. I know that many of you stayed up all night so you could see your last sunrise at BC. (Cheers.) Some of you thought it would never come, graduation that is. I’ve got news for you: Some of your parents and professors didn’t think so either. (Laughter.) Now, I notice a lot of you are wearing shades. It won’t work, folks. I’ll still hear you snoring. (Laughter.) I was on the campus of one of your rivals yesterday in New Haven. And while I let them know that they could be proud of their title in men’s hockey last year, I also had to put it in perspective: Yale is still four titles behind BC. (Cheers and applause.) There are many things actually that Yale and Boston College have in common, but one is probably the most powerful: mutual dislike of Harvard. (Laughter.) . . .As Secretary of State, I track many factions and rivalries around the world. BC versus Notre Dame is at the top of my list. Of course, there’s also Alec Baldwin versus the NYPD. (Laughter.) Beyonce’s sister versus Jay Z. (Laughter and cheers.) And then there’s the rivalry: Red Sox and Yankees. (Cheering and applause.) We absolutely loved the last ten years: Yankees – one World Series, and Red Sox – three. That's my kind of rivalry, folks. (Cheers.)
. . Many of you today might not even recognize the name of Father Robert Drinan. He was the dean of the Law School and he was running for Congress when I first visited him on the campus. And what impressed me most about Father Drinan – whether on Chestnut Hill or Capitol Hill – was that he made no apologies for his deep and abiding Catholic commitment to the weak, the helpless, the downtrodden. “If a person is really a Christian,” Father Drinan would say, “they will be in anguish over global hunger, injustice, over the denial of educational opportunity.”
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And because of where I’d been and what I’d seen, I came to Boston College with a set of nagging questions. I had confronted my own mortality head-on during the war. . . as I became disillusioned with the war, my faith also was put to test.
There’s something theologians call “the problem of evil.” It’s the difficulty of explaining how terrible and senseless events are, in fact, part of God’s plan. That was a very real test for me. Some of my closest friends were killed. You see things in war that haunt you for the rest of your life. So coming here to BC Law, reading St. Augustine on the problem of evil, or St. Thomas Aquinas on just war, the letters of St. Paul and thoughts about suffering – this was not an abstract or academic exercise. It was a chance to dig in and really try to understand where and how everything fit, including trying to understand where I fit in. I’m sure a lot of you ask those questions. It was the compassion, listening, and understanding that I experienced at BC that made me feel welcome, taught me literally how to think critically, how to ask the right questions, and reinforced in me a personal sense of direction.

. . The people I met here were putting into action the words of the Jesuit motto that you’ve heard already today: “Men and women for others.” Every institution has a mission or a motto – that’s the easy part. The hard part is ensuring that they’re not just words. We have to make sure that even as our world changes rapidly and in so many ways, we can still, each of us, give new meaning to our values. Today, I promise you that is one of the greatest challenges of America’s foreign policy: ensuring that even when it’s not popular, even when it’s not easy, America still lives up to our ideals and our responsibilities to lead. . . our citizenship is not just a privilege – it is a profound responsibility.

And what we have done to turn back the armies of defeatism and indifference in the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and even polio – this work should give every one of you confidence to confront another cross-border, cross-generational challenge, the challenge of a changing climate. If we’re going to live up to our values, this is a test that we have to meet.
Now look, I know this is hard, because I spent almost 30 years in the United States Senate pushing this issue, trying to get colleagues to move. We got up to maybe 55 votes, couldn’t quite get to 60. And I know it’s hard to feel the urgency. As we sit here on an absolutely beautiful morning in Boston, you might not see climate change as an immediate threat to your job, your community, or your families. But let me tell you, it is.


What’s frustrating is that this challenge is not without a solution. In fact, not one problem I can think of today that we face in this country is without a solution. It’s a question of capacity, willpower. The solution is actually staring us in the face. It is energy policy. Make the right energy policy choices and America can lead a $6 trillion market with 4 billion users today and growing to 9 billion users in the next 50 years.
. . .But if we do nothing, and it turns out that the critics and the naysayers and the members of the Flat Earth Society, if it turns out that they’re wrong, then we are risking nothing less than the future of the entire planet. This is not a hard choice, frankly. But still, let me tell you we need the help of every single one of you to make it.

In the end, all of these global challenges – how to defend against extremism, how to eradicate disease, how to provide young people with opportunity, how to protect our planet – all of these questions of whether men and women can live in dignity. What do I mean by dignity? I mean exactly the same thing that Father David Hollenbach taught on this campus and brought to the forefront of Catholic social teaching: That when families have access to clean water and clean power, they can live in dignity. When people have the freedom to choose their government on election day and to engage their fellow citizens every day, they can live in dignity. When all citizens can make their full contribution no matter their ethnicity; no matter who they love or what name they give to God, they can live in dignity. . . The diploma that you will receive today isn’t just a certificate of accomplishment. It’s a charge to keep. It’s a powerful challenge to every single one of you, because you have already been blessed with a world-class education, and with it comes responsibility. Part of that responsibility is taking to heart the values that you’ve learned here and sharing them with the world beyond BC. That spirit of service is part of the fabric of this school, just as it is part of the fabric of our nation.

I often think of the words of our first Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, someone who also founded a prestigious university like yours. Jefferson spoke about the beauty of a simple image: using one candle to light another. And he said that when that happens, both candles gain light and neither candle loses any. He was talking about the contagious quality of shared knowledge. As heirs to the Jesuit tradition, this is an idea that you know well. Two centuries before Jefferson, St. Ignatius Loyola always closed his letters with a simple charge, and it’s one I pass on to you today. St. Ignatius wrote simply, “Set the world aflame.”

So graduates of 2014, pass on your light to others. Set the world aflame with your service. Welcome those who are lost; seek out those at the crossroads. That is how you can fulfill your responsibility as a graduate of this great institution. That is how you can answer the call to be a servant, leader, and that is how you can keep faith with and renew the idea of America, and that is how we all live up to our duty as citizens.