Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke: Commencement Address to the Graduating Class of 2024 at Thomas Aquinas College – What Shall We Do?

President O’Reilly, Dean Cain and Members of the Faculty and Staff, Mr. Turicchi and Members of the Board of Directors, Father Markey and Father Viego, Honored Graduates and your families and friends, and benefactors and friends of Thomas Aquinas College:

“Brethren, what shall we do?”[1] Such was the response of “devout men from every nation under heaven”[2] to Saint Peter’s Pentecost Discourse. The Holy Scriptures tell us that “that they were cut to the heart.”[3] Saint Peter had proclaimed to them the truth of the Redemptive Incarnation with these words:

Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know – this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. But God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. …

This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which you see and hear. …

Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.[4]

Witnessing the transformation of the Apostles by the Descent of the Holy Spirit and hearing the preaching of Saint Peter, the devout men understood that the event which they were witnessing and the enduring reality which it manifested had changed their lives forever. They recognized the abiding victory of Jesus, “Lord and Christ,”[5] over sin and death through the outpouring of His Spirit, God the Holy Spirit, upon the Church, into the hearts of the faithful members of the Church, Christ’s Mystical Body. ….

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