Affecting the Human Environment

Affecting the human environment

Here below is the address I gave to the first graduating class of Juan Diego Academy, in Mission, Texas. We are all very proud of  the graduates, and grateful to their families.

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Sociologists and anthropologists define culture in many ways. So do theologians.
I am hoping by keeping it simple tonight, we can avoid much unnecessary confusion.

Culture is the environment of human relationality.

You are in it even as you affect it.
It's quality upon receipt affects you, and your quality upon receipt affects it.

Various cultures coexist at the same time, in the same place. They can inter-penetrate and yet remain remarkably distinct

This is true everywhere, but it is very clearly true in the RIo Grande Valley.

It is possible to speak of a dominant American culture, one that derives its formative force from history, law and media expression. There is here in the Valley also an enduring presence of Mexican culture, largely transmitted by local customs, language forms, and also media expression.

There are others: Texas culture, y la cultura norteña.

Cultures do not make you who you are, rather they specify how you receive a call to be who you are.

Certain cultures you are born into. As we get older, they can be something we choose to enter into.

Back to my simple definition: the environment of human relationality. 

The first culture we know in this world is our immediate family culture. All the other more national cultures reach us through it. I remember as a little boy we watched the Ed Sullivan show as a family. Then one night the Beatles appeared on the show. My Dad decided we weren't going to watch Ed Sullivan anymore. That lasted about a month, then we were watching it again. 

My point is that national cultures are received first through family culture.

Family culture has to do with how we are received into the world of human living. No family culture is perfect, but it can be largely affirming and joyful or it can be the opposite. Family culture is where we learn (or not) what it is like to be loved and cared for, for no other reason than that we are here, and our families are glad we are here.

If we can speak of a breakdown in family culture, it is at this basic point that the disfunction is most devastating: when a child is not in a human environment where he or she learns what it is like to be loved.

Human abilities to relate well to others get off to a good or a bad start first in a family culture.

The second great cultural world we encounter is the school culture. Here is where we learn how to be received and how to receive others into a community where what it means to belong is less clear. I cried my first day of first grade because I didn't think I would be "at home there". In other words, I didn't think I would belong.

School culture, from first grade all the way to post-graduate school, can be cliquish or it can be hospitable to newcomers; it can be self-centered or it can be service centered. It can be energetic or lethargic. It can consciously try to uphold a high standard of excellence, or it can barely skim above mediocrity. It can feed envy and jealousy or it can promote gratitude and respect for the good in others.

Our national and local cultures, understood as environmental conditions affecting the quality of human relations, are fed by the streams of water that flow from the human environment of the family and school cultures we belong to and that we try to sustain.

If families and schools do not teach the more basic excellence of relating generously with one another, then neither will the wider cultures to which we belong.

In the end this is why the Church must invest her best efforts on the family and in schools. It is Christ Jesus who asks us to affect the culture for the better, to make the culture of human relating more humane, more merciful, more compassionate.

The graduating class of JDA was asked, almost without their knowing it, to set the trajectory for a Catholic School Culture. You were given a task you could not have fully appreciated at the time you started as freshmen, the task of setting up an atmosphere of human relation that would be either welcoming or not, generous or not, excellent or not.

With each new class entering you were to be the leaders in making a people-friendly school culture.

And now as each of you go to a new place to continue your education in the mystery of human relating, you will for the most part be entering places of cultures already established. Perhaps that is a bit intimidating. You ask yourself, "will I fit in?"

But do not be afraid. Look at what you have already done, you have affected the culture of this school for the better. Indeed, as the first graduating class, you have been the agents of creating a culture where the goodness of life is affirmed, and the excellence of study does not eclipse the goodness of hearts. 

If your next chapter leads you to a place that is cliquish, you can make it less so. Or if you go to a place where honesty and generosity are lacking, you can make these virtues more present in the environment you find yourself in.

If you go to a place where competition and getting what you want at any cost is the atmosphere you breathe, you can affect the culture by being who you are, a man or woman of integrity, mercy and compassion.

You can affect the culture, because now, after 4 years of creating a good one you know what the task entails. It entails putting people before things and putting God before all else.

Be aware that the grace of your time at JDA, has been a grace for us all, in the fullest sense of the term: something given to us by God to make us better able to live and love. 

You have had the frequent celebration of the sacraments, prayer and lots of activities meant to engender a truly humane human community where all are welcome, and none disrespected. 

My hope is that as you leave here, you can say honestly, that "there at that school, I know I was loved". And because you have had that experience at home and at school, you can go out to help others be loved too. 

I ask you especially to be agents of hospitality and welcome to those many you will encounter who do not know as well as you about what a gift it is to be loved. 

Our world culture is not so hospitable to life. In fact it is often hostile to children and to the very old. You must show that the world, as God intends it, is not just for the strong, it is home also to the weak, the poor, the children and the old. Be someone who shows gracious hospitality to everyone, and not just the strong, and those favored by the powerful. 

That is how you can take what you were given at home and at school, and make the environment of human relations better, more humane, more compassionate and merciful.

Stay close to the source of this grace, Christ and his Church. With the gifts he gives through her, and the gift that you can be in her, you can make the wider culture we live in a more hospitable and generous one.

My thanks to your parents for the family culture that formed your coming, and for their willingness to take a chance on a new school,

Thanks also to your teachers and the generous staff, and administration for their kindness and hard work, and for their trusting that a risk for something good is blessed by God no matter what the outcome.

And thanks to God,  who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who has shown us how his ways can surprise many an expert by making something good flourish in unexpected places.

God bless you always.

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