Incline Our Hearts

Pentecost Is Our Commencement

One of the things I love about this time of year as your Bishop, is that I get to participate in graduation ceremonies and other events at our Episcopal schools taking place at the end of the academic year. We have five wonderful Episcopal schools in our diocese, each unique and important, with two that go through high school. At both Casady and Holland Hall, every year I take part in both Baccalaureate and Graduation or Commencement. 

Schools tend to use the terms “graduation” and “commencement” interchangeably, but of the two, I prefer the term “commencement,” because it means “beginning.” Not just the end of something (our high school years), but the beginning of something new. As I see these poised, grounded, gifted, and compassionate students graduating from our Episcopal schools, I rejoice in their accomplishments, but even more so, I am inspired by who they are becoming, by God’s grace, and how they will make a difference in the lives of others in college and beyond.

It is a happy coincidence that commencements often take place around the time of Pentecost, which is this Sunday. Pentecost is one of the great feast days of the Church, and has many meanings and themes. But one of them is that Pentecost is a kind of commencement, a new beginning. In the Pentecost story in Acts, we recall the birth of the Church, through the power of the Holy Spirit. And in this new beginning, a new mission is given us by God that we continue to this day: sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the world, even to the ends of the earth, beginning where we are. 

Bishop Poulson