.080 In Christ, suffering is transformed by love and into love. 00:07:09.100 --> 00:07:15.680 This year as Sisters of Life, we're also celebrating a twenty fifth anniversary of our founder Cardinal O'Connor's passing. 00:07:17.035 --> 00:07:22.815 And in time, we hope we'll have a biography and a documentary to present to the world, so stay tuned for that. 00:07:23.355 --> 00:07:25.055 But I leave you with his words. 00:07:25.755 --> 00:07:37.000 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. 00:07:38.020 --> 00:07:43.000 I see you as sacred persons to be loved, persons of priceless dignity and worth. 00:07:43.780 --> 00:07:50.575 Indeed, I may very well see you as being far better persons than some of you may see yourselves to be. 00:07:51.275 --> 00:07:57.455 To underestimate you is to underestimate God, for each of you is sparked with his divinity. 00:07:59.090 --> 00:08:11.350 I 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. 00:08:12.535 --> 00:08:17.835 This will infuse every encounter with authentic delight and the joy of discovery. 00:08:18.695 --> 00:08:29.070 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. 00:08:29.610 --> 00:08:31.310 Thank you, and God bless you.