This weekend, our 8th grade class graduates from Saint Simon School and we are excited for them as they head off to high school. Many of the students have been here all 10 years of their elementary schooling and some joined in the last few years, but they are graduating as a class, a community of students who have grown to study, play, and work together. They have shown us how to love and to be loved. They have been a wonderful class to get to know and we will miss seeing them every day.
In my homily to them at their Graduation Mass, I broke open the wisdom from the book of Sirach from the Saturday morning scripture readings. I advised them how when I was their age, I was not a humble child and I still struggle with humility even today. But the gift of the wisdom literature from Scripture is that it holds up humility as wisdom and the way to live a full life is to love: love of God, of others and yes ourselves. I gave them an acronym to try to live by: LOVE—Listen, Openness, Valor, and Empathy.
I suggested that they strive to listen well to their teachers who are trying to teach them knowledge of different forms in the years ahead, to listen to their good friends who will be an excellent mirror for them, and to listen to their parents as they have valuable wisdom to offer them to avoid some roadblocks of life.
If we listen well then, we will need to be open to new ways of thinking, open to new ways of learning and open to new people with very different ideas than ours. I challenged them to be open to God in their life in everyday little moments of grace and to search each night before bed to name the top three graced moments of each day.
If we listen well and are open to all of life, then we are going to need to acquire valor. Valor is the boldness and courage to act on what we have seen and heard. Sometimes that means standing up for someone who has no voice, other times that means remaining silent when someone else finds their voice and still other times that requires deep thought to ascertain what is the most courageous thing to do or say in any given moment. Valor is an old but important character trait.
Finally, I pleaded with them to be empathetic with others. I challenged them to see the “other person”, whoever it is they meet and wherever they meet them, as another “Christ” and treat them the way we would want to be treated if we were in that current situation. Empathy is the imaginative effort to walk in another person’s shoes so we can be kind, gentle and loving to them in their moment of weakness. I challenged them to be most empathetic to strangers and see them as angels from God giving us a chance to flex our LOVE muscles.
I concluded by inviting them to join us each week at Mass as it is where we strive to learn together how to LOVE each other and LOVE God. It is here we are working together to be our best selves. We don’t always get it right, but we strive to be better each week. Come and join us in that endeavor.
One of the great gifts of our community of faith is that there is a strong tie between the school and the church. We have many shared programs and events allowing the school and church communities to become one in action and prayer. We pray and hope that after the students graduate, they and their families will continue to remain connected to our community through Sunday worship especially, at the Sunday evening Mass with the contemporary music band.
Henri Nouwen says that “true community is first of all a quality of the heart, a quality that touches all those whom we meet in our life, not only our own family, but also the people we work and play with. And the source of all community is our most intimate relationship with Jesus Christ because the deeper we enter into communion with him, the more clearly, we will find that all those whom we love are hidden in his heart.”
My hope is that the students take friendship with Christ everywhere they go and become the living Body of Christ to all they meet on their journey of life. Of course, this truth about community being centered in Christ does not solve all our pains and problems, but it certainly can set us free to travel on and to move forward. A church community is a physical manifestation of our Catholic religion. It is a safe place to ask those big and difficult questions of life that come our way: Where did we come from? Why do bad things happen to good people? Who is my neighbor? Where do we go from here?
Barbara Taylor Brown says that religion is a “treasure chest of stories, songs, rituals that are a way of life which has been handed down for millennia. Not covered in dust but evolving all the way so each generation has something to choose from when the time comes to ask the big questions.”
We hope and pray that each family graduating knows that they have a home and community here at St. Simon Parish forever and they are welcome to return asking those questions of life and feeling safe to bring their hurts and pains, not to solve their problems but to know that others care enough to listen to them.
Our community is not just somewhere to belong (although that is a great thing) it is primarily a place to be transformed into our fullest potential as a child of God created in God’s own image. This weekend, if you meet a graduating student, please congratulate them, and show them love with a kind comment of encouragement on their journey of faith. Believe in them now and always see them as a mirror of who we are to become.
Congratulations class of 2023! May God bless you and hold you in the hollow of his hand.
Fr. Brendan