The School completed another successful academic year, with the Class of 2022 graduating on Sunday, May 29. In his homily at the Mass, Abbot Michael Brunner offered the graduates these words.

Abbot Michael Brunner’s homily at the Graduation 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. Saint John’s Gospel this morning tells us some of Jesus’ final words to his Apostles, words focused on love. At the time Jesus spoke them, those words must have confounded the Apostles. We hear His 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. 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 your four-year-long journey as high school students officially comes to an end.

It is very appropriate that this graduation occurs just a few days after the feast of the Lord’s Ascension, and it happens just two weeks before Pentecost, which for the Apostles was their graduation from mere disciples to men on a mission. As a community, a unique class, you have been an inspiration to us, each one of you a unique manifestation of the divine presence, of talent, beauty, and truth, a class working with and respecting the individuality of each member. You have done what Saint Paul, the great founder of communities, urged his converts 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.” For this we thank you and congratulate you. I personally thank you for being so brotherly and sisterly to each other and to me during my fourth and best year here. You made it a true joy and pleasure. 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. God is the mirror in which we see and find our best selves.
 

Abbot Michael Brunner and servers Michael and Thomas O’Hara prepare to process at the graduation Mass

Now the Gospel of Mark says that after their graduation, the Apostles: “…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 separate parts of this country and the world, and you will carry with you signs of what you stand for. 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 really important. This kind of unity and harmony does not come easy to people. You only need glance at the news to see that. 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 the Gospel this morning: “Peace be with you.” And how poignant that greeting is on this Memorial Day weekend.

As you and I briefly explored the major religions of the world this year, we saw that the 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. 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 through us God is alive and active in the world today.  

As permanent and grinding as the problems of our time seem: a struggle for dominance by a few powerful economies; poverty shackling most of the world’s peoples; depletion of the earth's resources;  destruction of the environment; continual violence, war and small genocides; the displacement of millions of refugees – 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.  St Paul reminds us: grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. The world desperately needs you and your gifts. It needs you to grow them and produce fruit 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 is the best possible 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. The greatest commandment is to love God with your whole being, and to love your neighbor as yourself, 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, because science and the world are 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 in their wars. It is because you have courage, strong hearts. The world needs you not to give up your life for a cause but to live your life for a reason, beyond your own 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.

Read the scriptures. Young Jacob, Joseph, David, Samuel; young Mary, Joseph her husband, Peter, Paul, and young Saint John all had dreams which changed their lives and their world. Young John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela all had dreams too. The world has seen many dreams – and nightmares – come true. Nazism, Communism, Auschwitz, poison gas, biological warfare, and nuclear weapons and the destruction of the World Trade Center were all once just somebody’s dreams. But so were Ecumenism, Civil Rights and racial equality, the EU, freedom in South Africa, antibiotics, airplanes, satellites, the United States, the Bill of Rights, a U.S. President of African descent and even this school. All were once just dreams, too. The world needs your dreams and visions, because the dreams that individual men and women pursue are the dreams that come true, and become reality for everyone. In just a few years, our time, the time of this world will be truly your time. Your time is coming as you enter college, to focus sharply your sights on your dreams, dreams which you will spend your lives in bringing to reality. I 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 what we have built. 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, for all truth is of God. 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 or do not agree on what is truth. 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. 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 2022, be happy, loving, beloved, and wise.