 Thank you. I'm so honored to be here with you today. I want to thank Sister Patricia Patton, the Board of Trustees, and the IHM Sisters for inviting me and salute the administration and faculty for your hard work in preparing the graduates. And most of all, I want to congratulate you, the Class of 2015, on your outstanding achievement. Feels good to be a mighty Mac alum, right? I think we should also thank all of those unofficial members of your Macalata Bucket Brigade, all those moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas and loved ones and siblings. Let's give them a hand. Now, I've heard it said that a commencement speaker is a little like the dead body at an Irish wake. They need you there to have the party, but nobody expects you to say much. So with that in mind, I'm going to keep it brief. You know, it wasn't that long ago, actually, that I was listening to a commencement speech at my own college graduation. Well, I should say it doesn't feel that long ago. In truth, it was nearly two decades. You could maybe guess that from the four children that my husband, John, and I brought here with us. But I still remember, though, how I felt that day. I remember I felt so joyful, so thankful, and so alive. And I wanted that feeling to last. I think that's a very human desire, isn't it? Our yearning to hold on to the joy of these mountaintop moments. And I imagine that's probably how the apostles felt on the occasion the church celebrated this past week, the ascension of the Lord. Here they are on the Mount of Olives. Jesus has just told them to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth. And then, in a cloud, he's gone. And they're left behind, filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit. Yes, but probably also a little unsure how they were going to sustain that joy when they headed back down the mountain. In a sense, I think that's the same question that's facing you today. As you head out into the world armed with your new degrees and all that you've learned here at Immacolata, how will you maintain the joy and the gratitude that you feel right now? And how, in a culture filled with workaholics, shackled to their cell phones, driven to distraction by our 24-7 media culture and caught in a frantic quest for more status and more stuff, how will you avoid the same trap? Now, these may seem like odd questions coming from someone who drafted her first resume in sixth grade or spent her career in media and has been known to check her iPhone just a few dozen times a day. I've made nearly every stop on the print and broadcast media circuit, so I know the good that the media can do. And I'm grateful for the chances I've had to watch history unfold at the Vatican or the Oval Office. I'm also grateful, though, lately to be devoting more time to my books and speeches. It's good, good to let an idea bounce around in your head a while before broadcasting it to the world. Of course, our media culture doesn't encourage that sort of thing, like most journalists I've known the daily, even hourly pressure to, as we say, feed the beast. And whether that beast is empty newsprint or empty hours of airtime, the effect is the same. We tend to focus on the urgent at the expense of the important. That focus then gets passed on to you, so you find yourself swimming in information, much of which you don't need to know. Some of which you'd probably be better off not knowing, Kardashians, anyone. And all of which, necessarily, leaves you less time to ponder the things you really do need to be thinking about. It's the same with social media. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, they can all be used for great good or great distraction. And we may find ourselves wondering, are my gadgets and habits helping me to lead a more joyful, attentive life, or are they getting in the way? These aren't new questions. Every generation has asked them. Socrates worried that writing would weaken the power of the human memory. Some said the same about Gutenberg's printing press in the 15th century. And in the 1930s, Aldous Huxley envisioned his brave new world of tech addicts who were so numbed by entertainment that they couldn't tolerate silence or defend their own rights. Technology changes. Human nature doesn't. We've always been tempted to use our work and our toys to avoid facing what St. John Paul II called our original solitude. We're the only creatures capable of an interior journey. And yet, we hesitate to take it. That's true of some of the greatest thinkers and leaders in history, even the saints. Take St. Teresa of Avila. Before she was a doctor of the church or a legendary religious reformer, this 16th century Spanish mystic was a case study in distraction. Teresa spent her teen years fixated on her own good looks, gossip, romance novels, and a forbidden fling. She eventually joined the convent more out of fear for her soul than zeal, but her trivial pursuits followed her in. So she slogged through her religious routine, focused more on earning praise than developing an interior life. At age 39, Teresa walked into the chapel and came face to face with a statue of the suffering Christ. Something about his image, bloodied and bound as he awaited crucifixion, moved her. Teresa was pierced with regret for the decades that she had wasted chasing distractions instead of following her true calling to a life of prayer and service. From that day on, Teresa's desire for silence and solitude intensified. Distraction still plagued her, but once her interior journey began in earnest, she quickly grew into the leader and author we still celebrate, 500 years after her birth. So what took her so long? Teresa didn't have a smartphone after all. God didn't have to compete with Instagram to get her attention. Yet like many of us, Teresa felt too bombarded by the world's noise to seek the deeper purpose she craved. As she said once, I knew perfectly well that I had a soul, but I did not understand what that soul merited or who dwelt within it until I closed my eyes to the vanities of this world to see it. Now, we tend to hear that and think, well, how nice for her, but I have some work to do. There are people who need my help, a market that needs my skills, student loans that need my repayment. This is the season for action. When I'm older, I'll worry about contemplation. Here's the thing though, action and contemplation reinforce each other and it's very hard to succeed at one if you neglect the other. Teresa's life is proof. Her most lucid writings on prayer and her loftiest experiences of it came as she was battling critics inside and outside the church, braving treacherous conditions to establish new convents all across Spain and caring for hundreds of other women while suffering near constant sickness and exhaustion herself. Teresa couldn't have done what she did without tapping into supernatural strength beyond her own. It was the same for Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She used to tell her sisters, until you can hear Jesus in the silence of your own heart, you will not be able to hear him saying, I thirst in the heart of the poor. To make time for silence isn't to shirk our duty, but to remember why and for whom we're doing it in the first place. Even just a few minutes a day can help us recover our sense of wonder and wonder leads to joy. That's a lesson I learned from my father. Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease my senior year in college. In the years that followed he went from forgetting to pay bills to forgetting to dress himself or to read the masterworks of theology and history that he once loved. Yet Dad never forgot his joy or his sense of wonder. Even in his dementia he saw the world as shot through with hidden grace. And when I set aside my distractions long enough to learn he helped me do the same. Seeing Dad stroke my mother's cheek as she would button his shirt or class me in a bear hug every time I entered the room or carefully re-read the same worn pages of scripture that he'd been praying over all his life. I began to understand what he'd been doing all those mornings when as a little girl I would rise before dawn and find him praying alone in his office. Dad had been filling his cup. He was filling it with that living water that Jesus promised the woman at the well. The water Jesus says that will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. That promise came true for my father. I remember the day I knew for sure. I was driving down the interstate on my way to run an errand. The thought popped in my head I should see Dad. I resisted. Dad was in end stage Alzheimer's by then. He couldn't walk or eat or speak. Visits were agonizing and I'd already made several that week. Still something told me to go again. So I veered right just in time to catch the exit for Dad's nursing home. A few minutes later I was standing in his room and to my surprise Dad recognized me immediately. We hugged and I pulled up a chair. I remember how Dad gazed at me for a long time silently cradling my face with his hands. He raised his arms to the sky then lowered them back to me. He repeated the gesture several times as if trying to tell me something. His mouth was wide open and a smile full of wonder but he didn't speak. As we sat there face to face I told him everything I wanted him to know before he died. I told him that I loved him that he'd been a wonderful father that it was okay for him to go home to heaven and I asked him when he got there to ask God to send me a baby. My husband and I had been battling infertility for four years at that point and the doctor said we'd probably never conceive. Dad's eyes brightened as I spoke of heaven. He began gesturing again toward the sky and when I mentioned a baby he smiled and opened his arms wider than ever. I leaned into them and we embraced again. We spent three hours together that day. The longest dad had been awake in months. When I finally turned to go I took one last look at him over my shoulder. Dad was still gazing longingly at me from his wheelchair so I walked back and knelt down beside him. His blue eyes brimmed with tears as I gave him one last kiss. Dad smiled, flung his arms wide open and managed one parting word for me. Joy, he said, just joy. A few days later dad slipped into a coma. He was dead within a week and seven months after that I conceived twins. I shuddered to think what I would have missed that day if I'd had a smartphone with me. I hope I still would have made that fateful turn off the highway but I still would have given dad my undivided attention for what turned out to be our last conversation. The truth is though, I don't know. And that's the thing about the present moment. There's just no way to know until it's over what you might miss. You always think you'll know when the big moments arrive that they'll be as clearly demarcated as a commencement ceremony and you'll spot them and you'll say, oh, this is important. I'd better pay attention. But most of life's mountaintop moments they sneak up on you. And if you're not watching for them, they slip away, never to return. Resolve today that you're not going to let that happen to you. Resolve that whatever else you do after this day, you won't pass your years in a distracted fog that you'll cultivate the silence and the space you need each day to recognize the miracles all around you. If you do that, if you make that resolution and keep it, I believe you'll achieve levels of excellence you never dreamed possible. And your success will be that much sweeter because you'll know that you achieved it without missing what matters most. So congratulations again, class of 2015. I can't wait to see all you'll do and even more all you'll become in the years ahead. Thank you.