The Final Lecture: 2005

The "Final Lecture" of Father R. Gerard Albright, Professor of Biology

UDM Honors Program Induction Ceremony and Dinner
October 9, 2005

Thank you very much, Dr. Koukal, for your most generous and flattering introduction. And my greetings to all of you: to Fr. Stockhausen, our President , to my other administration and faculty colleagues, to student and alumni members of the Honor Program of our University, and (in a very special way) to this evening's new Honor inductees, families and friends.

It was for me a most pleasant surprise last February when I learned that the Honors Program students had selected me to be this evening's speaker. I thought: What might I, a very long-time professor of biology, say on this occasion as I gave my "Last Lecture"? And, I strongly suspect, all of you are wondering the very same thing right now. Would I . . . should I . . . comment on the views of the New York Times and other popular media with regard to this past summer's newest challenge to Organic Evolution in the guise of Intelligent Design? Or maybe analyze the latest twist of the Double Helix and similar molecular phenomena?

Fear not and relax, dear friends . . . my focus tonight is very much elsewhere. And that is as it should be.

For we are all gathered here this evening, not because of me and my professional interests, but because of the young men and women whom the University is about to welcome into one of the most prestigious organizations under its sponsorship.

And that is the reason, my dear New Honors Inductees, that I direct my Last Lecture remarks to you on this auspicious occasion. Words of congratulation . . . very much so! But even more so: words of challenge!

In fact, a Triple Challenge to each individual one of you! I do so fully aware that you are the type of individual who does not merely face up to challenges, but looks forward to meeting them head on.

In fact, it is for this very reason that you are what you are today. And that constitutes my Challenge Number One . . .

. . . that you recognize what you have in fact accomplished, and how it came about that you have done so. That you acknowledge that God has from the very beginning selected you to become something wonderfully special. And that you have already been working hard to achieve it.

Home and the earlier years of school differ in details for each of you, one from another, of course. And yet a common theme prevails. Parents and family and teachers pointed out the way, steered you in the right direction, provided you with examples of what could be done . . . ought to be done. Nurtured each tiny spark of receptivity on your part. Stood close to support you as needed when you took each first and faltering step. Helped you find once again the right path when you wandered off into the wasteland of anxiety and uncertainty and error.

And it was parents and family and teachers…each in his or her own way who quietly allowed you to develop your mind and heart, and to grow in knowledge and in the wisdom that life itself provides for those who move forward to meet it. Yes, each of you, tonight's Honors Program Inductees, has already done this very thing, and done so with distinction.

And that is why my First Challenge to you is to recognize what is already embedded deep within the very being of each of you. To see and to admit that something very special has already taken deep root within the reality that is you personally. Pride is one thing . . . boastfulness something very different. Modesty and humility are virtues indeed, but they need not be coupled with shyness or a yearning to back away from accomplishments. So I urge you to recognize what you have already done, what you have already become, what has earned you a rightful place at tonight's Honors celebration. To recognize this . . . and then to meet it head-on.

Challenge Number Two . . .

Yes, there is indeed something more . . . a great deal more . . . that lies ahead. For so much of what you have already accomplished, what you have become, is but a prelude to what is yet to appear over the horizon of life. You have already shown clearly the potential that is rightfully yours. Challenge Number Two is my calling each of you to still further actuate the potentials deep within you, and not to let them lie fallow or become dormant as the months and years slip by. To understand and appreciate that seeds once planted bear fruit only when preceded by further growth and development.

To appreciate more fully that what you have already been given calls for something more than simple grateful acceptance on your part. Whether they openly express it or not, parents and families, teachers and friends . . . yes, and the God of us all . . . rightly expect that you even now do more than merely clasp close the inheritance that has come to you. It is an inheritance not to be buried in some dark corner, but to be invested in the sunlight of growth and fruition.

Yes, a generous supply of talent and ability is already the possession of each of you. Make it grow taller into the sunlight of life! Look to where you can profitably find new strength, gain new knowledge, expand into the acquisition of new wisdom.

By now I am sure you have made at least a tentative choice of some sort of professional career. Keep it sharply in focus, of course. But round out your overall profile by dipping into other realms if learning.

If you are not majoring in architecture, has it ever occurred to you to at least find out what kinds of excitement keep Loranger Hall buzzing with activity month in and month out?

If engineering seems to be little more than harnessing and controlling and developing mechanical or chemical or electrical energy, have you ever asked yourself: why do so many of my fellow students energetically make it such an intimate part of their lives?

How about you Liberal Arts majors . . . are those Core Curriculum science and math and computer course requirements significantly more than simply areas of learning that you would just as soon avoid if you could?

To those of you venturing into the corporate world of business: Have you looked beyond a consideration of how profits are acquired, and sought to understand the effects on others that profit acquisition leaves behind for them to cope with as best they can?

And how about you students who are day in and day out being swept along by the gale-force winds of gaining and retaining all of the scientific factual material inherent in preparing for medicine or dentistry or nursing or one of the other health-related careers? To you I ask: are the Liberal Arts for you scarcely more than academic hoops to be jumped through as you lurch forward along the road of life?

Yes, we all have our own individual areas of academic focus that beckon us with an almost irresistible attraction. But as Honors Students you are called upon--you are expected!--to continually progress into the expansive and ever-deeper realms of learning and knowledge and life experiences that lead to the acquisition of true wisdom.

This implies not merely strengthening and further developing what you have already acquired! It means setting your sight on new vistas. Looking with an energetic curiosity towards areas deserving of further and deeper exploration on your part. Yes, and this includes as well realms of knowledge and understanding that you may have never even thought of as being something important in the development of the total personality that is uniquely yours.

Do you, my dear Honor Students, grasp what I'm driving at? Do you understand that the implications of all I have been saying is the very essence of Challenge Number Two? That you not simply rest on your laurels, but realize that you are urged and called upon by all the others of us here this evening to actuate those potentials, to bring to an even further reality those God-given talents that are yours.

"But, you say, I'm already swamped . . . when can I do all this?" My answer to this constitutes the very core of Challenge Number Three.

To face the reality that now is the time to take those talents and abilities that are rightfully yours, and nurture and make them grow ever upward toward a still fuller fruition. Now, these very Days, when the energies of Youth are still at your beck and call. Now, when the months and years of a professional career still lie ahead of you. Now, before all the distractions yet to come cloud life's picture and make it almost impossible to penetrate the inexorable fog that will most certainly settle in with the passing years.

Yes, my Challenge Number Three is for each of you to convince yourself that now, during these Days of your Youth, is the time to take and shape and expand and nurture and develop the talents and abilities that make you what you have become, what you are this day! To postpone action, to say "there's still time ahead for this in the decades to come ", is tantamount to saying that it will in all likelihood never happen at all. To put aside this Challenge is simply to admit that your own Days of Youth are destined to become Lost Days of Youth . . . lost in the very real sense of missed opportunities to grow and develop . . . to strengthen and lift higher the hearts and spirits of those who have come to know and to love you. Lost in the sense of gone and never to be retrieved.

I'll venture the guess that you are thinking: "Well, it's easy for him to stand up there now during his Last Lecture and toss his three challenges our way. What in the way of challenges did he himself have thrown his way back in his own college days?"

Well, my dear Honorees, it has indeed been a very long time between this evening and my own days of youth! But I can still go back. No, I have not forgotten those days. The days when these same three challenges came my way . . . not as the core of somebody else's last lecture, but in my own inner musings. The Three Challenges applied to me back then just as they do to each of you this evening.

And you're thinking: "And what back then did you do to avoid having those Lost Days of Youth become a reality??" I'll tell you: I thought. And I wondered: what would it be like to place myself a lifetime into the future . . . to turn then . . . and look back on those bygone days when I was young . . . when the days of youth were not yet lost in the distant past.

I thought. And I wondered . . .

. . . Wondered how to make the Days of Youth vibrantly alive and
in focus.

. . . Wondered how to expand and develop them into something truly
meaningful.

. . . Wondered how to energetically strive to be sure that opportunities
not slip from sight…that those Days of Youth not fade away and
end up in realm of Lost Days of Youth.

I thought. And I wondered. And I mused.

It was November in the year nineteen hundred and forty-seven. I was twenty-one . . . about the very age of you, our Honorees, this evening. I mused for awhile . . . and I wondered . . . and I set forth my thoughts on paper.

And this is what I wrote . . .

Lost Days of Youth, entombed forever more
'Neath swirling drifts, a never-melting snow;
Sweet spring of life, that age has covered o'er
And buried in the depths of long ago.
Lost Days, that slipped from view on wings of mist,
As do the shimmering stars at break of dawn,
Like sparkling beads of dew, by moonbeams kissed,
They glimmered in life's morn, but now are gone.
Of joys that were, alas, none can partake;
For days gone by 'tis useless now to weep,
Since neither tears nor longings can awake
Lost loves the winds of time have breathed to sleep.
--- Too young was I to understand it then . . .
And now too old to live it o'er again.