Banishing All Shadows | Jeffrey R. Holland | 2018

In this commencement address, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland charges students to be a force for positive change in this troubled world and to have hope that the light of God's love is powerful enough for banishing all shadows and forces of darkness.

This commencement address was given April 26, 2018.

Read the talk here:
https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/jeffrey-r-holland_banishing-all-shadows/

Read more about Jeffrey R. Holland here:
https://speeches.byu.edu/speakers/jeffrey-r-holland/

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"What a tragic end to such a gifted beginning! What a pathetic farewell to a life that held such promise! And where did it go wrong? It went wrong when Wolsey’s public ambition became more important than his personal integrity, when cutting moral corners was more advantageous than maintaining moral rectitude, when political power and unseemly wealth created a thirst for more and more of the same until honest living and responsible behavior could not quench that thirst and were jettisoned along the way, never to be regained.

If he could, I wonder if Cardinal Wolsey might raise his voice from the grave today, nearly five centuries after his precipitous fall, to quote to you a simple scripture he probably read more than once in his clerical duties: “For what is a man [or a woman] profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”3

You leave BYU to enter a political, social, and economic world your parents never knew and your grandparents could never have dreamed of. Perhaps that is true of each succeeding generation in history, but in my old age, I, for one, could not have imagined as a BYU student more than half a century ago the world you now go forth to experience. So much of that world is stunningly beautiful and rewarding.

Do you realize that when I was a BYU student, my colleagues had to wait for perhaps a 3:00 a.m. opportunity to use for a few minutes the university’s one mainframe IBM computer on projects you can now almost literally—not quite—pursue on your laptop? (I was going to say on your cell phone.) Almost nothing seems impossible now in the world of science, technology, and biomedicine, including such things as genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and fetal surgery. And now you have cars that drive themselves and little cannisters that play your favorite music, answer your math problems, tell you what time it is in Uzbekistan, and butter your toast—all before you get out of bed!

But not everything is so rosy everywhere for everyone. In so many nations of the world, including parts of our own, it can be a time prophesied by my favorite Irish poet, who warned:

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

. . . the centre cannot hold; . . .

. . . everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.4

I do not agree that “the best lack all conviction” because you, seated before me robed and hooded, and a host of good people across the earth like you prove otherwise. I believe you to be the very best, and I am counting on you to be consumed with conviction.

But alas, I fear that in too many cases “the worst [of our day] are full of passionate intensity.” No child should have to go to school fearful that they won’t live to see their parents that evening. No citizenry should have to live with a system—pick a nation, any nation, or put a pin in a world map almost at random—where corruption is rampant, where chaos is the order of the day, and where statesmanlike character, elevated (to say nothing of elegant) speech, and dignified personal behavior are seemingly alien concepts. No young people your age—or any age—ought to face conditions in so many places where poverty and abuse (including sexual abuse), malnutrition and disease, and human trafficking and terror are still the rule rather than the exception for too many people, including too many children.

Well, I don’t want to dwell on anything negative today, and you might say it has always been so down through time, and maybe it has. But it doesn’t have to be! So go out there and light a candle. Be a ray of light. Be your best self and let your character shine. Cherish the gospel of Jesus Christ and live it. The world needs you, and surely your Father in Heaven needs you if His blessed purposes for His children are to prevail. You have entered to learn. Now go forth to serve and strengthen. If correcting all the world’s ills seems a daunting task, so be it. Go out there and be undaunted.

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