Good morning, brothers and sisters!
What a thrill it is for my wife, Kathy, and me to be with you graduates and your loved ones on this memorable day. You are an impressive sight. Based on my own experience with the aging process, I recommend you take lots of pictures today. As far as I can tell, it will be pretty much downhill from this point on!
I rejoice with you in the accomplishment that your graduation from college represents. According to the United States Census Bureau, only 29 percent—slightly more than one quarter—of the U.S. population over age twenty-five has a bachelor’s degree or higher. Whether you are receiving an associate’s or a bachelor’s degree today, you have indeed achieved something significant and become part of a select group. On behalf of all of us who have come to celebrate with you graduates today, I express admiration and commendation to you for your hard work, your perseverance, and your desire to prepare well for the future. I know that what you have learned here will bless you and your families throughout this life and will, as promised, rise with you in the resurrection.
I know, too, that my commencement address is essentially all that remains between you and total happiness today! A German saying from my mission comes to mind: “In der Kürze liegt die Würze.” Roughly translated this means, “In brevity there is power.” I think on a day such as this, in brevity there is also wisdom. Accordingly, I have but two simple points to make. I will make the first with a “brief” story.
Nearly twenty years ago Kathy and I led the New York Rochester Mission for two years. One day a local leader of a large and prominent church called me. He explained that he was the chairman of a committee that had the assignment to revitalize the attendance and activity of the young adult members of his church in the greater Rochester area. He had scouted around and found that of all churches in that area, the LDS Church had the most active and engaged group of young adults. He inquired if I would be willing to share with him and his committee the secrets of our Church’s success? As you can imagine, this was a wonderful invitation for an eager mission president to receive! I thanked him for asking, but told him I wanted a day or two to think about how I could be most helpful before accepting his offer.
A few days later—after considerable reflection—I called him back. I told him that there was a way I might help him and his church produce faithful and believing young adults, but there was a hitch: my solution would require them to adopt Mormonism—in its entirety! He thanked me politely, but declined. I was disappointed, but not surprised.
What led me to respond to him as I did? It was the realization that the production of religiously interested and spiritually strong young adults—and there are about 1300 of you present and graduating today—isn’t simply the result of an identifiable Church program or activity or curriculum; rather, it represents the fruits of the incomparable way of life to be had by living the restored gospel of Jesus Christ—in its entirety!
Think about it. Even before a baby is born we know of its spiritual existence, and we typically await its arrival on earth with great anticipation. Clothing and supplies are purchased, baby showers are held, prayers are offered, and no effort is spared in preparing for such a blessed moment. In this country, where approximately 40 percent of all babies are now born out of wedlock, consider the blessing of being born to parents who are married—eternally—and who at their baby’s birth immediately adore him or her and begin to offer security, love, and a gospel-centered way of life. That is truly coming to earth with a “head start.”
But life has only just begun. In the Latter-day Saint home, the newborn makes its public debut within a few weeks, when he or she is brought before the ward family to be given a name and a blessing. Ever after, that baby has an immediate extended family of three or four hundred people who know the child by name and are interested in its welfare. As a young boy growing up in such a ward, word of my misdeeds always arrived home before I did! By eighteen months the acculturation and teaching of the child begins in the Primary nursery. At age three he or she is promoted to the wonderful status of a “Sunbeam”! Through gospel instruction—including the learning of never-to-be-forgotten songs, such as “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam,” “I Am a Child of God,” “Follow the Prophet,” and “Book of Mormon Stories”—the child begins preparation for baptism at eight years of age. This early opportunity for an LDS child to participate in a sacred ordinance and to make covenants with God is an event that never leaves his or her consciousness. Who among us can’t vividly recall the details of our own baptism and our promise to follow Christ and keep His commandments?
Consider, too, how helpful it is to renew those promises every Sunday of our lives by partaking of the sacrament.
Primary ends at age twelve, when young men are ordained deacons in the Aaronic Priesthood and join the Young Men’s program, while girls join the Young Women’s auxiliary. At that point, in addition to Sunday church meetings, young people meet one night a week for “Mutual,” the youth program. They also begin to participate in Duty to God and Personal Progress programs that provide wide-ranging opportunities for personal development. A few years later, as they enter ninth grade, they begin attending an hour-long class five days a week known as “seminary.” During the four years this goes on, Latter-day Saint youth work their way through a course of study involving the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Book of Mormon, and Church history. Many even get up long before the sun does to be able to attend such a class. During these years youth also participate in a variety of service projects, summer camps, youth conferences, and, if they desire, they can obtain what President Thomas S. Monson has called a “Personal Liahona” by receiving a patriarchal blessing. These growing up years aren’t just times of passive Church attendance. Most young people serve as leaders in their quorums and classes. As part of this service, they sit in councils with their bishopric and youth leaders, where plans and decisions are made, and they have opportunity to minister and serve in tangible ways. It is a wonderful time of learning, service, and growth.
But the institutional path for LDS youth I have described is really secondary in importance to what goes on at home during those formative years. In the best of cases, there is a wonderful religious rhythm to Latter-day Saint domestic life. Days are begun and ended with family prayers, dinner-time gatherings and conversations are regular and lively, the Holy Scriptures are individually owned—this alone is remarkable—and are also often regularly read in the family circle. Even if a family specializes only in the First Book of Nephi, as was the case with our family’s Book of Mormon reading program, there is great benefit to be had from the consistent striving. Monday night’s family home evening—reserved for a song, a lesson, a game, and a treat—is a unique feature of Latter-day Saint home life. Although on any given Monday night anxious parents may wonder whether they’ve done more harm than good, the cumulative positive effect of such evenings over the period of a child’s life at home is incalculable. Where the family head is a father, there is also the influence at home of priesthood and its power. Sometimes a caring home teacher or uncle or bishop can be a substitute for a missing father. Priesthood blessings are given when a family member is ill, upon a child returning to school, on the eve of a child’s marriage, and on other special occasions.
There is also the doctrinal dimension of home life to consider. Parents have been commanded to teach their children the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ, and baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost—and most do. Most also understand that they can have power and influence with their children only when they honor agency and lead their family with gentleness, meekness, and love unfeigned. In this connection, I vividly remember Kathy and I beginning an interview with one of our daughters—in a day when we thought those individual monthly sessions with each child were doing such good—with the daughter exclaiming, “Okay, mom and dad, hammer away!” Sooner or later most parents are guided by the Spirit to know that it is a combination of example, love, agency, teaching, and Spirit that helps a child internalize gospel principles and want to live his or her life accordingly. This intergenerational transfer of faith and of the LDS way of life—without compulsory means—is the quest of all right-thinking Latter-day Saint parents and is the source of some of life’s greatest joys.
If all goes as hoped and planned, at eighteen the young men and women of the Church usually have some combination of three worthy goals in mind: a mission, an education, and eventually eternal marriage. “Turning in one’s papers”—which in this digital age is no longer an accurate description of the missionary application process—is one of the most anxiously anticipated events of a young man’s and, increasingly, of a young woman’s life. It is also attended by a spiritual milestone of great significance: participation in the temple endowment ceremony and, for young men, being ordained an elder in the Melchizedek Priesthood. Here again, as with baptism, in the temple a young Latter-day Saint experiences a sacred and highly educational ordinance, coupled with meaningful covenants designed to produce a life of integrity and consecration to the Lord’s purposes. It will soon be fifty years since the experience of my own first endowment in the Logan Temple. I can recall the details and my feelings with great clarity. When it is entered into with real intent, the endowment ceremony can become life changing and acts to instill in the participant a lasting loyalty to the Savior and His kingdom. The missionary service that follows is one of the miracles of this world. A constant force of approximately 50,000 young adults deployed across the world in full-time service, supported primarily by self and family, is something simply incomprehensible to most non-LDS observers. With 25,000 of these young adult missionaries returning home each year—each one having become more knowledgeable about life, committed to the gospel, and focused on a constructive future—it’s no wonder, as I discovered in Rochester, that the Church’s single adult activity rate is something to be envied! Following a mission, an education, and the crowning ordinance of eternal marriage become the next steps. You graduates know much about both of these—or you soon will! I must also observe that the educational opportunity you have had here at BYU-Idaho—in terms of both curriculum and faculty—is exceptional!
At this point you’re probably wondering why I have surveyed in such detail the path most of you have walked in reaching the educational summit on which you stand today. It’s to make my first point: Please—this day and always—recognize and remember and be grateful that you are the beneficiaries of and have grown up under the greatest religious, cultural, and social system on earth, the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. And, you have been blessed to experience it in its entirety! In short, you have been reared according to God’s plan. In that process, the investment of love, teaching, and tangible resources the Church and your families have made in you to this point in your lives is phenomenal. We often hear about how good you are—that you are a chosen generation—and I sincerely believe that is true. But I must honestly add: you ought to be! You ought to be! No effort, no expense, no opportunity has been spared to enable you to achieve your God-given potential. To borrow a line from The Sound of Music, “nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could!”
That leads me to my second and final point: Therefore, what? Therefore, what? That profound question, by the way, was once posed as the sole comment President Boyd K. Packer reportedly made in reviewing a general conference talk one of the other Apostles had prepared! President Packer’s intent, I believe, was to help his fellow Apostle realize that to be complete, the talk he had written needed to suggest some application of the principles it contained, some action that ought to follow, some improvement that should occur. Is that not a fair expectation to have of you graduates today as well? Given the life’s experiences most of you have had thus far growing up in and being so richly blessed by the restored gospel of Jesus Christ—and I want to give you due credit for your personal efforts and wise use of agency—what now is your future obligation? Therefore, what?
I have a suggestion: My hope is that you will consider your blessed beginning in life as a prelude to a deep and lasting commitment to become a true disciple of Jesus Christ. His invitation, “Come, follow me,”[1] speaks to the soul of every man or woman who acknowledges His divinity and has experienced the miracle of His forgiveness. Consciously choosing to live a life of discipleship will enable you in time to translate all the experiences, teachings, ordinances, and covenants of your youth into improved personal behavior—into becoming more Christlike. You have already learned many things in your young lives, but knowledge alone cannot save. It’s difficult to improve on the sobering words of King Benjamin, who said, “Now, if ye believe all these things see that ye do them.”[2]
Living the life of a disciple will help you “put off” the natural man or woman, and then you will find yourselves becoming more saintly.[3] I see evidence of this wherever I go in the Church. In every land there are good men and women, not particularly concerned with social or economic status, who are becoming saintly. It is my fondest hope that this will be your future as well. Please don’t simply be inheritors of the spiritual riches I have described, but rather be active disciples of the Lord. Serve and love and learn and teach and share and bless others—and practice the self-denial of a disciple that will allow you to master appetites and passions. And above all, do all of this at home. We make our covenants in churches and temples, but they are best kept at home.
A life of discipleship—of consistently seeking to live as Christ did and to become like Him—is, I believe, the way we best come to know Him; and coming to know Him and His Father, our Father, is “life eternal.”[4] For many years I have had inscribed at the front of my triple combination this priceless quote from the prophet of my youth, President David O. McKay: “That man [and I’ll add “that woman”] is most truly great who is most Christlike. What you sincerely in your heart think of Christ will determine what you are, will largely determine what your acts will be.”[5]
Please, think enough of Christ to make Him your master and to strive all your life to be His disciple. On this most memorable and pivotal day in your young lives, I wish you good health, good happiness, good fortune, and lives as committed disciples of the Savior. I know that “No man cometh unto the Father, but by [Him].”[6] Maybe all we really need to know we did learn in Primary: Let’s be sunbeams for Him! In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Notes
[1] Luke 18:22
[2] Mosiah 4:10
[3] Mosiah 3:19
[4] John 17:3
[5] Conference Report, April 1951, p. 93
[6] John 14:6