Fr. Frank Majka, SJ – The Bridge

Watching Them Go

Graduations are unique and common. The unique aspect is that, whether they are graduating from grade school, high school, or college, the graduates are particular people with particular histories of achievement or lack of achievement, successes or failures, dreams realized or not. So, no two graduation ceremonies are exactly alike, because no two groups of graduates are exactly alike.

But graduations do have this in common: they are leave-takings. After the speeches and picture-taking are over, the graduates go on to the next thing in their lives; and the administrators, faculty, and staff of their institutions watch them go. And if the school, high school, or college is one consciousness of its mission, it is sending them out to bring to the world what they have learned, to learn new things that would not have been accessible to them before, and to do things that they couldn’t have imagined themselves doing a few years prior.

There are moments, or course, when those who leave and those who watch them leave might wish that the separation could be delayed, if just for a little while. But, as the Scriptures say, everything under heaven has its own time — there is a time to stay and a time to move on; a time to time to embrace and a time to let go. The time for letting go — the time for graduating — is also a time for those who stay to bless the graduates with the prayer that they may walk with God and God with them.