Fordham University - Maroon Yearbook (New York, NY)

Page 19 text:

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Page 18 text:

' 1 .F YQ, 'h ' ffl i xx lm: . .. 1.1. ..L. ... uw HAS often been said that we are what our influences 4. . Q are. These influences are wide in scope, encompassing ids: MS'-f everything from a classical symphony to a baseball game. There are, however, three main channels of experience which essen- tially affect our entire lives: our God, our parents and our teachers. The first two are never forgotten for our realization of their love and guidance grows with our development into maturity. We remember our parents long after they leave us and we keep our God in mind unto our last living act. But sadly enough, our teachers, the third great factor in building our characters, are too often for- gotten and never wholly nor justly commended for their untiring efforts in our behalf. Therefore, let us here respectfully and gratefully acknowledge the work which they have performed in molding our minds and characters, in establishing us as good citizens of our community and forever as true sons of our Lord. Again, if we are ever to be actively Catholic gentlemen, which is the basic purpose and hope of the University, it will only be through the imitation and influence of our professors.

Page 20 text:

LA FORDI-IAM UNIVERSITY NEW YORK 58, N. Y. THE PRESIDENTS ROOM In the spring of the year 57, the great St. Paul sat down at a writing table in the City of Ephesus on the shore of far off Asia Minor. In letters of fire he penned his first recorded message to the Christians of ancient Corinth and sent it off to them by sailing ship across the blue waters of the Aegean Sea. Time has not dulled the fire of his words, nor can distince diminish the im- portance of his message on man's responsibility for man. If one member suffers anything, all the members suffer with it, or if one member glories all the members rejoice with it. You are the body of Christ, member for member. It is of this social consciousness, this Christian and Christ-like obligation to the human race, this privilege and duty of every Fordham man to be respon- sible to and for his fellowmen that I am thinking, as I sit here at my desk in the Administration Building penning the message which Editor George Woods has asked me to write to the graduates of '5O. Five hundred years ago Rose Hill was primeval forest. But man came and in the course of time he built a church to God and a school for man-body, mind, spirit-a temple where the adopted sons of God could learn to know and love and serve their Father. Here for more than one hun- dred years students have studied and played, have lived and died. To every one of them, in greater or less degree, has come an awareness of the ideal on which this whole University rests-man's responsibility for man. That awareness of social responsibility comes to the Fordhan man from his consciousness of the past. God's fingers fashioned the dust of earth and Divine Power breathed upon it and from the first man and woman came the body of every man that walks the earth today. For thousands of years our ancestors walked in the darkness of exile from their first common home. Then there came the Son of God Himself to join our nature unto His, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh-forever our blood relative. We belong to Him and He belongs to us and we belong to each other. Above and beyond the accidental barriers of race or language, of time or distance, we are one family. Each man, who walks this planet to which we are all bound and where there rest the bones of ten thousand years of ancestors-each woman, each child, each infant yet unborn has a natural dignity and value in our eyes. He has the right to life, to life in security, to an inviolable dignity of his person. He has the right to labor to support him- self, to marry and to support his children. He has a right to think the truth. He has a right to speak the good. He has a right to worship the God Who made him. Above and beyond all this, he has the dignity of an adopted child of God, redeemed in Christ, bought by His Blood, destined for the joy of His Vision forever. This bond between us is no passing thing. Centuries ago, it sent Peter from far oft Asia to Rome, to build his church and die. Through hun- dreds of years, it sent saints and martyrs through Italy and Germany and France, to England and Ireland, to India and China and the East, to America- to Fordham. Through their sacrifice and suffering, through their love across two thousand years, we have the knowledge and the faith that illuminates these halls. The torch is now ours. Our journey together is short-lived, our destiny together is eternal. One day you and I and every man who breathes this morning will stand together before the Iudgment Seat of God. He Himself has told us what the measure of His Iudgment will be. It will not be money. It will not be knowl- edge. It will be the loving responsibility of man for man. Amen, I say to you, as long as you did it-or did not do it-for one of these, the least of my brethren, you did it-or did not do it-for Me. May the Holy Spirit, the Fruit of the Love of God the Father, for God the Son, kindle in your hearts during all your days a deep abiding supernatural awareness that no man walks this earth alone. God bless you, every one-Graduates of '50, 18