May 20, 2025 // Bishop

At Baccalaureate Mass, ND Grads Urged to Stay Connected

Kasia Balsbaugh

Visitors to the University of Notre Dame’s Joyce Center usually expect to see rebounds and layups. But on Friday, May 16, the space was transformed for a Mass for the crowd of graduating seniors and their families.

A temporary altar was built in the center of the basketball court, with the graduating class and faculty seated on the floor and family and friends of the graduates filling the arena. A livestream of the Mass was being shown in the Joyce Center’s Heritage Hall, which was also full with overflow seating.

The 2025 baccalaureate Mass also marked the conclusion of Holy Cross Father Robert A. Dowd’s first year as president of the university. Father Dowd celebrated the Mass and gave the homily, in which he spoke primarily on the theme of “connection.”

“And of course, Christians hope that … we will all see each other again in heaven,” Father Dowd said. “However, on this side of heaven, my hope is that we always stay connected – that we do our best to encourage one another during tough times, celebrate with each other during good times, and inspire one another to reach out to those in need.”

As Father Dowd said, one of his personal examples in this regard was his grandfather. Father Dowd spoke of his grandfather as a man of deep faith who was a prison warden for much of his career. Father Dowd remembered visiting the prison with his grandfather, then retired, where first the young Dowd would get a haircut in the prison barbershop – “whether I thought I needed one or not,” he joked. Then the young Father Dowd would wait in the warden’s office while the warden and his grandfather visited inmates his grandfather knew from his own time as warden. Sometimes, Father Dowd remembered, his grandfather would also travel across state lines to visit former prisoners who had been released just to see how they were doing. It is this type of connection and care Father Dowd said he hoped the graduates would imitate.

Father Dowd stressed that making these types of connections go beyond social media, an outlet that tends to be “very superficial” and not about “the things that matter most.” He encouraged the students to keep their relationships “grounded in charity, not in competition, and in a sincere desire to be there for each other in times of need.”

One of the reasons this is important to Father Dowd is because the president of Notre Dame during his 1987 graduation from the university, the famed Holy Cross Father Theodore Hesburgh, gave graduates a similar injunction.

“Let us agree that we shall never forget one another,” Father Hesburgh had said, as Father Dowd quoted. “And whatever happens, remember how good it felt when we were all here together, guided by a good and decent feeling, which made us better people – better than we would have probably been otherwise.”

The baccalaureate Mass also included the singing of the alma mater (“Notre Dame, Our Mother”), intercessions in several languages, and officers of the senior class bringing up the gifts at the offertory. Another tradition featured six students chosen by the deans carrying an American flag to the altar to be blessed and flown over the university’s campus in the upcoming year. Several of the university’s choirs, as well as the University of Notre Dame Concert Band, provided music for the liturgy.

Bishop Rhoades, in his remarks at the end of Mass, called the baccalaureate Mass “truly the heart of commencement weekend,” tying this observation to the fact that the Eucharist is the heart of our lives as Christians. In that vein, he thanked the priests at the university for offering thousands of Masses in the more than 60 chapels on campus.

After touching on Christ’s gift of the Eucharist, Bishop Rhoades mentioned another gift of Christ to His people: the gift of His mother, for whom Notre Dame is named. “I pray that you will stay close to her, your mother and teacher in the Spirit,” Bishop Rhoades said to those gathered.

Referencing a line in the university’s alma mater –“Notre Dame, our mother, tender, strong and true” – Bishop Rhoades noted how Mary showed each of the three characteristics in her love for her Son, especially in following Him to the foot of the cross. Bishop Rhoades pointed the graduates to Mary to learn how to be tender, strong, and true in their faith and relationships.

Again drawing from the alma mater, from the line “Glory’s mantle cloaks thee,” Bishop Rhoades told the graduates, “May glory’s mantle that cloaks the Blessed Virgin Mary one day cloak you, her spiritual sons and daughters.”

The baccalaureate Mass kicked off a weekend of graduate activities, which included the university’s commencement ceremony, held at Notre Dame Stadium on Sunday, May 18. According to a news release by officials with the university, an audience of some 20,000 graduates, family members, friends, and faculty attended, and 2,084 degrees were conferred on undergraduate students, with a total of 3,099 degrees being conferred throughout the course of commencement weekend.

Valedictorian Clare Cullinan, a South Bend native who attended St. Joseph Grade School, recalled “numerous memorable events in this stadium since I was a little girl, but it is deeply humbling and a bit surreal to be standing here with all of you today.”

Recalling Father Dowd’s inauguration speech that referenced the Notre Dame Forum theme “What do we owe each other?” Cullinan answered, “We owe it to each other to celebrate, challenge, and create community.”

Using her guiding phrase “Lead, Kindly Light,” a song she recently sang with the Notre Dame Folk Choir at Westville Correctional Facility, Cullinan emphasized how important it is to show people the love of Christ and “that we share the light of the Notre Dame community with others beyond the borders of our campus.”