Abbot Michael Brunner gave this homily at the Graduation Mass for the Class of 2024, celebrated on Sunday, May 26, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity.

Graduation Mass 2024

The reason we are here today is to begin to celebrate a graduation, so my words this morning are primarily directed to the graduates. Saint Matthew’s gospel passage today are Jesus’ final words to his Apostles, words focused on his love for them. At the time Jesus spoke them, those words confounded the Apostles. The Gospel says they had doubts. They did not realize he was about to leave them. We hear his words today with the benefit of hindsight and understanding.

At this important moment in your lives, perhaps some of the things you have experienced here, and many of the things said to you today, don’t make sense to you right now, but will someday, with the benefit of hindsight. Much of our life experience makes sense to us only afterwards. In life, it is all right to look backwards to get your bearings, but never try to go backwards in place or time. You must always look ahead and look forward. Life is always changing. No matter how far away landmark events of life may seem, they come quickly upon us. So today a change comes upon you and a promise is fulfilled. Your years-long journey as high school students officially comes to an end.

It is very appropriate that this graduation occurs on Trinity Sunday, when we celebrate the unique revelation to us of the One God to be a trinity, a community, of three persons. You as a class, as a bonded community of unique individuals, unique manifestations of the divine presence, of goodness, beauty and truth – you will disperse today, much as the apostles did after Jesus left them. As a community you are a face of God, because community is one of God’s faces, the face of Trinity. But you are one face of God that after today we cannot keep with us and we will no longer see. You have done what Saint Paul, the great founder of communities, urged his people to do: “to live in a manner worthy of the calling you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” We hope that while you were here with us at Portsmouth Abbey, you came to better understand yourself, your best self and the God-ness within you, but most importantly, we hope you encountered that primary face of God – the One, the Only, the Holy, and Totally Other, the perfect community of persons – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, whom we worship here this morning. This 3-person God is the mirror in which we see and find our best selves. We truly hope and pray you will meet and recognize a new reflection, a new face of God in a loving community at the college or university to which you will now be going.

Picking up where St Matthew’s Gospel left off, the Gospel of St. Mark concludes saying that after Jesus left them: “they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs.” Today you are going forth, out into new and different parts of this country and the world, and you will carry with you signs of what you have learned, stand for and believe.

I hope you will take to the places you go and to the people you meet all that you have learned here. And you have learned more than you realize, as you shall soon see for yourselves. If you truly learned how to form and be a community, you have learned something truly important. This kind of unity and harmony does not come easy to people. You just have to look at the world to see how difficult it is for human beings to live and work together in community, in harmony and peace. The Risen Jesus always greeted his disciples with those words we heard in every Eucharist: Peace be with you. And how poignant that greeting is on this Memorial Day weekend, when we remember those who gave their lives to restore peace. As we briefly explored the religions of the world this year, you saw that the search and longing for peace is a universal characteristic of the human heart, a blessing all peoples and religions seek. If love is the certain way to happiness, peace is the landscape through which this way is straightest and surest. Jesus Christ has given us peace, and we experience peace in Jesus Christ, celebrated in every Eucharist, moved by the Holy Spirit, who at Pentecost graduated the Apostles and sent them to gather and unite the human family in peace. Those recipients of the Holy Spirit, that first Christian community, were open to all peoples, gathered together as one at the Eucharist. The Holy Spirit and the real presence of Jesus Christ have brought the hope of unity and real community to all people, to be united through God's Spirit in the one Body of Christ. With the coming of Jesus Christ, God as man, and the coming of the Holy Spirit working in and though us, God is alive and active in the world today.