You Were Not Made for Comfort, You Were Made for Greatness
These are adapted remarks from Kevin Roberts’ commencement address to the 2025 graduating class of Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire. Dr. Roberts has served as President of the Heritage Foundation since October 2021 and jointly as President of Heritage Action for America since September 2023.
A Commission to Fulfill
In my career as an educator, I have always been fascinated by the places where schools take root. I believe schools—and the students they produce—always reflect something of their natural, geographic settings. I’ve seen it everywhere I’ve taught, all over the country: in the hardscrabble Appalachian Mountains, where folks took their local history as seriously as winter; in Texas, where students tended to be quite “independent” thinkers; in the South, where—as William Faulkner said—“the past is never dead, it’s not even past”; and in Wyoming, where students learn amidst landscapes as vast and humbling as God’s mercy.
So when I was invited to speak at graduation, I immediately wondered how Merrimack, New Hampshire had imprinted its unique character on Thomas More College’s mission and community. I learned that from its earliest settlements, this area seemed to be in a constant churn. Before Europeans arrived, southern New Hampshire was home to several native tribes at different times. As time passed, none could stop the settlers. On the other hand, the colonists also could not seem to settle. As was common throughout New Hampshire, they would come, build homes, and then leave during spasms of violence—then come back. Even the town’s four distinct villages reflected this fragmented character. The one thing that unified this community, going back hundreds of years, was the river.
Through all the town’s fits and starts, trials and errors, the Merrimack River sustained its people. It enabled hunters to hunt, farmers to farm, missionaries to preach, millers to mill, traders to trade, and families to flourish. However unpredictable the setting or diverse the challenges the people living here have faced, that river has brought them, served them, and propelled them forward. It has been a constant source of vitality, renewal, resilience, adventure, and hope. The Merrimack River is what gave this community hope—hope that here, they could earn a living, build a life, and make a difference.
I don’t think you need to have conquered Thomas More College’s classical liberal arts curriculum to see the parallel here. What the river has been to Merrimack, so the Truth of the Gospel and the patrimony of Christendom must be to you—and what you, Class of 2025, must now be to the world.
For the past four years, your education—your immersion in “the best that has been thought and said”—has helped you gradually wade into that river. But today, Christ has the same words for each of you that he had for St. Peter on the shores of the Sea of Galilee: “Duc in Altum”—“Put out into the deep.” Today, your education is no longer an aspiration to pursue. It is a charge to keep, a commission to fulfill, a God-given opportunity none of us can afford to have you waste—a call you must answer.
Our Falling World
You are graduating today into a world changing faster than ever before—and yet, it is exactly the same as it has been since the Garden of Eden: fallen.
This is one of the great practical virtues of a classical education. When we read original texts, Scripture, the epics and classics, when we study history and poetry and art, we learn that human nature has no history. We were created good, in the image and likeness of God. Our first parents sinned and passed their sinfulness to us. That is why we can relate to Cain and Abel and the Prodigal Son and his brother and Priam and Hamlet and Elizabeth Bennet, just as naturally as we can to our own friends and family.
Yes, fallen man has created a falling world. This is true now as it ever was. When I graduated from college in 1996, for instance, Russia was at war. Israel was under attack by Hamas and Hezbollah. Sudan was mired in civil war. Iran was secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons. And the United States seemed to be hurtling toward cultural rot, partisan rancor, and fiscal catastrophe. Sound familiar?
The point of a liberal education, like the one you all have received here at Thomas More College, is not to tell you that the world is broken, or even that the world has always been broken. It’s to show you why it’s broken and how to fix it. As G.K. Chesterton said of fairy tales: they don’t teach children that there are dragons. Children already know there are dragons. Rather, fairy tales teach children that dragons can be killed. What your liberal education liberates you from is hopelessness and helplessness. It gives you the opportunity to be great—to “set the world ablaze,” in the words of Catherine of Siena. And there is no better time than now.
Our new Pope, Leo XIV—whose name fills me with so much hope for the future of God’s Church—reminded us in his first homily that there remain “many settings in which the Christian faith is considered absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent… where believers are mocked, opposed, despised or at best tolerated and pitied.” And as someone who works in Washington, D.C., I can tell you that he is right. Every day, we are bombarded with the grandiose ambitions of ideologues who speak in the language of progress—that is, driving us as far away from our Creator and original nature as possible. Consider technology, which has turned the power to connect us into a force for loneliness, addiction, and division. Or medicine, which increasingly exploits its knowledge about biology to industrialize the destruction and manipulation of human beings. Or business, where predatory profiteering—divorced from the common good—has led firms to conspire with our enemies against their neighbors and commoditize their customers. And don’t forget politics, which across the West increasingly oppresses sovereign citizens in the name of democracy. Or art, as our culture spirals down into the sewers of pornography, performative propaganda, and algorithmic slop. Or last but not least, education, where our most prestigious institutions have abandoned rigor and truth in favor of bigotry, mediocrity, and wholesale academic fraud. I hope and pray that you appreciate that Thomas More College is an antidote to all of this.
The depressing state of our society and of the world leads many Christians and Catholics—far too many—to wash their hands of it. They retreat from the world—its temptations and follies and poisonous muck. They do so in sincerity and in righteousness, but I believe also in error. They think they are like medieval monks, tending the flames of our patrimony in seclusion, while outside the winds of heresy and corruption blow themselves out. Or like the Apostles, whom Our Lord enjoined to slap from their sandals the dust of any place that rejects the Good News. But I fear they are more like the Israelites camped in the wilderness of Paran on the doorstep of Canaan, soon after the Exodus. They sent twelve spies to scout the Promised Land. Forty days later, ten of the twelve scouts reported back that while the land did flow with milk and honey, the inhabitants there were too rich, too powerful, too strong to defeat. This was the sin for which the Israelites were punished to wander the desert for forty years. Not heresy or idolatry or cruelty, but timidity. And of the twelve spies, it was only Joshua and Caleb—the two that believed Israel could conquer its enemies—that lived to see the Promised Land.
We will never know how many of the setbacks our culture has endured are due to the choice of devout Christians to withdraw from fights just before they might have been won. “Let us not grow tired of doing good,” St. Paul exhorts the Galatians, “for in due time we shall reap our harvest, if we do not give up.” If we do not give up.
Be the Storm
What the Lord taught the Israelites and Paul taught the Galatians is what Thomas More College taught you and what the Communion of Saints teaches the whole world: fear God and nothing else. Fear not evil—for God walks with you through the valley of the shadow of death. Fear not darkness—for light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it. Fear not the storm or the sea—for the winds and the waves obey our Lord. So too, fear not drowning in the modern world—because Christ commands us, “Do not be afraid,” and with Him we can walk on water.
The world has always been falling apart. It has always been dying. Look at the great cities that made the West itself: Athens, Rome, Jerusalem, and London. Athens gave the world philosophy and democracy and Homer. Jerusalem gave us the gift of faith. Rome gave us republicanism and order. London gave us rights and the rule of law. All of them fell away, and all were revived—not by the flowing tides of history, but by men and women of faith, wisdom, and courage.
Augustine and Aquinas reconciled Plato and Aristotle’s search for truth to the Truth. Christian chivalry beatified Hector’s heroism, just as the sacrament of marriage sanctified Odysseus’ journey home to Penelope. The Romans conquered the world only to be conquered by it. Two thousand years ago, the Emperor Nero murdered Pope Peter. Last week, the whole world watched as one of their successors was enthroned—and it wasn’t the Emperor. Jerusalem is not where Christ died, but where Christendom was born: no longer just one people’s Promised Land, but all people’s eternal Holy Land. Even in Britain today, a culture frozen over by secular lassitude, the deep roots of the faith are sprouting green shoots: record numbers of conversions this past Easter, suddenly filling pews, and an explosion in popularity of Roman Catholicism among the young. Five hundred years after Henry VIII, the Tudor tyrant fades into irrelevance, while the legacies of Thomas More, John Fisher, and the English martyrs only grow.
Whether you realize it or not, each of you is now one of those green shoots, too. Thanks to the education you leave here with, from now on, there are not just four great cities of the West. There are five: Athens, Rome, Jerusalem, London—and wherever you happen to be.
For the last four years, that has been here at Thomas More College. But just as the Merrimack River empowered all kinds of people across generations to contribute in their own way to the success of this town, so your education here will now empower you to repair the world as best you can, wherever you go. Because no matter where you travel on this earth, you will still be in what C.S. Lewis called “enemy occupied territory.” There are no waivers from the draft in spiritual combat. You can either step up to the front lines like “mighty men of valor”—as Thomas More graduates are uniquely equipped to do, helping your brothers and sisters, especially those closest to succumbing. Or you can cower in the rear, behind even those who don’t know any better, and spend your life rehearsing explanations for when St. Peter asks you why.
Wonders
“The only great tragedy in life is not having been a saint.” The only question is what kind of saint God made you to be. What unique wonders your education here, and your formation in the domestic churches of your families, has empowered you to work—what part of this darkening world you can set on fire. Class of 2025, it is not enough simply to know and be guided and enriched by the great truths you have learned here. You have the opportunity now—and the duty—to add to that heritage. With your lives—your relationships, your work, your devotion—you can add to the fire, in everything you do.
Add to the fire your vocations. Most of you will be called to marriage and, if you’re lucky, have children. Nothing else you do in life will have a greater impact on the society around you. Your engagements and weddings will have spiritual ripple effects among your friends and neighbors that you’ll never know about. The way you treat your spouse will imperceptibly raise or lower the standards of every other husband and wife you meet. The way you live will model the faith to your children, who like soldiers will only strive to be as disciplined and noble as their captain. Don’t wait for kids to teach you how to love. The more passionately you love the Lord, the better you will love your spouse, and the better mom or dad you will be—long before you change your first diaper.
Add to the fire your faith. Don’t let religion become an item on your to-do list: prayers at bedtime and before meals, Mass on Sunday, fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday… Rather, make your whole life a prayer. As Francis of Assisi said, “Preach the Gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.” Go to Mary. Go to your guardian angel and St. Michael. Be Simon of Cyrene to everyone you meet.
Add to the fire your poverty and wealth. Compared to any other time in history and any other place on earth, the United States today is almost impossibly rich. Even working American families struggling financially can still afford luxuries unimaginable to kings and queens and titans of industry just a few generations ago. Hubris has never been easier to fall into. So, live not just within your means, but beneath them. Save, invest, and give generously. There is nothing wrong with earning a good living—so long as you do so intentionally and defiantly. Use your resources to repair the world: to support the church, patronize the arts, start schools, and support noble foundations like, for instance, conservative think tanks located at 214 Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C. Remember the words of Pope Benedict XVI: “The world offers you comfort. But you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.”
Add to the fire, too, your profession. Here there is not just one commission, but two. First, of course, to bring the Holy Spirit into your work. Be honest and cooperative and diligent. Seek opportunities to serve not only those who can help your career, but those who can’t. Be the one who looks out for employees on the lowest rungs. Show them the ropes. Help them rise. Show everyone you work with that humility, kindness, and charity add rather than subtract value from business. And second—less obvious, but if anything more important—be great at your job. If you’re a receptionist, be the best receptionist anyone has ever seen. Be the best engineer or teacher or plumber or accountant or priest or lawyer you can possibly be. The only caveat to this is carpentry, where alas, we can only aspire be the second best ever. Sorry.
Professional excellence is frankly a lesson I think well-educated, devout Catholics may need more than other people. My friends, being right is not enough. Having refined, polished, correct views about the Latin Mass or sola scriptura or just war theory or the Oxford comma will not make you a good teacher or doctor or sculptor or entrepreneur. Don’t fall into the liberally educated intellectuals’ trap of believing that life is a debate. Life is an adventure. So don’t style yourself a Catholic psychiatrist, or a Catholic artist, or a Catholic basketball coach. Be a great psychiatrist, artist, or basketball coach who is also Catholic.
Add to the fire your citizenship. Some 250 years ago, not far from this campus, men and women younger than you, who enjoyed none of the privileges we all take for granted, fought and died so that we could be free. Don’t take that for granted. And, please, don’t cast it aside in the name of piety. Catholics have a duty to meet their society where it is, not where we would have it be. Precious American Catholics who dislike choosing between icky Republicans and icky Democrats should look around the world. The most likely alternative is not a choice between genteel Thomists and Augustinians. It’s between totalitarians and nihilists—and neither are terribly receptive to Catholic social teaching.
Finally, add to the fire your joy. Life is a slog. Christ’s redeeming love makes it an adventure and a gift. Act like it. No matter how hard your days get or how far the world falls, we have already won. You have already been saved. Celebrate every day the Lord makes. Rejoice and be glad on your pilgrimage through this life.
The Thing with Grit
I am aware of the burden you may feel this speech is putting on you. But it’s not me doing that, it’s Our Lord. Sainthood ain’t for sissies. But it is the only life we are called to.
The state of the world is no excuse. As St. Thomas More himself wrote—from the Tower—”The times are never so bad but that a good man can live in them.” The same God that gives us burdens also gives us shoulders—and the hope that gives them strength. Contrary to Emily Dickinson, who grew up a few hours from here, hope is not “the thing with feathers.” Hope is the thing with grit. It is the thing that reminds us of the graces that come with every inconvenience. The spiritual power of earthly frustrations. The virtue of trial and error in our daily lives. Hope is what can make hard happy, easy boring, and you great. Never give up, never give in, never stop giving of yourself.
In closing, class of 2025, draw on the education you received here. Return to it. Build on it. But most of all, be grateful for it. Because it has given you the tools to repair this broken world—one relationship, one prayer, one moment at a time. You are too powerful to shy away from the fight. Step up to the front line—and move it forward. Tend the fire. Fuel it with your gifts. And set the world ablaze.
Most of all: “Do not be afraid…” Put your hopes in the Lord, and we will put ours in you. Thank you, congratulations, and God bless.
