By EmmaLee Italia| Correspondent

During the May 17 Commencement Exercises of St. John’s University, Queens campus, Bishop David M. O’Connell, C.M., highlighted the Vincentian charism he shares with the 145-year-old academic institution.

“You are graduates of St. John’s University – a place where Catholic and Vincentian values have been offered to you, and have pride of place inside of the arts, sciences and the professions,” said Bishop O’Connell, “and it is my hope that those values have changed your life.”

Invited to the campus as commencement speaker for one of two ceremonies held by the university, the Bishop was also presented with university’s Medal of Honor, the highest honor St. John’s bestows upon an alumnus, by St. John’s president Dr. Conrado “Bobby” Gempesaw.

Nearly 2,000 undergraduate degrees and 800 graduate degrees were conferred as Bishop O’Connell offered graduates not a sermon, but a bit of timely guidance.

“My advice to you, the graduating class of 2015,” said the Bishop, “is simple and direct and here it comes:  you better know how to handle change in life or you are not going to be a success … or happy.”

He noted that change, whether we are ready for it or not, will happen both within and without the human person. But while change is inevitable, we can decide whether we accept or resist it.

“You can try to stand still while the world constantly changes around you,” Bishop O’Connell said. “Or you can change with it. And if your life really means something to you, you can try to shape the change.”

Bishop O’Connell, well acquainted with the rigors of academic life, served on the faculty and administration of St. John’s University from 1990-1998. Having instructed hundreds of students at St. John’s as professor of theology and religious studies, then Father O’Connell helped them embrace the metamorphosis that occurs over the course of their academic experiences.

“Hopefully your education at St. John’s has successfully introduced you to the rhythms of learning and history and knowledge and technology and the professions,” he said. “That’s what it’s supposed to do … Education should change you … If you’re not different, if you haven’t changed, your diploma is a very expensive piece of paper.”

He emphasized how a Catholic university education offers the opportunity to incorporate particular values into that change, and that such values are integral to the St. John’s University experience.

“With all the academic knowledge and professional competencies that you have achieved here,” said the Bishop, “… your education is only part of what it should have been if you don’t know what those values are and what they mean – if those values have not changed you (in mind and heart) … to do the good, to do the right, and to care about your fellow human beings, especially the poor and people on the margins.”

Bishop O’Connell concluded by encouraging the graduates to use what they have learned to be “an enduring, a lasting influence, a steady influence on things that change... Mahatma Gandhi said it well: ‘You must be the change you wish to see in the world.’”