Welcome… First I would like to thank Mr. Bell, Fr. Luke, Mr. Curatolo, Mrs. Barkan, Mr. Rogosich, teachers, deans, fellow students and loved ones for being here tonight and giving me the opportunity to speak. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Olivia Sorenson and I am a current junior. As you entered the Cathedral this evening, you may have noticed in the back, on your right an image of Jesus, with blood and water coming out of his chest. We call that the image of Divine Mercy, crafted by Saint Faustina. At the bottom are five words that, every once in a while, I like to stop and think about: “Jesus, I trust in You.”
“Jesus, I trust in you.”
I don’t know about you guys, but lately I’ve really been needing that simple prayer. With life getting hectic (as it naturally does during junior year), as we stress over our academics and start to think about college and our futures, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and in some cases, even hopeless. Maybe you’re sitting in your room at night, struggling with a calculus topic, or maybe you’re having a hard time in a relationship, and you’re thinking to yourself, “There’s no way this is going to work out,” or “I just can’t do this anymore.” I can’t tell you honestly that I haven’t said those things, because we all think them. School’s hard. Life’s hard. * I think especially these days there’s this enormous pressure on high school students to have everything figured out, and that pressure can be scary.
There’s this outrageous expectation for 16 and 17 year olds like ourselves to know exactly what they want to do with their entire lives, and to have it all together, and some of us probably do. But a lot of us don’t. And that’s okay. It’s okay to not have a plan, *slow* because we have a God whose plan is so much better than we could ever imagine. Even though we might feel like we’re falling behind, even when we’re blinded by a moment’s chaos we have to have faith that the answers to all of our questions and all of our needs will come in His-perfect-timing. So we can trust Him with our future and live in the present.
And our present is this right here. This community, this environment we’ve built for ourselves and for each other at Gibbons, and that we have the chance to keep building for 2 more years. In this life, and in a special way at this school, we are provided with everything we could possibly need to succeed, like teachers who push us, classmates who encourage us, and facilities that enable us to pursue our goals and aspirations. And the word “succeed” can have very different meanings for very different people. One person might dream of graduating UNC medical school at the top of their class, while another may want to be a quarterback in the NFL, or make your mark by playing Annie on Broadway. Or maybe you feel called to religious life. But, whatever success may mean to you, it all has one thing in common: it is brought about by seizing opportunities.
So when someone says something like everything will work out, what’s really meant is “Everything can work out,” because God has a plan for each one of us, but in the end it’s up to each one of us to execute that plan.
He allows us to do that by putting choices in front of us each and every day, and giving us tools to guide us toward the right ones - this can include academic and athletic opportunities, but the most important of these tools is the people we choose to surround ourselves with, and everyone here right now at Junior Mass has chosen to put themselves in a position, sitting next to each other, where we are surrounded by a group of people that lifts each other up and feeds each other’s improvement. We’re here because we chose to foster our own growth in that way.
The thing is though, we’re all human, so we’re all flawed, and we’re not necessarily always going to make those right decisions, but that’s why we can always go back to those five words: pause Jesus, I Trust in You. Because that action of giving in to God’s greater plan will help put us back on the path every. single. Time that we stray.
About a year and a half ago, when I was getting ready to transfer from a public high school, I found myself in a situation just like that where I thought I knew best but -boy was I wrong. I really had to trust that it would get better. My dad’s totally saying “I told you so” right now, but I genuinely cannot express how grateful I am that my parents made me move to this school, although I fought it so hard at first. I remember being upset when they broke it to me, for two reasons in particular: I didn’t want to leave my friends (obviously) and, I know this sounds really silly, but Gibbons doesn’t have a marching band. We have a pep band and a fantastic drum line but we certainly do not march. You know at the time, I was disappointed because I wanted to march, and I couldn’t imagine that this Catholic school could possibly have anything better to offer. Turns out I could not have been more wrong. The kind of community I found at Gibbons, the tight, authentic relationships I’ve been able to form with people, are so much more real than the ones I had before and exactly what I needed.
As far as band goes, the opportunities I’ve been presented with in the last year or so (beyond musical, I’m talking about the opportunities to connect with people and to step into leadership roles and try new things, shoutout Mr. Cashin) far exceed anything my old band director could’ve given me. Still, I had to actually take those chances that were put in front of me, I had to give it to God, or I wouldn’t have grown the way I did. All this to say, I had one idea of what I wanted, and God had a totally different one. I was so resistant to the change, but He put me in a place that has allowed me to feel known and challenged in all the right ways. So even though I couldn’t see it at the time, God took control and inspired me to embrace the change, for the better. That for me is pretty solid proof that He can take care of me and everyone in this building, and that’s what gives me the confidence to stand up here in a Cathedral in front of thousands of people and say: It will all work out, if you surrender to God’s plan.
Now that Junior Mass is coming to a close, I want to leave you with this: The next time we’re all gonna be here together is Baccaleaureate Mass and graduation, and then that’s it. These next eighteen months will be full of big things -prom times 2, college applications and hopefully acceptances, probably rejections- and we can’t let the time get away from us. So while we still can, while we’re still here, let’s all try to find one way we can consistently say “Jesus, I trust in You” in order to make us better as people and bring us together as a class of 2026, before our time here is up.
Olivia Sorenson, Class of 2026