2023 Graduates at Pentecost Mass

This morning we are here to thank God and to begin to celebrate a graduation, and so my words this morning are primarily directed to the graduates. Today’s first reading describes the apostles and the early church meeting, actually hiding, together in a large room, when suddenly the Holy Spirit whom Jesus promised, dramatically came down upon them and filled them with power. We hear these words with the benefit of hindsight and understanding. At this important moment in your lives perhaps some of the things you have experienced here at PAS, perhaps some of the things said to you today, don’t and won’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. It can be worthwhile 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. So today you look forward as one of the landmarks comes upon you and your four-year long journey as high school students officially comes to an end. It’s very appropriate that we celebrate your graduation on the feast of the Pentecost, which event was for the Apostles their graduation from mere disciples to men on and with a mission. On that day the sense and meaning of all that Jesus had taught finally came together and they caught fire from the flame of the Spirit. They became changed persons, no longer fishermen and they never looked back.

I last spoke to you on Ascension Thursday, that day we recall Jesus’ rising to heaven out of the apostle’s sight. Without the coming of the Spirit on Pentecost, and the effect it had on the Apostles the Ascension would have been merely an interesting event. Just so your graduation from here will be of minimal importance unless it inspires you to strive for lofty and meaningful goals. You have been an inspiration to us as a community, each one of you a unique manifestation of the divine presence and divine talent and beauty and high aspirations, each one of you working with and respecting the individuality of all the others. For this we thank you and congratulate you, and I personally thank you for being such good brothers and sisters to each other and to all of us. You have made this time worthwhile. We truly hope and pray you will meet and recognize a new face of God in a loving community at the college or university to which you will be going. We also 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 the Totally Other, the perfect community of persons – the Trinity whom we worship here this morning. Our God is the mirror in which we see and find our best selves.

Now the Gospel today reports: Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Peace. Salaam. Shalom. A godly greeting in all languages. The longing for peace is a universal characteristic of the human heart, a blessing all peoples and religions seek. If love is the 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. Scripture describes the fracturing of humanity in the story of the Tower of Babel; humanity became marked by the confusion of language among peoples. Humanity was divided and dispersed into strife. Pentecost, however, is in fact the feast of peace. It celebrates the re-gathering and re-union of the human family, by the power of the Holy Spirit, a reunion symbolized by the gift of tongues. This first Christian community, those recipients of the Holy Spirit, was open to all peoples. That day people of every nation heard the Apostles speaking, each one in his own language, of the mighty acts of God. It was the Tower of Babel reversed. Pentecost brought the hope of real unity and community. People could now be united under God's Holy Spirit, through whom God is alive and active in the world today. Pentecost assures us that God is with us in helping us bring God's blessing upon all of creation. As permanent and grinding as our time seems: a struggle for world dominance by a few powerful economies; poverty shackling most of the world’s peoples; depletion of the earth's resources; degradation of the environment; continual violence, war and small genocides; the displacement of millions of refugees; famine and disease. Nevertheless, today we remember and celebrate God's continual presence with us as we work to heal and help forge a Spirit-inspired unity among all people, a unity you can help build.

Abbot Michael Brunner at Pentecost Mass

Today you are going forth, out into new and separate parts of this country and the world, and you will carry signs of what you stand for. We 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 your selves. 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 men. Saint Paul tells the Corinthians and us: There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God. The world desperately needs you, your service and your gifts; it needs them to grow and blossom in larger fields. As you have shared your gifts with us, and we have shared our gifts with you, share the gifts each of you has for the needs of the world that Jesus came to save.

The world needs the gift of your faith, your witness to the eternal truth of God’s love, because the world needs true love more than anything else. And faith in that love, faith in God is the best witness, because the world you are going into has little regard for what cannot be proven or demonstrated by science or that cannot serve utilitarian principles; and you cannot prove love or God in laboratories. To love God with your whole being, and to love your neighbor as yourself is the greatest commandment, because your neighbor is the image of God. The world needs good, loving neighbors. The world needs you to confirm the word of God’s love in your lives. The world needs your gifts in the sciences and the humanities especially, because the world is always in danger from and of inhumanity.

The world needs your courage. There’s a very good reason that the nations of the world use young men and women to fight their battles; It is because you have courage, strong hearts. You are proof itself of this virtue as some of you are planning to make commitments to military service. You will be putting your lives on the line. But the world needs you not to give up your life for a cause, but to live your life for a reason, beyond your self. That takes real courage. That’s the reason that the apostles were relatively young men, some very young, because they found the best reason to live and love for, and yes even die for. A love that is not worth defending unto death when and if necessary is not a love worth living for. The world needs your dreams. The Holy Spirit is the guide and counselor of dreams. Young Jacob, Joseph, David, Samuel. Young Mary, Joseph her husband, Peter, Paul, and young Saint John had dreams which changed their lives and the world. Young John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela all had dreams too.

The world has seen many dreams – and nightmares – come true. Nazism, Auschwitz, poison gas, biological warfare, and nuclear weapons and the destruction of 9/11 were all once just somebody’s dreams. But so were Ecumenism, Civil Rights and racial equality, antibiotics and airplanes, the United States, The Bill of Rights, computers and internet, a US President of African descent and even this school. All were once just dreams too. Now your time is coming as you enter college, to focus your sights on your dreams, dreams which you will spend your lives in bringing to reality. We hope you find that the seeds of those dreams were planted or at least watered here at Portsmouth Abbey. My generation, the generation of your parents and your grandparents, all generations before you that have come of age faced similar challenges in a problematic world, always vexed by the apocalyptic four horsemen of war, lack of food, disease and premature death. You have earned the opportunity to better us, to build higher and stronger upon our foundation. Life is always changing. Be change for the better. Be men and women of and for your time. As you build, may the words of this school’s motto now be your motto: Veritas, Truth. First and foremost, we stand for faithful adherence to eternal and enduring truth; to the truth of faith certainly, but to all truth, to the truth of goodness and beauty, for all truth is of God.

Fr. Paschal Scotti reads the Gospel

That word “truth” is unfortunately controversial in today’s world. Some do not think there is anything true in itself, many others do not recognize what truth is or do not agree on what is true. We hope that you recognize it and will continue to. One inescapable truth is that God and the world expect from all of us, and now you, in proportion to what we each have been given. In the Gospel of Luke Jesus speaks that powerful truth: Everyone to whom much is given, of that person much will be required. You do have so many gifts which you have been given and which you have nourished, so may you bear much fruit. And so finally, we pray as St Paul did in his letter to the Ephesians: May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a Spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of him. May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call. Be men and women full of hope. It’s a beautiful world, but it is a rough world in the process of becoming. Always hope. Always look forward to the ultimate goal.

So today I offer you the priestly blessing God commanded Aaron to give his people: May the Lord bless you and keep you, May the Lord let His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. And may you, class of 2023, be happy, loving, beloved, and wise.