Homily for Graduation 2009
Abbot Caedmon Holmes, O.S.B.
Sunday, May 24, 2009

At this point in the liturgical year we are situated between Jesus' Ascension into heaven, which we celebrated last Thursday, and the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church, which we will commemorate a week from today, at Pentecost, the birthday of the Church as Christ's agent in the world, speaking and acting for him under the inspiration of his own Spirit.

The first reading of today's Mass shows us Peter and the other remaining apostles, during the interim period between Ascension and Pentecost, having someone elected to take Judas's place and so bring the number of the apostles back up to Jesus' original choice of twelve.

What else were they doing during the nine days between Ascension and receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost?  They were praying.  The Acts of the Apostles says, "They constantly devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brothers."

Was it perhaps like the time between ending formal education and beginning one's career of work?  What better way of getting ready than asking God for inspiration and strength?

When Jesus disappeared off into the sky, the "formal education" of the disciples was at an end.  When the Holy Spirit came upon them, they "graduated" and were commissioned to go out to do their task of proclaiming the Gospel to the whole world.  Between these two events there was time for them to pray.  Without inspiration from heaven they would neither have known what to do nor have had the strength and wisdom to do it right---or even to do it at all.

Today our graduates are going to find on their seats at the ceremony in the tent two gifts:  one is a book about making a success of college, donated by Tom Healey of the class of 1960, which he has been giving to our graduates at commencement now for some years.  The other is something new this year:  a gift from a donor who wishes to remain anonymous.  It's a little book with a big title:  Scriptural Rosary: A Modern Version of the Way the Rosary was Once Prayed Throughout Western Europe in the Late Middle Ages.  It offers instruction and encouragement to pray the Rosary, using verses selected from the Bible. 

Now, it happens that this book has a special extra interest for us at Portsmouth Abbey School.  The author's name is not given in the book, but we have recently learned that it was compiled by the father of our own Mrs. Zelden, who lives with her husband and daughter in St. Hugh's House and teaches Christian Doctrine in the School.  (The book was published first in 1961, so you could think of it as a kind of older sibling of Mrs. Zelden herself.  I don't know how old she is but am certain that she's still much younger than the age of the book, which is forty-eight.)

Whatever else you may have learned during your time here at Portsmouth, we would be very disappointed and embarrassed if you have not at least begun to get acquainted with Jesus during your time among us.  In reciting the Rosary, Pope John Paul II said, "The Christian people sits at the feet of Mary, and is led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ, and to experience the depths of his love."  The Rosary, John Paul said, is "a true doorway to the depths of the Heart of Jesus, ocean of joy and of light, of suffering and of glory."  (He is referring there, of course, to what we call the mysteries of the Rosary:  the Joyful Mysteries of Jesus' birth and childhood, the Mysteries of Light of his preaching and miracles, the Sorrowful Mysteries of his passion, and the Glorious Mysteries of his resurrection and all that flows from it.)

We call these mysteries because  those who are initiated into them find that they are full of power---life-changing and death-defying power.  "The mysteries of Christ are Mary's mysteries, because she lives only from him and through him."

Whatever good things you graduates may be blessed with in later life, in career and in family, we hope you will not miss out on the supreme good of cultivating your connection to Christ, learning to live from him and through him.  God has shown his love for us by sending his only Son, to be savior of the world. 

In his prayer to the Father in the Gospel passage we have just heard, Jesus asks the Father not to take us out of the world but to keep us from the evil one.  We don't belong to the world, Jesus says, any more than he belongs to the world---and indeed the world knows how to make it clear that it does not want him!  But he sends us into the world as the Father sent him, not to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through him.

You graduates, of course, are not going immediately out into the world from here:  your education is not yet completed.  But wherever you go next term, it will be to a bigger, busier place than Portsmouth Abbey School, with many more students---and, in all likelihood, a less sheltered place.  Your courage and conviction will be put to the test if you are going to live by and stand up for what you believe is true and right.  Don't be taken by surprise:  Christ himself predicted this would happen to you as it happened to him.  Don't try to go it alone.  Christ is your brother, and wants to be your friend.  By his own gift given from the cross, His mother is your mother.  Stay close to them.  Prayer is the way to do that, prayer nourished by the sacramental life that is offered to you in the Church, nourished at the same time by listening to and pondering on his word, which is addressed to you personally.

As Queen of Peace, Mary is patroness of Portsmouth Abbey.  May she, the Mother of Christ and Mother of the Church, show you her Son, and protect and sustain you in your life of faith.

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