 Good morning everyone. In a former chapter of my life, I had the great privilege of teaching in a very large Catholic university. Of course, that was not Jesuit. No one's perfect. Okay. I was asked to teach moral theology to freshmen. There are no words to describe that experience. I must tell you. It will all be in the movie of my life whenever that comes out. And they gave me a run for my money. So one day, I decided to give them a run for their money. And I walked in and I set aside my lesson. And I said to them, I have a simple question to ask you. I said, what is the most Catholic word in the English language? And they all perked up. And they gave the standard answers. Jesus, God, love, faith, the church. And I said, yeah, they're all quite much, quite essential to our faith as Catholics. But I'm thinking of another word. I'm thinking of a word that's very simple, a word we use often each day. It is kind of like the small, unheralded hero of the language, without which we could not speak, without which we could not articulate our faith, without which we could not live what the Lord has asked us. And I said, it is three letters, and it starts with A and ends with D. The word, of course, is and. And. Sounds strange, doesn't it? And yet consider for a moment, my friends, we have come here to this altar because we will enter into the mystery of the one whom we believe is God and man. We come here because we, using our right reason and our gift of faith, can encounter the life of God. We come here to this place, each of us, as singular, unique individuals and parts of the mystical body of Christ, one unbreakable, mystical, and eternal family. I would venture to say that it is impossible to live our Catholic life unless we honor, esteem, and live the mystery of the word and. And in all the communities of our great church, it is here in this community and every community of higher education, the university is the place where and must be lived, protected, and respected. For it is here in the power of the Holy Spirit, in the mission of Christ, that we can articulate together this one unified vision of what a human person is meant to be. A discerner, seeker, inquirer of truth. A child of God given the gifts of natural talents and abilities and the power of grace to go out and be missionary disciples, incarnating the love who is Jesus, love made flesh. It is here that all of us, as different as we are, we offer another great and for every young person who comes here is seeking knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge, that body of information that we all need to be successful citizens, contributors to the common good, to find our place in the world no matter what our vocation may be. This university does that well, but also wisdom. As we heard from the first reading in the great man, this image of wisdom himself, Solomon, wisdom my friends is the gift. It's the gift of living life well. It's not allowing knowledge to divide us, but a tool to unite us, to keep our eyes fixed on the values that are eternal. The wise woman or man is the one who recognizes the face of God in his or her neighbor and we recognize him fully in the person of Jesus the Lord in whose name we will receive his body and blood, soul and divinity. So at the very heart of this great Jesuit university lives the power, the imagination of the word and. And so we have all come here to pray for you because today Christ is making you the guardian and protector of the word and the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the Spirit will give you the gifts that you will need to do that. Because quite frankly for you, for me, for all of us in leadership, it has precious little to do with what we will actively do and everything that allows the Holy Spirit to work through us. For the mystery of leadership in the church my friends, whether it is a university president, diocesan bishop, members of a board, faculty, staff, pastor, whoever it may be. In the end the great mystery of leadership is all about following in the footsteps of the servant as we heard in the gospel. Is to become conduits of the life of him who has created us, engraced us, redeemed us, united us and sent us forth into mission. Consider the poor little humble and. Without it we would not be here. That my friends is a metaphor for leadership. As Saint John the Baptist once said when he pointed to the Lamb of God and he said he must increase and I must decrease. So too for you and I and for you, Dr. Nimic, all who are in leadership, if we are going to be the servants of this great mystery then we will find ways, you will find ways to reach the lost, to lift up every human heart, to overcome the tendencies that will exist here to divide and polarize, to pit one against another, or to label us as the liberal, the conservative, the this and the that for there are no labels for God. Your great leadership here, a man of great knowledge and wisdom is by your example in life to teach every young person here the way to leadership and to honor the great mystery of the word and. My friends, we live in a world that is deeply divided, deeply polarized, where the face of hatred is growing, where many find and revel in the fact that they can pit one against another. A world that has not yet learned its lesson that what unites us is far greater than what divides us. It is a world that is growing cold to hearing the message of the good news of Jesus. And here in this place dedicated to the one Savior and Redeemer, noble in the tradition of Ignatius himself, let us together, we pray for you, but let us pray for each other that for the greater glory of God we will always live and serve and share in the great mystery of the word. My friends, let us turn to the Lord with our prayers and our petitions.