On April 21, 2012, the College gratefully recognized and celebrated our major benefactors at a Donor Appreciation event. The following are excerpts from President Mooney’s remarks at the dinner that evening.
Welcome and thank you for your support during the past year.
I hope that you had the opportunity to be on campus today to see for yourself some of the great things happening here . . .
As we built the programming for today we focused on Sister Madeleva’s wonderful words about discovery [from her book] Conversations with Cassandra. Until recently the part that I was most familiar with was the section carved in stone on our Welcome Center, which reads: “We promise you discovery, the discovery of yourselves, the discovery of the universe, and your place in it.” It is a beautifully composed thought that stands well on its own.
But I like that phrase even better in the context of the whole statement, which begins: “We will not promise you happiness. We will not wish you security. For we remember that ‘security is mortal’s chiefest enemy.’ And we know that you can be secure only when you can stand everything that can happen to you. If your school has prepared you for this, it has been a good school.”
I love the line, “you can be secure only when you can stand everything that can happen to you.” Perhaps it is only with the passage of time that we really grasp the significance of her words and how very true they ring for each one of us—what part did Saint Mary’s play in our ability to stand everything that can happen to us?
I ask each of you to reflect on your Saint Mary’s experience and the many ways it has affected the rest of your life. We all know that life will throw us a curve—none of us gets through life without facing ups and downs—and at those times we may not automatically think about Saint Mary’s. But I believe our time here prepared us to face the rest of our lives with grace and fortitude. Of course, it is always important to reflect on our past—but equally important is to plan for our future.
. . . Thank you for being a part of this wonderful heritage started over 165 years ago by the Sisters of the Holy Cross and continued today and tomorrow by you, and by me, and by our students. Our participation in the heritage of the present ensures a bright future for our students of tomorrow.
Click here to see video highlights of the speech.