Craig Melvin was inspired by his late brother Lawrence when he delivered his motivating commencement speech to the Villanova University Class of 2026. The TODAY co-anchor received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from the Pennsylvania university on Tuesday, May 19, before he joined Ho da Kotb, Harrison Ford, Lindsey Vonn and more influential figures in addressing the latest group of college graduates. Speaking from Villanova Stadium, Craig encouraged the graduating class to keep three pillars in mind as they embark on different journeys in life. He cited the university’s motto: “Veritas, Unitas, Caritas,” which translates to truth, unity and love. Craig with his honorary degree on May 19, 2026.David DeBalko Photography/Villanova University / David DeBalko Photography/Villanova University In the final section of his speech, dedicated to Caritas, Craig recalled how his late brother Lawrence, who died five years ago from colorectal cancer, often spoke about love as a Baptist minister. “He preached about love often. He could quote scripture the way some quote song lyrics,” Craig said. “And I assure you, he is getting quite the kick out of me right now. His little brother up here, about to quote a Catholic saint at a Catholic university.” In his final remarks, Craig said he was “playing the role of Baptist preacher” before he advised the Villanova graduates to hold onto their “restless” spirits while pursuing their dreams. Read on for a full transcript of Craig’s Villanova University 2026 commencement speech. President Donohue, members of the board of trustees, the Augustinian community, faculty, families, and Class of 2026. How does it feel? Before I begin — and appropriately here, Father — a confession. I know I was not your first choice but he had a scheduling conflict. He is currently running the Catholic Church. You held out for the Pope. You got a TODAY show host. That means instead of receiving a blessing in Latin from the man who leads a billion faithful Catholics, you’ll get some life advice from a guy your parents watch for 11 minutes some mornings while getting dressed and waiting for Al Roker to tell them whether it’s going to rain. I apologize in advance. As I was crafting my speech for this event, I didn’t want to use the 2,000 words that AI would’ve spit out about “being authentic” and “embracing your journey.” If there’s one thing you don’t need, it’s a soulless robot telling you what a Wildcat is. But I did go to social media and ask the internet and the Villanova community for their advice and their wisdom, as well. I’ll share some of it with you in just a day, but what a time to be a Wildcat. About a year ago, as has been noted here, Bob, class of ’77, became America’s Pope. The Knicks — your Knicks, with Jalen Brunson and the Nova boys the legendary Coach Jay Wright sent into the NBA. They’re in the Eastern Conference Finals tonight. And then there’s change afoot here as well. I just drove by your library. It’s getting an amazing facelift, gleaming state of the art, luxurious, years in the making, but sources, sources tell me it will not hold the candle to the fact that Wawa took over the Connolly Center, but some things at Villanova have not changed at all. Father Peter still tears around campus in that golf cart at worrisome speeds. I saw the thing out there. It seats four people. Not sure who you’re driving around, Father. The tailgaters still packed the parking lot of the Wells Fargo Center, now I guess they call it the Xfinity Mobile Arena. They pack the parking lot before every home game in the snowy dead of winter, because Villanova basketball does not let weather decide whether you show up. Remarkable moments, a remarkable place, and this is truly a remarkable class, which brings me to three words, and you’ve heard them already, three words carved into the seal that you walk past every day for four years, three words spoken in the prayers of St. Thomas of Villanova Church. Each Sunday, three words that this community has carried since the Order of St. Augustine arrived on this hill in 1842. Veritas. Unitas. Caritas. Truth. Unity. Love. I mean, you’ve heard them so many times since you’ve been here, you’ve probably stopped hearing them. Today I implore you, listen and hear them as if for the first time, because the world that you are about to walk into is going to test all three hard and the order matters. Veritas — Truth As a journalist, I’ve spent about 20 years telling stories and asking questions for a living, and I will tell you this plainly: in two decades of doing this work, truth has never been harder to find than it is right now, and you know this. Social media, AI slop, regular, regular old-fashioned humans spreading misinformation and disinformation deliberately have created one heck of a mess. Two years ago, you could have spotted something fake in two seconds. Today, today, you have to look twice. A few years from now, it is going to be virtually impossible for a lot of you, for nearly all of us, to read something or look at a video or a picture of a senator, of a CEO, of someone you love and know whether it’s real. Take a moment and think about what that means. A democracy, it depends on citizens who can agree on what happened yesterday, or that the sky is blue. Juries, depending on evidence that they can trust, strangers on laptops 1000s of miles away, they can fake your voice on a phone call to your parents, and your parents oftentimes will believe them. When the foundation of truth, when that cracks everything that rests on top of it can crack, too. But one reason that I am hopeful about this class, about you, is you’ve spent four years being formed exactly for this fight. You learn here that “I saw it online” is not an argument. Augustine spent his entire life chasing truth. What he learned and what he left to this noble tradition is that truth is not a possession, it’s a practice, a daily discipline of asking, is this real? How do I know who benefits if I believe it? Veritas, it’s not a noun for your generation. Thankfully, it is a verb. And some of you will do this work professionally, doctors, lawyers, those rowdy nurses that I’ve been hearing throughout the ceremony. Some of you will engage in truth as a matter of professional practice, but most of you will do it as citizens, as parents, as friends, every time you decide whether to share, to forward, to repost. Our country, our society, and our world needs you to do it well. Unitas — Unity Here’s what I have learned in about two decades of trying to do my absolute level best to showcase the truth, and it’s taken me a while to realize this. It’s not enough. Too many times the lonely person with the right facts loses to the connected community with the wrong one, the wrong facts. This is why the second word matters just as much as the first. Unitas. Unity. For years now, we’ve all been seeing it, we’ve been living in it, this growing certainty that the person across the table or across the aisle or heck even across the street isn’t just wrong but evil. So many succumbing to the temptation to wall ourselves off into tribes of the like-minded. Tribalism, it’s what’s left when community crumbles. But again, here is the strange power of this amazing education you’ve gotten, the very word Catholic, and my wife, my wife is a big C Catholic, I’m talking about little c Catholic here, small c, which means universal. The Augustinian tradition that built this place, it insists that we’re not our team, we’re not our tribe, and for the love of God, we’re not our algorithm. We’re made for something bigger. You learned that here you sat in classes where students from very different backgrounds wrestled with the same questions, large and small. You’ve learned, and you’ve practiced unity, not seeing this real unity, the discipline of standing in the room with someone that you disagree with, because you’ve decided in advance that they’re a person, not the enemy. You lived this for four years. You studied until two in the morning together in Mendel and Bartley. You went to Nova basketball games, and you cheered together. You tailgate in the snow. Legendary parties at the Bryn Mawr Courts. Rip Bryn Mawr courts, you serve the Villanova students well, literally. But that, that is Nova Nation. It’s not a slogan, it’s a way of life. So in the years ahead, when the algorithm tries to sort you into tribes, keep these people close, call them, drive to them, show up at their weddings, their parties, hospital rooms, and one day, many years from now, their funerals, these degrees that you’re about to get, the degrees will open doors, these friendships, these will keep you whole. And that, that brings me to the third and the hardest word. Caritas — Love My brother Lawrence was a Baptist minister. He died five and a half years ago from colorectal cancer. He was just 43. He left behind a beautiful wife and two young children, and he preached about love often. He could quote scripture the way many of us can quote song lyrics, and I assure you, he is getting quite the kick out of me right now. His little brother up here, about to quote a Catholic saint at a Catholic university. Augustine said, “Love, and do what you will.” Six words. That’s the whole thing. At first read, it sounds dangerous, like permission to do anything. But Augustine meant the opposite. He meant that if love lives inside, the outside takes care of itself. But also let’s pay attention to what Augustine is not saying. He’s not telling us that that love is a feeling. Caritas is not merely an emotion, it is what you actually do with your time, your money, your attention, your power, like Veritas, it is a verb. The world tells you that love is something that you feel. This place taught you that love, time and time again, is something that you choose. And the people that Caritas chooses first are the ones that oftentimes the world chooses last. Each fall, this campus hosts the largest student-run Special Olympics event in the world. Not as a charity, some of you spent spring breaks building houses, some of you tutor kids in North Philly, not as a pad to your resume, but because four years here quietly, and perhaps unbeknownst to many of you, informed you to see the poor, to see the migrant, to see the forgotten. In his first public address, as your first choice for the commencement speaker today, the Pope, in his first public address, he said the church must be a place of bridges, not walls. Build bridges toward the person you disagree with, toward the truth, toward the people the world has forgotten. Your degree that you’re about to get, it’s not about what you will do, it is about for whom. So since I’m playing the role of Baptist preacher this afternoon, how about I leave you with one more line of Augustine’s? He wrote about it himself in his Confessions, but he meant it for all of us. “Our hearts are restless,” he said, “until they rest.” You are restless today. You’re also really hot today, and so am I. I was restless when I sat where you are too, and you should be. You spent four years being formed, being challenged, being fed, being loved, and now you gotta leave. You will be restless tomorrow. You will be restless at 35 when you have that corner office or baby on your hip, or both. Do not be afraid of that restlessness, it will be, I promise you, the engine of every good thing that you will ever do. It will drive you toward Veritas when the lie is easier, toward Unitas when standing apart would be simpler, toward Caritas, when indifference would be safer. But here’s the question that I leave you with. How will you know? How will you know whether you are living these three words or whether you’re just doing what so many do, performing them? There’s a poem that I’ve carried with me for a long time. It’s called “A man in the glass.” It’s about 100 degrees out here, so I’m not gonna subject you to the entire thing, but the argument is simple. You can spend a lifetime collecting worldly praise, but in the end, the only approval that matters is the heavenly Father’s and your own. When you get what you want in your struggle for self, and the world makes you king for a day, just go to a mirror and look at yourself and see what that man has to say. For it isn’t your mother, father, or wife upon whose judgment you must pass, but the person whose judgment matters most in your life is the one staring back from that glass. You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years and get pats on the back as you pass, but your final reward, your final reward will be heartache and tears if you have cheated the man in that glass. Class of 2026 — these three words you carry today, Veritas, Unitas, Caritas — they live or die at the mirror. Live them so that the person in the glass is your friend. Congratulations, Class of 2026. V’s Up! This story first appeared on TODAY.com. 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