St. Frances Academy Commencement Address

By Mayor Martin O'Malley

June 1, 2003

It’s an honor to be here to celebrate this day of achievement with this year’s graduates and their families and friends. Congratulations to the Class of 2003. You did it and soon enough, your pictures will be a welcome addition to the wall inside St. Frances that bears tribute to the graduates who’ve gone before you. You’ve made a lot of people proud – starting with everyone who is gathered here tonight.

Sister John Francis, Brother Brian, Ms. Missouri, Board Members, Faculty, Staff, Parents, Friends, and Graduates: thank you for asking me to be with you.

Look around you tonight, and you will see stories of quiet determination and perseverance. Stories of hard work and academic success. Stories of redemption and hope. Stories of extra-ordinary kids making their parents and grandparents proud – leading by example.

I defy anyone who is here to walk away not feeling optimistic about what is possible in this great school in this great community, in our great city. You graduates are living proof that if we are willing to believe, willing to work hard, our persistence will pay off.

Through the Lord’s guidance, through personal strength, through hard work, and through your stubbornness and audacity, you have given our entire city hope.

This school is a special place. It’s run by people who care deeply about our children. People like Sister John Francis, who sits down, herself, to interview every prospective St. Frances student. People like Mr. Shelton, athletic director, teacher, parent, and coach of the year who led the girl’s basketball team to their championship win this fall. People like Sister Clare, who may have passed on, but whose spirit surely lives on in the hallways of your holy little sanctuary here in this community.

Tonight, we celebrate these amazing individuals. We celebrate 175 years of St Frances’ powerful positive legacy in Baltimore. We celebrate a brand new, long awaited community center and gymnasium! We are thankful for good kids – leading by example. We are grateful for our past four years. We hope in anticipation for the future. And we pray that the Mayor will be brief and to the point.

But we do all of these things under the cruel, though true, title of “commencement”, not the end but the beginning, the beginning of all the possibilities that lie ahead – the beginning of our search for our fit, our opportunity to make a difference; during our blink of time; in this temporary world.

And the scary thing – bright young men and women of St. Frances – is that you are smart enough to know it won’t always be easy. In fact, if you have learned the most valuable thing that any education can give, then you have learned that if you do it right, if you act with dignity, if you walk humbly with your God… it should not be easy. And if you do well, it cannot be easy.

St. Augustine wrote: “Do you aspire to great things? Then build with little ones. You desire to build a very high building? Think first of the foundation of humility. The higher you intend it, the deeper must the foundation be laid.”

This evening, hope is rightfully high for the foundation for future success has been laid.

Sometimes – especially when you’re young – it seems that by the time one lays the foundation necessary to achieve excellence, it will be too late to make as great a mark as possible. But there is always enough time; it’s how you use it that makes all the difference.

Things change slowly, and then things change quickly. God works in mysterious ways. And when the opportunity to make a difference appears, you are now prepared to seize it.

I was lucky, as you have been lucky, to have been taught by teachers that it is not enough to simply have faith. You must have the courage to risk action on the faith that you can make a difference – risk action on the faith that you can change the world. It’s a lesson worth learning, and it’s the most valuable lesson that any teacher can pass on.

Every day we’re alive, we should be reducing our limitations. We should be relentlessly growing: not in our capacity to earn, but in our capacity to learn; not in our ability to achieve, but in our capacity to love; not in our strength to hoard, but in our desire to scatter, to serve, and to sacrifice.

I believe it was Mother Theresa who said: “I am not capable of accomplishing great things, only small things with great love…” Having the courage to take risks for great and important things, having the courage to risk action on your faith, is the only way any of us will ever achieve anything worthwhile – anything with great love.

These are important lessons I learned before I left high school and I’d bet, in one way or another, many of you have learned them too, right here, at St. Frances…this hallowed academy founded on the principle that all children have unique God-given talents.

And that the adults of our community have a moral responsibility to provide each child with the education necessary to reach his or her potential. That is how a society should be judged. For nearly two centuries....this school has delivered on that promise. And because of the school Mother Mary left to us, our society, our city, is judged a little better. We have her to thank for that and this gift that has changed thousands of young lives…including yours.

As you begin your next journey, find your calling and follow it. Never give up. Never relent. Never let anyone else decide what you are going be. Only you make that decision. And you shouldn’t think small. For the battle is always the same: will you change the world or will the world change you?