Playing a Part in the Lives of Students

Good and loving God-We thank you for the completion of another academic year, and for giving us the opportunity,short though it may have been, to play a part in the lives of our students and our newgraduates. We are grateful for your guidance and love as we shared in this important work.

Please bless and guide our graduates as they reach this end, and as they chart new beginnings.May what they have learned by being here with us allow them to truly be "women and men forothers." May what we have learned from them enable us to be the same.

Please help them to use all that they have learned here to make the world a better place - toserve others in true solidarity and kinship - to seek ways to help the poor, the marginalized,and those who are suffering - and to always seek the greater good.

We know that some of them will experience pain and hardship, and we know that some ofthem already have, and we ask you to grant them solace and strength.

Finally, Father, we thank you for giving us the opportunity to build our community with theseyoung men and women while they are here. Though they are leaving our campus, we knowthat they will always be with us as part of the Xavier family, and we ask that the bonds thathave been created here remain strong despite any distance.

We ask all of this in your name, and in the name of your Son.

- Written and offered by Phil Chick