October 2025
Dear Graduates of Chaminade and Kellenberg Memorial,
“Serve the Lord with Gladness!” This past summer, I had the tremendous blessing to be able to visit the Solomon Islands with Bro. Mike McAward and three Chaminade and Kellenberg grads. We went to the Solomons at the invitation of Archbishop Chris Cardone, the brother of Fr. Tom Cardone and a Chaminade grad of the class of 1976. He is a Dominican friar and has served the people of God on the islands for 36 years. The Archbishop’s episcopal motto, “Serve the Lord with Gladness,” comes from Psalm 100. It’s very short, so I’ll include it here:
Cry out with joy to the Lord, all the earth.
Serve the Lord with gladness.
Come before him, singing for joy.
Know that he, the Lord, is God.
He made us, we belong to him,
We are his people,
the sheep of his flock.
Go within his gates, giving thanks.
Enter his courts with songs of praise.
Give thanks to him and bless his name.
Indeed, how good is the Lord,
Eternal his merciful love.
He is faithful from age to age.
When I was a student at Chaminade, my favorite morning prayer video was Glad’s Be Ye Glad. It’s one of those songs that gets stuck in your head the whole day. The chorus goes like this: “Oh, be ye glad/ Oh, be ye glad/ Every debt that you ever had/ Has been paid up in full/ By the grace of the Lord/ Be ye glad, be ye glad, be ye glad!” To this day, whenever it comes on, I turn up the volume and sing along. It simply makes me glad.
Joy and gladness are tricky things. Everyone wants to be happy, but very often, we find ourselves unhappy. When we come up against some difficulty – some cross that we don’t want to carry – we say to ourselves, “I’m not happy,” and very often, we throw in the towel. Sometimes the crosses are small, like struggling in a class or spraining an ankle. Other times, our crosses are bigger, like struggling with anxiety or questioning our future career. Whatever the personal difficulty may be, we experience that cross as unhappiness. Our confusion, however, is thinking that happiness and joy are the same. They are not.
The Archbishop’s motto, Psalm 100, and Be Ye Glad can offer a helpful antidote to the unhappiness we experience. Happiness is fleeting. I’m happy after a good workout, but when I leave the gym and find a parking ticket on my car, I am unhappy. Joy is different.
“Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before him singing for joy!” True joy is a gift from God that comes from an authentic relationship with Jesus Christ. As we grow in faith and knowledge of God and the Church, we begin to experience a joy that is unlike worldly happiness. We start to learn more deeply that “God made us, we belong to him, we are his people.” And once we know God, we find joy in serving him.
In fact, we can be joyful even when we are unhappy at that moment. A real relationship with Jesus that is rooted in the Eucharist, in regular habits of prayer and Confession, and in the community of the Church. When the difficult moments come and unhappiness settles in, we remember that “the Lord is good . . . faithful from age to age.” God often shows us his goodness in prayer and through our faithful friends and relatives. Not only that, we often find God in serving others, and that makes us happy too.
So, do you need a little bit more joy in your life? Focus on your prayer life. Get to Mass every Sunday. Pray your rosary. Make friends who take their faith seriously. Get involved in a service organization on campus or in your town that makes a difference. Sure, your crosses will not disappear overnight, but you will find an inner fortitude that comes from God alone. “Serve the Lord with Gladness” is not just a good motto for a bishop; it is a key to real happiness.
I hope that you find joy in the Lord Jesus during this semester. Be sure of my prayers – and the prayers of all my Marianist Brothers – for you and your families. Please pray for us too!
To Jesus through Mary,
Bro. Patrick Cahill, SM
