Well, my dear friends, let me say first how pleased I am to be with you, as your Archbishop, this evening to celebrate this Graduation Mass with you, the O’Neil High School graduating students. I’m not telling you something you don’t know when I say that graduation from High School is an extremely special event. It is the graduation we seem to remember more than any others that might follow.
Maybe that’s so because, for most of us, it marks our first real stepping off into our future, a tangible act of real independence. So we remember it for a long time. While preparing for this Mass, I realized that it is over 50 years ago this month that I graduated from High School in Moncton, New Brunswick. You probably can’t even imagine anyone being that old! Surprises me a bit too, actually!
We remember High School graduation because it is a major turning point in our lives. We move from childhood and adolescence into a new maturity and we begin to take a new responsibility for our lives. We can say that this is one of the “hinge” moments in life. It is like taking hold of the door handle and opening the door to walk through into something very new to us.
We especially remember today that this is a hinge moment in the lives of a group of people who are Catholic Christian people. You graduate from a Catholic School. So you have an understanding of life that is different from other people around you. You have a vision for your future that is different from others around you. You have a hope and a security and a confidence that others do not have because you put your faith in a person who is absolutely unique. Over these years you have encountered Jesus and you have come to know him. There is no one in the world like him – past, present or future. You and Jesus are very closely connected.
Very much like you, Jesus, in the Gospel reading we listened to a few minutes ago, is at a hinge moment in his life. He is about to leave his quiet and private life and set out to begin his public life and work. He goes to John the Baptist and asks John to baptize him. John was a prophet who called people to repent their wrong doing, change their lives and start living like the people of God that they were. John baptized people in the Jordan River as a symbol of their willingness to do just that, to live up to who they were.
Jesus didn’t need to be baptized. He had never done anything that was wrong. But he was going to take all the wrong that would ever be done in the world upon his own shoulders so that he could win forgiveness for everybody sins, for all evil doing, for all the wrongs that people everywhere do in their lives. So Jesus goes into the River to John. And, somewhat unwillingly, because John knew who Jesus was, John baptizes him.
At that point, a miracle happens. St. Matthew tells us: “just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved,* with whom I am well pleased.’
At this hinge moment in his life, as Jesus begins his public work, his Father affirms his identity and tells everyone who he is. His Father is God. And God says: “This is my Son, and I love him and I am very happy with him.” Jesus is what his Father is: Jesus is God.
As I was preparing this talk, I happened to listen to the Goo Goo Doll’s song “Iris.” And the words of the chorus struck me.
And I don’t want the world to see me
‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand
When everything’s meant to be broken
I just want you to know who I am
You are heading out into a world that has always been a place where it’s hard to know what is real and what is not or what is true and what is not. And as the song said, everything can seem like the movies and we can’t tell what is life. And it seems that everything’s meant to be broken from the things we buy at the mall to important relationships that mark our lives.
Jesus wanted the world to see him. He knew that many people wouldn’t understand him and wouldn’t accept him and would reject the life he offered. But he understood how deeply broken people’s lives could be and he was willing to die to change all of that. He knew who he was and he wanted everyone to know because he was going to set them free from all their brokenness.
Well , who then are we in all of this? We are taught by our Catholic faith that when we were baptized we became one with Jesus and Jesus became one with us. Jesus dwells in us. St. John in his Gospel tells us that God’s Son came into the world and to those who accept him he gave power to become children of God, “who were born not from human stock or human desire or human will but from God himself.” That, my dear graduates, is you and me. Because of Jesus and in Jesus we are daughters and sons of God.
That is certainly our dignity. But it is also our hope for the future and confidence for our life. We are not afraid to let the world see us, we know who we are: we are God’s children and we know that God loves us. St. John wrote in his first letter: 1See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.(1 John 3:1)
When we were baptized, we became one with Jesus and Jesus and the Father come and make their home in us. Jesus tells us that he is the way the truth and the life; and so we follow Him in our lives because we need to know how to live our lives well in order to be happy. Jesus is God’s love in human flesh, and so we follow him because we know how much we need love and guidance in our lives.
Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. He doesn’t just show us the way, or teach us the truth or give us life, he is the way and he is the truth and he is the life. And so we not only believe what he says, we believe in him. We put our faith in him as a person and not as a set of beliefs or rules of conduct. And we become one with him in our spirit, and we are never without him throughout all our life. We are never alone; we are never abandoned. Because we have a relationship of friendship with God’s only Son.
This gives to all of us who follow Jesus a strength and an encouragement that comes only from God and only through Jesus who is God’s Son, the beloved, in whom the Father is well pleased. We have hope because we know where our lives are going – life forever with God and with our brother, Jesus who loves us and who is always with us.
We who follow Jesus can live in this world knowing what is real and what is true. The song said “I just want you to know who I am.” We who follow Jesus know who we are.
And we want the world to see us, to see who we are. Because in a world where it seems that everything’s meant to be broken, we want them to know that they too can be who we are: brothers and sisters of God’s own Son, the beloved, God’s own children. And they too can have the hope and the promise and the strength and the guidance that we have. And when their lives become broken, then they too will have the comfort that God ion his love heals them and makes us whole.
It is my prayer that God, who is always with you, will help you always, in all the years ahead, to live up to who you are and find in your life the happiness that God created you live.
