Good evening. To our graduates and their guests—family
members; faculty, staff, and administration of St. Dominic High School; our
parish priests, clergy, friends: Welcome. It is a joy to celebrate this
wonderful occasion with you all. We are all family tonight.
Before I begin, I would like to thank the graduates who
asked me to give tonight’s homily. I was humbled and honored by your request.
Please say a prayer for me that I may do well and that the Holy Spirit may
accompany my words.
And to the parents, my hearty congratulations to you.
This day is just as much about you as it is the graduates. Today is the
culmination of what began many years ago as you held your little one in your
arms, realizing what unconditional love was and knowing that you had gone past
the point of no return. (*looking at graduates*) They were stuck with you! Life
and your heart would never be the same. Your sacrifices have been many; may the
gratitude of all go with you today and always.
* * *
I’ve given a title to tonight’s homily:
The Pitfall of
Senioritis: Or, What Motivates Me to Make My Bed
There is a saying among some of the priests at the
seminary. It is “Remove the scaffolding and the man will be revealed.” The
priests would say this as the men would go home for summer break and leave the
rule and rigors of seminary life; the men were totally off on their own to make
decisions not based on obligation or because opportunities were served up on a
platter for them. No, the men would go home and make decisions based on what
they had or had not integrated from their learning (or lack thereof) in the
seminary. The scaffolding of the seminary life is removed and we’d see if the
man looked more like Christ the Priest… or not.
The same happens to you now. For the vast majority of
your life, you have been behind scaffolding, like a building under construction,
obedient—or mostly so—to the expectations and obligations given to you. These
have dictated your life to this moment. Getting out of bed, to name just one of
numerous examples, was grounded not only by your alarm, but also by your mom or
dad or the fear of being tardy and someone noticing. Now, few will. Something
as mundane as getting up is up to you and your motivations for doing so.
And so Jesus prays. The readings for tonight take us to
the night before He dies. On that night, He prays to the Father: “Father, I
have consecrated them in the truth…. I have protected them, guarded them… I pray for them… keep them from the Evil One…
I sent them out in to the world…”
Jesus is concerned about you. I’m concerned about you.
Your parents are too. It’s not easy “out there.” We know what happens when we
are left to our own designs. You know what happens, right? I mean… #Senioritis.
Let’s talk about that for a moment. How did senioritis go?
Like crawling over a finish line. Quick
poll: how many of you during the past semester at one point or another said:
“I’m so done with this”? (Go ahead, raise your hand) … (*this can easily be
turned into a “praise God” sign*)
Yes, praise God!
As a past high school teacher, I was always a little
intrigued by senioritis: What caused it? Was it simply apathy? burnout? Was it
the stress of doing school and
college prep? Was it because things like Flannery O’Connor’s use of irony in
her short story you studied in AP American Lit just didn’t seem to bear any
weight on whether or not you were getting into whatever college and major you
were already accepted into?
Senioritis, I have found, is a collection of all of these…
and
which ultimately boil down to one thing: what motivates you? What is
your intention for doing what you do? What gets you up in the morning?
Senioritis happens because, frankly, we sometimes don’t
know. And that’s actually the beauty of the second semester of senior year.
During the second semester, all of the “baloney” motivators—and I say “baloney”
because I can’t say the actual word (this is a PG rated liturgy)…. During the second semester, all of the “baloney”
motivators are stripped away and we are faced with what seems like nothing: just
deadlines, busywork, and study that really means nothing to my life.
But it was
precisely in that moment that we all had a choice. We didn’t realize we had
a choice, but we did. The choice was this: to love the subject you were
studying not because you were obliged to, not because of grades, not because of
impact on college, but to love it for its own sake. Senioritis is the symptom of a greater illness: namely, that we have
yet to learn to love a thing selflessly—for it’s own sake.
I’m going to be honest with you, most people never learn
this lesson. There are lots and lots of people in corporate America, politics,
medicine, and even higher university education who do what they do not because
they are or were motivated by love of the thing itself, but because they were
moved there by a lifetime of decisions motivated by fear of negative
consequences or other selfish reasons. When they reach their forties or
fifties, they have a mid-life crisis: that’s senioritis for older people. (…
did you notice? that was nervous laughter.)
They face the same question that you faced this past
Spring and which you will again face this Autumn: What gets you out of bed in
the morning?
The scaffolding is being removed. What will we see?
The Lord consecrated us in truth and prays for us that we
might have a good reason for getting up each morning. He prays the reason might
be love….
* *
When I was in the seminary, there was a brilliant
professor there who spoke very high theology and who totally blew our minds.
One year, he was reassigned and his parting words of advice were:
“Gentlemen, always make your bed.”
We laughed about this. I mean, of all the things you
could leave us with, you say “always make your bed”? How mundane!
I mean, yeah, I grasped the intention: it was orderly,
virtuous, contributed to cleanliness, blah blah blah….
But I tried it. …. (And it was invigorating!)
Actually, I noticed something odd about it: when I was
stressed out or anxious or depressed, I never made my bed. When I was feeling
good, I made my bed. I learned that something like this simple virtuous but
mundane action had become a barometer for self-knowledge. And self-knowledge is
very important—especially in college!
I mean, to know when we aren’t being healthy, to know when we need to close the
book and go outside, to know when we just simply need to go to bed….
I wish I knew about this in college. Because, really,
making your bed will help you with other things we often struggle with in
college.
So, for example, hung-over people never make their beds. Fact.
People who do things that they shouldn’t be doing with
other people in their beds don’t wake up in the morning and say “Hey, let’s
make the bed together,” … because that’s weird … and what are we, married? ….
And maybe we should be married before we do things in bed, ‘k?
But there is more to it than that. At some point we all
realize that we’re going to die. (SorryNotSorry). But we are. I remember
hearing once that going to bed and falling asleep pre-figures death (which is
why we should always make an act of contrition before going to bed—we just
never know; you might not have a tomorrow!). By the same token, awaking and
rising out of bed to a new day pre-figures the resurrection and the dawn of
eternal life.
So, when Jesus rose from the dead, the linens in which he
was wrapped were neatly folded. These neatly folded linens were proof to the
apostles that Jesus had indeed risen—the proof was because linens were
expensive and if Jesus had been stolen by robbers, well then the robbers would
have stolen them too (and certainly not folded them!).
Making one’s bed, and I know this sounds like a stretch—but
making my bed would become a reminder of heaven and of always keeping my face
turned toward God in hopefulness, to keep right perspective when I got mired in
the muck, to keep priorities straight, and so serve as a reminder: even the
smallest virtues can conquer the largest vices—especially when the little
things are done for love.
This is ultimately the challenge before you. Everything
has been served to you on a platter. Your school has served you religion. Your
school has served you the opportunities for making friends. Your school served
you the obligations that motivated you to study. Your parents served your
personal needs—from feeding you to doing your laundry to picking you up, etc,
etc, etc, ad infinitum et ad nauseam. And this was done because we love you. It
was done because we know that it is more blessed to give than to receive. And
you have received.
But now you will have to intentionally choose to give.
Intentionally choose to love.
Friendships—they are going to take work. Keeping up with
people back home—you’re going to have to carve out time in your schedule and
intentionally choose to love. Religion? Same deal. The challenge of college is
that you now have to intentionally choose. And all of the baloney motivators
are stripped away.
You will ask yourself “is this worth it?” Is this
friendship, this class, this going to Mass at 8pm on a Sunday when I have a
final due tomorrow—is this worth it? And you will learn what motivates you. And
that might frighten you because you might realize that the only thing that
motivates you is the thing that might have motivated you your whole life so
far: namely: fear… or, worse, you.
I challenge you, then. I’m not inviting, I’m not humbly
requesting. I dare you, I challenge you: love. Give selflessly. Choose to study
not because what you get from it, but because learning is beautiful. Choose to
go to Mass not because of what you do or don’t get out of it, but because Jesus
is lovely and challenging. Choose to make your bed, not because I said so, but
because maybe there is something hidden and mysterious in the wild world of
small virtues—something worth discovering, something lovely in itself.
Like you. We loved you for you. We gave to you not
because of what we could get out of you, but because we loved you and still
love you for you. For your own sake.
It says, “I have consecrated you in the truth” which is
another way of saying that Jesus has totally given his life for you, the
consecration happening by the shedding of his blood.
So too, us: we have consecrated you in everything we have
given you….
It is now that you are sent. We will miss you. But you
must go. Consecrate the world in love!
Go and do the same!
Please consider recording this for YouTube.
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