Angel Gonzalez Rodriguez
Maria Finan
Moreau First-Year Experience
04 March 2022
Lived It. Loved It. Farewell Beautiful Life.
	I understand that you, my loved ones, are saddened with my departure from this world. It was God’s will for me to join him now in heaven, and there was nothing anyone could ever do to prevent that from happening. Because nothing can overcome His will. Instead, I ask that my life - as well as all I accomplished, experienced, and learned - may be celebrated.
	I am satisfied with what I achieved during my lifetime, but one could say I lived my life in dissatisfaction. Now you may be asking yourself, how is this possible? To answer this question, I’d like to mention a quote from Fr. Michael Himes that really stuck with me throughout my life: “[St.] Augustine also noted, ‘Dissatisfaction (restlessness) is not a bad thing...indeed it’s the best thing about us.’ It’s what constantly moves us forward, makes us grow, expands our horizons, and deepens our perceptions. It’s a very healthy, a very important, and a very valuable thing” (“Three Key Questions” - Moreau FYE Week Three). In my eyes, dissatisfaction is the catalyst for our endless pursuit of success and happiness because, while we may find ourselves content whenever we make progress towards that success and that happiness, we know in the back of our minds that there’s still more work to be done. Hence, we keep on pushing ourselves even further. And as many of you can attest to, I did just that. Those of you who went to school with me in Healdsburg, CA know why I was so insistent on finishing among the top dogs in my class. I wanted to make my family proud. To set myself up for success in the future. To counter age-old ethnic stigmas and prove that a Mexican is just as good as a White person in America. And thanks to the constant support of my family, friends, teachers and coaches, I accomplished all of that. But by no means did it stop there.
	In December of my senior year of high school, I was accepted to the University of Notre Dame on a full scholarship. That’s right. The son of Mexican immigrants who was excelling in school in the face of adversity suddenly became Healdsburg’s hometown hero. It felt great to know that the entirety of my hometown now had my back as I finished high school and began to prepare for a new chapter of my life that awaited me in Indiana. However, in all honesty, I did have a little bit of doubt nestled in the back of my mind. I thought about how Notre Dame had always been predominantly White and how it was a private institution; as a graduate of a public school whose student body was about half White and half Latino, I was afraid I’d have a bit of a hard time getting used to life on campus. But, as I came to learn, “Notre Dame’s a crossroads, where all the intellectual and moral currents of our times meet and dialogue. A place where all of the burning issues that affect the Church and the world today are plumbed to their depths in an atmosphere of faith. Where differences of culture and religion, conviction can coexist with friendship and civility, and even love” (Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, CSC in Hesburgh - Moreau FYE Week Two). There may have been a bit of a culture shock upon my arrival, but the relationships I formed with friends, professors, and other faculty members quickly dissipated my doubts and fears. I met people from many different walks of life and learned so many things - academic and non-academic, religious and non-religious - and because of this I always felt a strong sense of belonging at the University during my time there.
	Once I got settled in at Notre Dame, I began to regain my Catholic faith - something that was a little shaky growing up. As a busy college student with few breaks in his schedule, I identified very closely with the following quote from Dr. Jihoon Kim: “I may not be able to spend the many, many hours to pray [sic] to God, but I will use these five minutes to not just pray for myself. [But] I could pray for others, I could pray for my loved ones, and I will utilize these five minutes and do something about it instead of focusing on what I cannot do” (“5 Minutes” by Aria Swarr - Moreau FYE Week Six). With the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes being just a short walk away, I began to set aside time to visit so I could light a candle and pray before exams or during times of hardship. I also began observing the Sabbath, although not in a traditional manner. For many of us, the Sabbath is “the one day a week we take off becomes a vast empty space through which we can wander, without agenda, as through the light-filled passageways of Notre Dame [de Paris] [...] it’s like a retreat house that ensures we’ll have something bright and purposeful to carry back into the other six days” (“Why we need to slow down our lives” by Pico Iyer - Moreau FYE Week One). While I didn’t take the entirety of Sundays off to observe the Sabbath, I ensured that Mass (be it in my dorm or in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart) was factored into my Sunday schedule. Worship and prayer allowed me to establish a greater connection with God, and that brought some peace and stability to my life. Sometimes I felt stressed and sometimes overwhelmed with the task I had at hand, and there seemed to be no end in sight; however, stepping away and talking to God, even if it was just for five minutes, allowed me to clear my mind - and nourish my soul - and return to my work more relaxed than I had been before. I regained and fortified my faith during my time at Notre Dame, but there was more to my experience than just the religious aspect of it.
	I had a vast array of interests growing up, which made it difficult for me to decide on what I wanted to pursue a career in. There were all sorts of careers with which I would fill in the blank of what I wanted to be when I grew up, from doctor to firefighter to professional soccer player to President of the United States. It wasn’t until my freshman year of high school that I began to more or less define the career path I wanted to pursue: engineering. But even that came with its fair share of doubt, as I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to be a mechanical, civil, environmental, or aerospace engineer. This doubt ended up following me onto the Notre Dame campus, and it was here that I learned that “Planning your career is much like planning for a trip.  There are many details and decisions to make and it requires a lot of exploration and research.  It’s not a one-step process. Contrary to popular belief, deciding on a major does not determine the rest of your life” (“Navigating Your Career Journey - Moreau First Year Experience Course” by the Meruelo Family Center for Career Development - Moreau FYE Week Four). Once I did my research, I decided to major in civil engineering because it took advantage of my two greatest strengths: mathematics and hands-on labor. But that doesn’t mean I got rid of my other interests; if anything, I nourished them. As a devout soccer aficionado, I watched games when I could and played for my dorm’s interhall team each of my four years; as a social person, I got to spend lots of time with my friends, both in and outside of St. Edward’s Hall; and as a poet, I wrote romantic poems to my crush back home - to say the least, she loved each and every one of them. When I looked back on it all upon graduating, I was glad that my major didn’t define how I lived my non-academic life.
	My roommate during my freshman year at Notre Dame once told me that “to live a life well-lived, one has to remain true to their ideals and give it their all in the pursuit of what makes them happy” (from Reflection Activity - Moreau FYE Week Five). That’s what I want to be remembered for: for always giving it my all, be it in the classroom, in the workplace, or on the soccer field, so that I could become the best I could possibly be. For loving and caring about those around me. For always putting my family - my relatives and close friends - before anyone and anything else. For always standing up for, and doing, what is right. For being kind and humble and tender. Yes, tender. Why? Because, as His Holiness Pope Francis put it, tenderness is about “being on the same level as the other. God himself descended into Jesus to be on our level. This is the same path the Good Samaritan took. This is the path that Jesus himself took. He lowered himself, he lived his entire human existence practicing the real, concrete language of love. Yes, tenderness is the path of choice for the strongest, most courageous men and women. Tenderness is not weakness; it is fortitude. It is the path of solidarity, the path of humility” (“Why the only future worth building includes everyone” by TED Conferences - Moreau FYE Week Seven). I was always tender in that I knew how to identify with everyone who was a part of my life at one point or another, be it through a shared success, failure, experience, or background. Sure, I was always confident and had a bit of an ego (the good kind) to my personality, but I set all of that aside to lend a helping hand to those who needed it because, for all I knew, they could do the same for me at some point further down the line. This was my life, a life-well lived: with many ambitions and many people to support me in my pursuit of them. With this, I state that this, my funeral, is not a final goodbye. It’s only a “see you soon,” for we will all be reunited soon in heaven. Thank you, and may God bless you all wherever life may take you.