Carrying Christ’s Light from BYU to the World

My dear friends, as president of the BYU Alumni Association, I am pleased to extend my heartfelt congratulations on your graduation from Brigham Young University. I do this on behalf of the nearly 500,000 living BYU alumni around the world. I confer upon each of you lifetime membership in the Alumni Association, and I invite you to be active members of the alumni chapter nearest to wherever your next life adventure takes you!

Now that you are at the end of your BYU journey, I hope with all sincerity that you are moving on with a great love for this institution. I can tell you that my affection for BYU has grown over the past 30-plus years since I graduated, and I hope that is the same for you.

In truth, my affinity for this special place began when I was very young, as both my parents are retired BYU professors and this campus was like my second home. My grandparents met and married at BYU. My grandmother attended Brigham Young High School. And my great-grandfather was on the first Brigham Young Academy football team in 1896. You may be interested to know that that football team won the regional championship by defeating the Salt Lake YMCA, the Elks Club, and, yes, the University of Utah!

My own wife and I dated and were married while we were students on this campus. So, in a very real sense, every good thing in my life has roots in BYU.

Our family loves visiting this campus. In fact, we were here just last month for one of your young single adult stake conferences. On that Saturday, we met our son and daughter-in-law along with their two young children for lunch at the new Creamery on Ninth.

Our daughter-in-law had told our two-year-old grandson, Owen, that they were coming to BYU to see where “Mom and Dad had fallen in love.” Unbeknownst to any of us, our son had told Owen earlier in the day that they were going to BYU “to go rock climbing” in nearby Rock Canyon. So imagine our surprise when this two-year-old responded to his mom with a concerned look on his face, “But mom, I don’t want to go to BYU to fall in love. I came here to go rock climbing!”

Well, maybe you can relate. Whatever your reason for coming to BYU, I hope you accomplished your goals. And regardless of the variety of those goals —which were likely different for each of you—I hope you accomplished the most important goal: our common purpose of life, which is to deepen our faith in Jesus Christ and to become more like Him.

Now you go out into the world, and the world will tell you that your new purpose is to “make a name for yourself.” But you know better because you have been taught better and because you have experienced better. And that “better” purpose is to accept the invitation from the Lord to take His name upon us. You have a great opportunity—and a great responsibility—to do something far more important than making a name for yourself. And that opportunity is to make a name for Christ in the world.

While it is true that Jesus Christ invites His followers to “let your light so shine,”¹ He also reminds us that He is “the light of the world.”²

Each one of you now goes out into that world, and you carry the Savior’s light with you; the world needs His light, and the world needs you.

In both working professionally and serving in the Church with those of your generation, I have found that you have a great desire to change the world. And it is true that the world needs all the help it can get.

You are well prepared to act on these opportunities because of the experiences you have had at this special institution. Whatever your classes and whatever your major, you have been taught truth. Every class and every event was an opportunity for a revelatory experience because you have been at a university that is “Christ-centered” and “prophetically directed.”³

My promise to you is this: If you follow the Savior’s example of being meek and humble and rather than focusing your efforts on making a name for yourself instead keep your promise to take upon yourself the name of Christ, then you will have His light in your countenance. Then the Light of Christ will shine in your eyes. Then you will change the world in the best way possible, in the only way that truly matters.

May God bless you in that most worthy of endeavors. Thank you, and congratulations!

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