2026: Baccalaureate Speaker Reverend Eugene Cho
President Wente, distinguished faculty, trustees, alumni, and honored guests, families, and graduates: 1 and peace to you.
It is a profound privilege to join you today at Wake Forest University for this baccalaureate service.
Commencement ceremonies often ask us to look forward: careers, toward achievement, toward the future we hope to build.
But today, during this baccalaureate, I want to invite you to ask a deeper question.
Not merely: “What will you do?”
Now, this is important for sure…but it is not the totality of your existence.
We are not just merely human doings…but human beings.
And thus, I invite you to reflect on the question: “Who will you become?”
And I would like to center our time together around a brief but convicting exhortation from the scriptures in Galatians 6:9:
“Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we
will reap a harvest, if we do not give up.”
If there is one phrase I hope remains with you long after this day has
passed, it is this: Do not grow weary in doing good.
Now, before we get to the crux of my remark, I feel like I need to confess something.
Over the last several weeks, I have spent an embarrassing amount of time wondering how to make this speech memorable. Not simply meaningful…but memorable.
And if I am being entirely transparent, I also briefly wondered how to make it go viral.
My first idea was straightforward to declare:
“2026 Class of Wake Forest—I will personally eliminate all student debt.”
That would certainly have generated enthusiasm.
There would be tears.
Perhaps fainting.
At minimum, a standing ovation.
By evening, the headline on NBC Nightly News would read:
“Short but handsome Asian graduation speaker shocks Wake
Forest graduating class.”
There was, however, one complication. It would have been entirely fictional.
I probably could not even buy each of you a burrito bowl at Chipotle.
Certainly not with guacamole.
So I abandoned that plan and considered another: a collaborative interpretive fusion of modern and hip hop dance featuring President Wente, Misty Copeland, and myself.
Unfortunately, that was just a rumor. Started by me.
But beneath my attempt at humor is a more serious observation.
We inhabit a culture increasingly organized around spectacle. Visibility has become its own form of currency.
We are trained to measure significance through metrics of attention:
- What trends
- What elicits clicks, likes, and views.
- What captures the gaze of strangers.
And if we are not careful, we may begin to confuse being noticed with being faithful and purposeful.
Yet the most transformative people in history are rarely those who
mastered spectacle.
More often, they are those who embody endurance.
- People who remained morally awake in numbing times.
- People who continued to love when cynicism appeared more
sophisticated. - People who quietly refused surrender.
Which is why Paul’s words in Galatians remain so piercingly relevant:
“Do not grow weary in doing good.”
Because doing good is rarely glamorous.
It is often slow.
- Frequently unnoticed.
- Sometimes costly.
- Occasionally heartbreaking.
And yet it remains one of the few things capable of renewing the world.
So today, graduates, I would like to share with you three exhortations:
- Remember that you did not arrive here alone.
- Refuse the dehumanization of others.
- Choose presence over performance.
I. Remember That You Did Not Arrive Here Alone
One of the persistent myths of modern life is the myth of the self-made person.
We admire autonomy.
We celebrate independence.
We romanticize the solitary genius or entrepreneur.
But beneath nearly every meaningful human achievement stands a network of service and sacrifice.
Parents. Family. Teachers.
Mentors. Friends.
Communities. Our church or spiritual communities.
Labor unseen and often unacknowledged.
This invitation to speak today, for example, is not an honor I carry alone. It belongs also to my family.
My father was born in what is now North Korea, in a village outside
Pyongyang. One of six children, he and my mother knew hunger intimately.
My father is now ninety years old and still occasionally shares vivid stories of pulling grass from the ground to quiet hunger pains.
In time, his family fled south and endured the devastation of the Korean War. He spent some time in a refugee camp.
Years later, in 1977, my parents immigrated from South Korea to the United States.
They left familiarity for uncertainty.
They arrived with limited financial resources, a couple words and phrases of English, and no guarantee of success.
But they carried something else: HOPE.
The stubborn and sacrificial hope that their three sons might inherit
opportunities they themselves had been denied.
I remember the day I, the youngest, graduated from college. My father stood there and wept.
Now, you should understand: my father does not cry.
In fact, I believe I have witnessed it only twice.
Once when the San Francisco 49ers lost to the Dallas Cowboys in the 1992 NFC Championship Game.
And once on my graduation day.
“Now that you have graduated, I can die in peace.”
At the time, I did not fully understand the magnitude of that sentence. I do now.
Because embedded within those words was an entire history of trauma and sacrifice:
- Enduring Communism, Korean War, refugee camp,
- Separation from family.
- Deep hunger.
- Migration, fear, racism.
- Hope, endurance, love.
And perhaps this is one of the first truths adulthood asks us to confront honestly:
None of us arrives anywhere alone. In other words, no one is an island to themselves.
- Someone sacrificed for you.
- Someone prayed for you
- Someone encouraged you when you doubted yourself.
- Someone absorbed burdens so you could move more freely through the world.
- Someone believed your future was worth investing in.
(I suspect that…that someone is here today to cheer you on. So,
graduates, would you take a moment to give them a thunderous
applause?)
Graduates, gratitude is not merely a feeling.
At its deepest level, gratitude becomes responsibility.
The question is not simply whether you will succeed.
The deeper question is whether your life will become a bridge through
which others may flourish.
Because when societies forget our interconnectedness, it becomes easier to imagine that other people’s suffering is unrelated to our own lives.
And that moral fragmentation carries consequences.
II. Refuse the Dehumanization of Others
Today, I have the privilege of serving as President of Bread for the World – a citizens movement of over 50,000 members from around the country – where we advocate to end hunger in the United States and globally.
We engage Congress and the Administration to do all they can to enact policies that center our vulnerable neighbors – near and far – who struggle with hunger.
Needless to say, this is an incredibly challenging time.
Did you know that in the wealthiest country in the world, there are over 14 million children who are food insecure?
Did you know that in our world today, over 43 million children suffer from wasting – the most dangerous form of malnutrition. That a child dies from the complexity of hunger every 11 seconds.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
I have become increasingly convinced that hunger is not fundamentally about scarcity.
The world already produces enough food.
Hunger persists not exclusively because of individual choices but also
because of systems, neglect, conflict, economic systems, political choices, and ultimately, moral imagination or lack thereof.
In other words: hunger endures not because humanity lacks resources, but because humanity often lacks the will to recognize itself in one another.
And this is where the crisis becomes spiritual as much as political.
Because suffering has a way of becoming abstract.
- Human beings become data points.
- Families become demographics.
- Children become policy discussions.
The philosopher Hannah Arendt warned that one of the great dangers of modernity is not only evil itself, but the normalization of moral disengagement—the gradual erosion of our capacity to truly see one another.
History confirms this repeatedly:
- The Nazis referred to Jews as rats or vermin.
- During the Rwandan genocide, Tutsis were called cockroaches.
- Enslaved Africans were reduced to livestock or property.
- American Indians or Indigenous people were called savages.
Dehumanization always precedes destruction.
Because language shapes imagination. And imagination shapes action.
When people are reduced to abstractions, compassion becomes optional. But the Christian tradition insists upon something radically different.
It insists that every human being bears the Imago Dei—the image of God.
Not merely the successful.
Not merely the productive.
Not merely those who resemble us politically, culturally, economically, or nationally.
Every person.
Every hungry child.
Every refugee person.
Every unhoused neighbor.
Every elderly person abandoned in loneliness.
Every immigrant family navigating fear.
Every person with disabilities wondering whether the world has space for their dignity.
Every person bears sacred worth.
And if this is true, then compassion is not sentimental idealism.
It is moral clarity.
It is the refusal to permit another human being to disappear beneath indifference.
III. Choose Presence Over Performance
Graduates, if there is one word I hope you carry into the next chapter of your lives, it is this:
Presence.
We are living through an age saturated with performance.
Performance of opinion.
Performance of outrage.
Performance of virtue.
Performance of success.
We curate ourselves constantly. Just check out my Instagram or LinkedIn.
I’m really impressive. Lol.
And yet beneath all this visibility, many people remain profoundly lonely.
It is possible to be endlessly connected and existentially unseen.
One of the great temptations of our era is what I sometimes think of as “drive-by compassion”: momentary concern without enduring commitment.
But genuine compassion requires proximity.
The Catholic priest and writer Henri Nouwen once wrote:
“Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into places of
pain, to share in brokenness.”
That is difficult work. Because presence cannot be rushed.
- Presence asks us to remain when problems become complicated.
- When solutions become unclear.
- When gratitude is not immediate.
- When transformation unfolds slowly.
But presence is where love becomes credible.
And Scripture consistently calls us toward precisely this kind of life.
This is echoed in other faith traditions.
- Hebrews urges us not to neglect doing good and sharing with others.
- Ephesians reminds us that we are created for good works.
- The Gospel of Luke calls us to love even our enemies and to do good expecting nothing in return.
This is not passive niceness. It is moral courage.
And I realize many of you are entering adulthood in a moment marked by profound exhaustion and challenges.
- War.
- Polarization.
- Economic anxiety.
- Ecological instability.
- Institutional distrust.
- Loneliness.
- The overbearing uncertainty of AI. (BOOOO!)
The temptation in such moments is cynicism.
Cynicism often disguises itself as intelligence.
But I have increasingly come to believe that cynicism is frequently wounded hope masquerading as sophistication.
It allows us to appear discerning without requiring us to remain vulnerable.
Not retreat but to Stay engaged. Why? Because love remains.
Love persists beyond frustration or even weariness.
As Cornel West reminds us:
“Justice is what love looks like in public.”
And love refuses paralysis.
Now, to be clear: None of us can heal the entire world.
You will not solve every crisis.
You will not eradicate every injustice.
You will not repair every wound.
But that has never been the measure of faithfulness.
- The question is not whether you can do everything.
- The question is whether you will refuse to do nothing.
Will you mentor someone?
Will you advocate for the vulnerable?
Will you ensure that every child has enough food and nutrition to not just survive but thrive?
Will you protect the dignity of those the world ignores?
Will you remain compassionate in a culture rewarding indifference
Because compassion does not only transform the recipient.
It transforms the giver.
Wake Forest’s motto is Pro Humanitate—for humanity.
What a remarkable aspiration.
Not for status.
Not for applause.
Not (just) for self-advancement.
For humanity.
Graduates, the world certainly needs your intelligence.
But even more urgently, it needs your integrity.
- It needs people who resist the seduction of indifference.
- People who refuse to surrender empathy and tenderness.
- People who continue doing good long after doing good ceases to feel fashionable.
There will be moments when kindness feels inefficient.
Moments when ethical conviction appears costly.
Moments when cynicism will sound more intellectually impressive than hope.
Resist that temptation.
As Mother Teresa once said:
“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with
great love.”
And in truth, most of human history is shaped precisely there: in small acts of stubborn faithfulness.
So graduates of Wake Forest:
- Remember that you did not arrive here alone.
- Refuse the dehumanization of others.
- Choose presence over performance.
May you continue doing good when it is easy.
And may you continue doing good when it is costly.
And when you are tempted to believe that only the spectacular matters, remember this:
The world is most often changed not by those who seek attention—but by those who quietly, persistently, lovingly refuse to give up.
Do not grow weary in doing good…And at the proper time, there will be a harvest.
Do not grow weary in doing good.
God bless you.