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Homily at Baccalaureate
Mass, Christendom College, May 17, 2003 Even though your college
bears the name of Christendom, you will have no difficulty acknowledging
that the followers of Jesus were not originally called Christians. That
name was first used in Antioch, in a Gentile environment, where the title
"Christ" came to be used as though it were a proper name. In
Judea the Christian movement was initially called the Way, a term used
no less than seven time in the Book of Acts. The term can still serve
to remind us that we are on the way, and that the way for us is none other
than Jesus himself. He himself, as we heard, declares: "I am the
way." "Way" is
a dynamic title, well suited to what Vatican II called the pilgrim people
of God, a people still pressing forward, as Augustine said, "amid
the persecutions of the world and the consolation of God" (LG 8,
quoting the City of God 18.51.2). All of us are wayfarers so long
as we are in this mortal condition. Even after you get your diplomas tomorrow,
you graduating seniors will still be on the way. You will get a new commission
to press forward, conscious that "we have here no lasting city, but
seek the city that is to come" (Heb 13:14). When Jesus points
to himself as the Way, he means that he is the true way, the way that
leads to life. He is not the only way. Elsewhere in the Gospel, he warns
us that we must enter in by the narrow gate (himself, the gate of the
sheepfold), for wide is the gate and broad is the way that lead to destruction
(Mt 7:13). The earliest Christian catechism, know as the Didache,
builds on the fundamental premise that "there are two ways, one great
difference" (Didache 1.1). The vices mentioned in this early
exhortation are the same as those all too familiar in our day: sins of
lying, theft, pride, anger, adultery, fornication, and abortion. Not only is Jesus
the true way; he is Truth itself. Truth is preeminently what satisfies
the human mind. We are intellectual creatures, made for truth. There is
nothing that causes so many disorders in society and in individual lives
as ignorance or rejection of truth. The devil, we know, is the father
of lies (Jn 8:44). In our time there is no lack of persons who by their
wickedness suppress the truth of God, exchanging it for a lie, as did
the Romans of Paul's day (Rom 1:18). Even more pervasive are the skeptics
and pragmatists who, like Pontius Pilate, shrug off the quest for truth
as a waste of time. The quest may indeed be difficult, but it cannot be
renounced without throwing the whole of life into chaos. Those who earnestly
seek the truth dispose themselves to recognizing it when it comes. As
Jesus said in reply to Pilate, "For this I was born, and for this
I came into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of
the truth hears my voice" (Jn 18:37). Treasure the fact that you have been given a Catholic education in which the truth of revelation was no severed from the truth of the human sciences. There are many rivers of truth, but in the end they merge into one undivided stream. When the perennial questions are seriously asked, Christ can be recognized as the encompassing truth. Truth in the end turns out to be a Person, a person whom we encounter both in the proclamation of the Gospel and in the ministry of the sacraments. Finally, Jesus says
that he is the life. Being in its highest realization takes on the form
of life: it possesses and affirms itself. In an unending dual, life struggles
against its own opposite, death. Christianity leads to life; its rejection,
to death. Wherever we look today we see signs of death. Ours has been
described as a culture of death–not simply because it devalues the
life of the body but even more because of its failure to respect the life
of the spirit. Jesus says of himself that he has come that we may have life and have it more abundantly (Jn 10:10). But in him a further mystery discloses itself. Jesus the author of life succumbs to death, the ignominious and painful death of crucifixion. He tells us not to fear bodily death or those who can inflict it (Mt 10:28). Those who cling selfishly to life will lose it, and those who are ready to die for truth will save their lives (Mt 16:25). They will share in the Easter triumph of the Lord of life. " He who believes in me," says Jesus, "even though he die, shall live" (Jn 11:27). We do not have to wait for death in order to share in the divine life that Jesus came to bring. We receive it as soon as we are reborn by baptism. We can grow in it day by day with the food of the Eucharist. As Jesus lives because of the Father, so, he tells us, those who eat him will live because of him (Jn 6:57). The Eucharist is our daily bread, our nourishment for the way. It is the true manna that comes from heaven, the living and life-giving bread that imparts spiritual growth and strength. Here at Christendom College you have, I trust, learned to love the Eucharist. Take that love with you wherever you go. The more you life is centered on this sacrament of sacraments, the more energized will it be in all its dimensions. Neither death nor life nor anything under heaven will be able to separate you from him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. |