2019 Opening School Mass

Welcome to the 2019-20 school year, the 94th school year here at PAS. It is good to have you back, and to have with us for the first time the class of 2023. Today we are celebrating the Mass of the Holy Spirit, to ask especially for the Spirit’s blessing, guidance, inspiration and protection for us and for the work we are just beginning. As we know God through his revelation to us as a Trinity of three divine persons, we can fairly easily comprehend the Father and the Son. But the Holy Spirit is a great mystery. St. Paul speaks of the Spirit’s many gifts to us as individuals. They too are hard to comprehend. Just you try to understand someone speaking in tongues. And if you deliberately tried to prophesy, you would be a false prophet; you would fail. Yet to each of us, Saint Paul says, there is given some personal manifestation of the Spirit some way the Holy Spirit wants to and can work through and in us for some benefit to ourselves and to others. And so today we are asking the Holy Spirit to wake us up to our gifts to recognize them and to stir us to use them.
 
In the Gospel we just heard Jesus prays: "I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike.” I’m sure you don’t like to think of yourselves as child-like. But child-like here does not mean child-ish; it means fresh, unspoiled… the young at heart, precisely those who are open to the surprising workings of the Spirit. So you who are young have an advantage over us who are older and more bound by our pre-conceptions. Now I know all of you have finished your summer reading. I try to do more reading during the summer, although it doesn’t always work out. One of the books I read was an absolutely fascinating, 800 page biography of Stalin, which was full of interesting tips on how I could be a more efficient superior. But I don’t think the Holy Spirit was moving me to follow Stalin’s example.
 
Then there was another book I read; a book which my mother got back in 1945. At some point in my adult life she gave it to me, in fact insisted I take it. She would periodically ask me if I had read it, which I never did. It was a novel, and I didn’t read novels. I think I started lying to her at some point, telling her I had read it, just so she wouldn’t ask any more, but that didn’t work for long. Because as her memory failed, she both forgot she had asked me before and forgot my answer. So she kept asking. I did start reading it once many years ago, but got bored real quick and put it aside. My mother has been gone for 15 years now, so I can’t even tell you why I picked it up this summer, but I did and it was a real eye opener. First it taught me a lot about my mother and I wish I had read it years ago while my mother was alive so we could have talked about it together. She obviously wanted to. So always do what your mother asks when she asks. Mothers always have good reasons. And secondly, this book was full of wisdom and keen insights, some of which were about you.
 
The book, Blessed are the Meek, is a historical novel about St Francis of Assisi, who was someone definitely tuned in to the Holy Spirit. But what made me think about you and the Holy Spirit was its description of the Children’s Crusade, a remarkable event that occurred in 1212. Remarkable because the previous two generation of Europeans had been on fire with the idea of the Crusade, some for noble reasons and some not. But those Crusades failed, and the fire went out. And then in the spring of 1212, a twelve year old shepherd boy in France named Stephen and a 14 year old boy in Germany named Nicholas said “we can do it.”  “We” meaning the youth, we “18 and under.” If the adults were not willing to look beyond their day to day mundane lives to great things, these young people were. And within a period of four months, 150,000 children and teenagers – rich and poor, nobles and peasants, dropped whatever they were doing to go on a crusade. They would liberate the Holy Land & convert the Muslims. Now let’s forget for the moment that this crusade ended in utter disaster. The whole point of this story being in the book is the motivation of these young people. They were thirsting for greatness, to achieve a noble purpose. They acted on their inspiration, responded to the call of the Spirit with total sincerity and love, and not for revenge, conquest, profit or glory. Tragically, they were cheated, deceived, tricked and abused, shipwrecked, enslaved and killed, totally taken advantage of by venal and cynical adults. But they had taken Jesus seriously, at His word, and were treated as the prophets had been before him, and even as we treat prophets now.
 
The French poet and diplomat Paul Claudel wrote: Youth is not meant for pleasure but for heroism. Not that I really know anything about them, but I gather one of the attractions of video games is to achieve virtual comfortable heroism. Are you thirsting for real greatness and a noble purpose? I know one thing: there is greatness within you. We do make a point of admitting to Portsmouth young people with the potential for greatness. But in what does your own greatness lie? To answer THAT, you need the Holy Spirit to help you discover & understand it, to give you the knowledge to develop it, and then give you the courage to use it. And the wisdom to know how and when to use it, and the reverence to order it to the glory of God & the good of others. In what does your own greatness lie? That is what you are here at PAS to find out and what we are here to help you find. One thing we do know, you are called to be saints, to be great in holiness.
 
Whatever those unfortunate young people lacked in their Crusade in 1212, they succeeded in that, in spite of those who didn’t believe in them and those who took advantage of them. Crusades of young people today do not need to end in abject failure. It was the school children and teenagers of Birmingham, Alabama, facing police clubs, firehoses and dogs, who brought an end to racial segregation there. The first summer I took St Louis students to Chile, the High School students there organized a national strike all by themselves and brought about needed changes in that country’s funding of education. What can you do, you ask? Look at Greta Thunberg, and her crusade to slow down climate change, a crusade joined by thousands of teenagers in Europe. You can do great things, you can make more real God’s kingdom on this earth, God presence and power in your own life, if you listen, pray and respond to the Holy Spirit working in your life and your world. Don’t be afraid to think big. The Prophet Joel speaks of the youth having visions. At least have a vision: a vision of God and your unique, gifted place in his creation. Blessed are the eyes that see what you can see.
 
Come, Holy Spirit ! Fill the hearts of your faith-filled students here, and their teachers, and set them aflame with your love. Send forth your spirit, and they shall be re-created and so you shall renew this world ! O God, you who teach your faithful ones by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, grant that we all may be truly wise and always rejoice in His help. This we ask in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son, Our Lord. Amen.

 
Come, Holy Spirit !
Fill the hearts of your faith-filled students here,
and their teachers,
and set them aflame with your love.
Send forth your spirit, and they shall be re-created
and so you shall renew this world !
O God, you who teach your faithful ones
by the guidance of the Holy Spirit,
Grant that we all may be truly wise
and always rejoice in His help.
This we ask in the name of Jesus Christ,
your Son, Our Lord.
Amen.