My dear friends, let me say first how pleased I am to be with you, as your Archbishop, this afternoon to celebrate this Mass for you the Miller High School graduates. Graduation from High School is an extremely special event. While preparing for this Mass, I realized that it was 52 years ago this month that I graduated from High School in Moncton, New Brunswick. You probably can’t even imagine anyone being that old! It is somewhat a surprise for me as well!
Times have changed over the years, and the world has changed. Yet one thing doesn’t change: graduation from High School marks a major turning point in people’s lives. We move from childhood and adolescence into a new maturity and a new responsibility for our lives. This is one of the “hinge” moments in our life. What we remember especially today is that this is a hinge moment in the lives of a group of people who are Christian, who are Catholic Christian people. So we look to Jesus, the Son of God, for his words to us.
The Gospel recounts an event when Jesus was at a major turning point in his life. He had just finished the Last Supper and was about to walk with his apostles across the Kidron valley in Jerusalem to the Garden of Olives where he would be betrayed by a friend, arrested and, the next day, die on the cross.
Jesus could have talked about many things to his closest companions. He chooses to them about love. He tells them that he loves them just like His Father, who is God, loves him. And he tells them to “abide” in that love he has for them. He says they need to “live” in his love, perhaps something like a person who wears his favourite clothes all the time is said to “live in those clothes” or someone “lives in those jeans.” Or perhaps the way we live in our home, in a place that is our comfort and our security and our refuge when life gets challenging and tough.
So then, Jesus says: make my love for you your home, make my love your security and your comfort. Make my love for you your refuge and your safety. Then he says that if we do that then our joy will be complete. We will find great happiness in our life and it will be a happiness, a joy that will be complete, not passing, not here today and gone tomorrow, but always there, completely there, fully there in our hearts carrying us forward day by day for the whole of our life.
Jesus words to his disciples in the Bible are not just about the past but are really for us and our lives right now. Jesus speaks those words to us. You are setting out on a whole new way of living your lives. You are stepping into a new world. And you are blessed with a Catholic education which gives to you an amazing and time tried way of living your life so that your life and your future will give you a life in which, as Jesus said, “My joy will be in you and your joy will be complete.
Jesus continues his words and tells his friends that when we obey his commandments we know that we are abiding in his love. When we abide in Jesus love then we are one with him: one in mind, one in heart, one in Spirit – just like Jesus is with His Father. When we are one with Jesus, then we can live the life that he lives: life that is complete and life that is full, life that is eternal and therefore life that is happy.
And what are Jesus commandments? At this point Jesus said to his disciples: ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
When Jesus talks about how important it is for our happiness that we obey him, it is good for us to think about “Who it is that we obey in our lives?” Who do you obey? I suppose your parents, although you are becoming more and more independent of your parents at this point in your life. If you are on an athletic team, you probably obey your coach, if you want to stay on the team. There are many people we are called to obey.
Jesus said that he lived his life being obedient to his Father. We know Jesus’ Father is God. And therefore Jesus owed his Father his obedience and this obedience showed his love and his oneness with his Father. Jesus asks us to obey his commandments, and the commandment he gives is that we love one another.
There are many types of love. But Jesus puts that command that we love one another in the context of friendship. We all know how important our friends are. During our years in High School we make friendships that are very strong and very important and some of those will last a life time.
Jesus says:No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.That is the great love that Jesus has for us. Jesus says to us that we are his friends. So it is in this friendship with Jesus that we find our anchor in life, our security, our comfort and our great happiness.
In the Bible, The Book of Sirach tells us that whoever finds a faithful friend has found a treasure, a faithful friend is beyond price, a faithful friend is a life saving medicine. Jesus says to us: you are my friends. Jesus calls us, who are his followers and his friends to love one another as he has loved us.
This love is not a romantic love; it is not a love that depends on how we feel. It is a love that is all about what we decide to do. The Book of Sirach also says:
8 For there are friends who are such when it suits them,
but they will not stand by you in time of trouble.
9 And there are friends who change into enemies,
and tell of the quarrel to your disgrace.
10 And there are friends who sit at your table,
but they will not stand by you in time of trouble.
11 When you are prosperous, they become your second self,
12 but if you are brought low, they turn against you,
and hide themselves from you.
We are a faithful friend when we decide to stand by someone in time of trouble, regardless of whether or not it feels good regardless of whether or not we gain in any way from what we do. We are a faithful friend when we try to bring about what is good for someone else, what is helpful, what is encouraging, what is strengthening, what is assuring. Jesus says that is the way we are to love one another. That is his command and when we live that way we bear fruit for God in our lives. And when we bear fruit for God in our lives then our lives become full and our joy complete. That’s the life I wish for each and every one of you.
