Watch Oprah give a rousing message to students around the world in her 2020 commencement address: 'You are the chosen class'

• Oprah Winfrey led a group of celebrities in a commencement address to the class of 2020 on Facebook and Instagram on Friday.
• Dubbed "#Graduation2020: Facebook and Instagram Celebrate the Class of 2020," the broadcast starred Winfrey, Selena Gomez, Sterling K. Brown, Cardi B., and more share messages to the graduating class.
• Winfrey kicked off the event with an almost six-minute speech.
• "You are, indeed, the chosen class for such a time as this," Winfrey told the graduating class of 2020.
• Oprah used her speech as a call to action to help make the world a kinder place and to absolve the inequalities we face as a society.
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Just because schools around the country aren't able to have physical graduation ceremonies, doesn't mean commencement ceremonies can't take place.

Oprah Winfrey gave a hopeful and inspiring commencement speech to the class of 2020 on Friday across Facebook and Instagram as part of the company's #Graduation2020 ceremony.

"I know you may not feel like it, but you are, indeed, the chosen class for such a time as this, the class of 2020," Winfrey opened her commencement speech. "You're also a united class, the pandemic class, that has the entire world striving to graduate with you."

In a nearly six-minute speech, Winfrey acknowledged that though this isn't the ceremony students envisioned with friends and family cheering them on and caps thrown in the air, that didn't mean their graduation day was any less significant. It was just the opposite.

"Even though there may not be pomp because of our circumstances, never has a graduating class been called to step into the future with more purpose, vision, passion, and energy and hope," said Winfrey.

"I wish I could tell you I know the path forward, I don't. There is so much uncertainty," Winfrey continued. "In truth, there always has been. What I do know is that the same guts and imagination that got you to this moment, all those things are the very things that are going to sustain you through whatever is coming. It's vital that you learn, and we all learn, to be at peace with the discomfort of stepping into the unknown."

And if you're nervous or anxious right now about all of the uncertainty we're facing during this time, Oprah said, that's all right.

"It's really OK to not have all the answers," said Winfrey. "The answers will come for sure if you can accept not knowing long enough to get still and stay still long enough for new thoughts to take root in your more quiet, deeper, truer self. The noise of the world drowns out the sound of you. You need to get still to listen."

Winfrey's speech offered words of encouragement and hope not just for graduates, but for many who may need them right now.

Oprah offered a challenge to the class of 2020, and really the world, to take this as an opportunity to fix some of the inequalities we see around us right now.

"Can you use this disorder that COVID-19 has wrought?" asked Winfrey. "Can you, the class of 2020, show us not how to put the pieces back together again, but how to create a new and more evolved normal? A world more just, kind, beautiful, tender, luminous, creative, whole. We need you to do this because the pandemic has illuminated the vast systemic inequities that have defined life for too many for too long."

Winfrey listed off the inequalities faced by immigrants, those in poverty, and those incarcerated without the ability to social distance.

"This moment is your invitation to use your education to begin to heal our afflictions," said Winfrey. "What will your essential service be?"

Winfrey was joined by a long roster of celebrities, including Selena Gomez, Cardi B., Hugh Jackman, Simone Biles, and Sterling K. Brown, and more. Miley Cyrus also joined to sing her hit, "The Climb."

With schools across the nation shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, Facebook and Instagram's commencement program is just one event taking place for the class of 2020 this month.

Saturday, LeBron James is hosting a second commencement ceremony for high school seniors called "Graduate Together," which will be broadcast across the main networks, CNN, and Facebook. The hour-long, commercial free event will air at 8 p.m. ET.