"A Community Built on Values Lived Every Day": DeSales Celebrates Its 57th Commencement

Bridey Lawler ’26, president of the Class of 2026 and a pharmaceutical marketing graduate, described DeSales University’s Commencement not as an ending, but as a beginning shaped by shared experiences and, most importantly, the community that surrounded graduates throughout their four years.

Lawler warmly welcomed attendees, including over 600 graduates, at the University’s 57th Commencement Exercises, held on Sunday, May 10 at the PPL Center in Allentown, thanking families, faculty, staff, and supporters for their encouragement, sacrifices, and belief in each graduate.

Reflecting on her time at DeSales, Lawler spoke about finding a place that both challenged and supported students and, above all, offered a true sense of belonging.

“Not just a community in name, but one built on values that are lived out every day,” said Lawler. “Values like gentleness, humility, gratitude, hospitality, and wisdom.”

She emphasized that DeSales’ core values are not merely ideas, but principles practiced daily through relationships and actions, making the University experience deeply meaningful.

“Because at the end of the day, what defines our time here isn’t just what we studied,” Lawler said. “It’s who we became and who we walked alongside.”

University President Rev. James Greenfield, OSFS ’84, Ed.D., followed by congratulating the Class of 2026 and offering a special acknowledgment to the mothers in attendance on Mother’s Day. He noted that the day was especially fitting for Commencement, as education begins at home, long before a student enters a classroom. He also recognized a graduating mother‑and‑son duo, Amy and Justin Riley, both criminal justice graduates in the Class of 2026, which garnered a front-page story in The Morning Call: Mother, son graduate together from DeSales University.

Fr. Greenfield echoed the importance of the DeSales core values, which were highlighted by Lawler and referenced previously in the Invocation Prayer by Fr. Daniel Lannen, University chaplain.

“We hope these core values will serve as your uniquely Salesian resume virtues,” said Greenfield. “Gentleness under pressure; humility that admits mistakes; gratitude that remembers you did not get here alone and refuses entitlement; hospitality that makes room for others; and wisdom that knows when to act and when to wait. These five University core values will help you resist the temptation to live a highly polished life that is hollow underneath.”

He concluded by reminding graduates of the support that continues to surround them as they move forward.

“Always know this: you are deeply loved by those who raised you, by this University, now your alma mater, and by God,” Greenfield said. “Go forth with confidence and, as an Irish blessing says, unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning anew, trusting in the slow, steady, loving work of God.”

Commencement followed Saturday’s Baccalaureate Mass, celebrated in the campus’s Billera Hall, which comprises the first half of the University’s graduation. Close to 1,100 people attended the vigil service for the Sixth Sunday of Easter. 

Rev. Kevin Nadolski, OSFS, vice president for mission and chief of staff, served as homilist and linked the Easter season, graduation, and Mother’s Day as a trifecta of events whose threads weave a tapestry of inspiration to reflect on the accomplishments of the Class of 2026. To offer a reason for Christian hope, he intersected the five-time repetition of the word “love” from the Gospel reading with the love the graduates, and all believers, are called to give to a world that needs it so deeply.

“Why do we hope? We hope because we have been loved. And because we have been loved by God, our mothers, our fathers, our siblings, our families and friends, and this University, we will stretch ourselves to love… those who bring us joy. And even those who bring us pain. Most especially, those who are poor and nameless to us, but no less our sisters and brothers,” he said.