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It is always a pleasure to visit my alma mater, but I could not have come on a more propitious day than this – the day on which your new Rector is to be installed and the feast day of St. Simon and Jude, Simon the Zealot and Jude the Patron of Hope.

Humility, love for the poor, zeal for the truth – three qualities drawn from the Scriptures and exemplified in your professional lives and in the healthcare institutions you represent. Thank you for your service.

We’ve gathered this afternoon to celebrate the blessings of these past 25 years, as this “mission church” has proved itself to be truly a missionary church that has reached out in welcome to everyone seeking a spiritual home, and in a special way, to those who have recently come to the United States.

We are living in days that call for the unconquerable faith of Abraham, and likewise, the faith of Ignatius and the Jesuit missionaries and martyrs, not to mention my predecessors who helped lay the foundations of the Church in these United States.

The United States remains an unfinished project—it is a country still being born. So too, the Jesuit mission here is unfinished—it is a story still being written by the Spirit. As we look to the next 250 years, I would humbly suggest that the Jesuits’ task is, not to dominate the national conversation, but to deepen it.

As members of bench and bar, as advocates and ministers of justice, you are uniquely positioned to help our nation move ahead, in genuine solidarity, in truth and freedom, with an unwavering commitment to the common good and human flourishing. You are in a position to help people, especially those in need, to believe once again in the soundness of our constitutional system in the fairness of our judicial processes, in the goodness of our republic.

But faith and reason, pulling together, teach us that there is a beauty deeper than appearances, a beauty that is deeply embedded in every human being. This beauty is beheld by the Divine Eye – it is beheld in the sight of God, the God who is Creator and Redeemer of each person without exception.