Blessing of Student Leaders by Abbot Michael

The academic year began with a series of orientations and welcoming events for new students. On Saturday evening at 5:00 pm, the Vigil Mass for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time served as the occasion to welcome new students and many of their families to the Abbey community, where Abbot Michael offered this homily. At the end of the Mass, the abbot also concluded with the blessings of student leaders as well as of the faculty and staff, followed by the general blessing of all present.

As we come together today to celebrate the beginning of a new school year – I hope we are all celebrating and not feeling sad that a new school year is starting – as we begin, the church gives us a very appropriate Gospel reading for this occasion. As the gospel story begins, we find Jesus in foreign territory. If your high school experience is anything like mine was, you will and in fact should often find yourselves in foreign territory. Math was certainly always foreign to me, but I managed to grasp some of it. It would be very much a waste of time in school if your teachers presented to you what you already knew. Because Jesus’ reputation preceded him, the people in this foreign place brought to him a deaf man, asking Jesus to heal him. Not only was the man deaf but he could not speak intelligibly. Those two senses are connected. If you can’t hear, you don’t know what speech should sound like and so you cannot speak but only make garbled sounds. Just so, if you are not a good listener, what you have to say won’t have much value.

So here we are, you and I, at Portsmouth Abbey School, and in this Gospel story we are meant to identify with this deaf man. Note that this man did not come to Jesus on his own. Other people brought him to be healed. The Gospel doesn’t say this man resisted but he very well may have thought that it was pointless. Now I don’t know how many of us would flock to schools if the law did not require it and our parents did not bring us. For example, my father was the second youngest of twelve children, and he was the first boy in the family to finish elementary school, that is eighth grade. I don’t know how he felt about it at the time, but it allowed him to go on to high school, college and law school. Probably my grandfather made him finish elementary school. My father made me sign up for organic chemistry, definitely foreign territory for me, which I would never have taken on my own. The point is, like the deaf man in the Gospel, sometimes we need to be pushed. And sometimes miracles do happen.

Jesus does not disappoint these foreigners. He does heal the deaf man, but in a unique way. He doesn’t do it in front of everyone. He takes the deaf man away from the crowd and provides him with an intense personal experience. Instead of just saying “be healed and hear” in the way Jesus performed some other healing miracles, he physically touches the man, putting his finger into the man’s ear. And then more surprisingly he touches the man's tongue with his saliva-covered finger. And Jesus groans, an indication that he was exerting significant effort. And he says, “Be opened,” and the man is suddenly able to hear and speak.

Abbot Michael reads the Gospel at the Vigil Mass, September 7, 2024Did Jesus need to use His finger and His saliva to heal this man ? Certainly not. He could have done it with a mere thought. But He chose to use His body as an instrument of healing. Doing so reveals to us that Jesus’ humanity became the source of unity between God and humanity, between God and us. You might think it gross, but even His finger and His saliva unite us to God. Everything about Jesus, God in His human form, distributes grace, healing and mercy. If Jesus chose to use His finger and even his saliva to distribute His power, so, also, He desires to continue using us to distribute His love and mercy.

God became a human being so that human beings could become like God. You are His hands and feet, His eyes and voice, His heart and finger, and even His saliva. That last thought is very humbling and sobering. But if Jesus can use His saliva for healing, He can use you too. If we can understand that, then we will be better ready and able to become an instrument of His divine mercy to those who need it. God is able to use us NOT because we are so good or deserving of being used. Rather, He can use us because He has chosen to do so, even in our most humble, imperfect state. None of us are too much like God yet. Saint Paul said in one of his letters to the Corinthians, “In my weakness, God’s power is made perfect.” We can pray for the full effects of our ears and tongues being opened, that we have open ears to God’s voice speaking to us – that is what lectio does for us. We can pray that we speak plainly when we are asked about our faith or when someone needs to hear a good word from us; and when we need to speak up for another person, or people’s, behalf. Ask yourself: have you ever had an experience of a new insight in your life, or heard a truth that turned you around? Why not speak out of your personal experience and tell someone about it? Maybe, even give a Church talk. Going back to my first point, Jesus is in foreign territory. There he heals someone not of his people, or faith. Jesus challenges us to reach out to others, no matter their social, racial, economic, or ethnic status and share with them the gifts of grace and peace we have received.

Be opened this year, to new and foreign knowledge, to new and different people but especially open the ears of your heart and listen to what God is trying to tell you. Because he is indeed speaking to you. Listen and learn. Here at Portsmouth Abbey we are all about knowledge and grace.

New Abbots gathering at for the Quadrennial Congress (from osb.org)Now I am very sorry to say that I will miss the first two weeks of classes this year. Tomorrow morning I leave for Rome and the Congress of Benedictine Abbots from all over the world. This happens every four years, but because of COVID it has not happened for eight years. I would rather be here, but duty calls. Because I will not be here on Monday morning to celebrate the Mass of the Holy Spirit with which we begin classes, at the end of this Mass there will be some special blessings. I will ask the student leaders – prefects, class officers, International Student Leaders, the head boy and head girl – to come up here for a blessing. And then I will ask the same of the faculty and staff. I wish you all a smooth beginning of classes, success in sports, blossoming of knowledge, increase in grace. And I very much look forward to coming back here with you later in September.

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