Baccalaureate Mass Homily, 2000

As I imagine you graduating seniors have realized this week, times like these are ripe with reminiscence. So if you’ll indulge me for a moment, I’d like to share a flash of nostalgia I experienced as I was preparing this homily.

The year is 1973, the place is St. Joseph’s Church in Hopkins, Minnesota, and the occasion is my eighth-grade Baccalaureate Mass. About sixty of my classmates and I were gathered together much like you are now, but with a big difference. It being the 70’s, we rejected the traditional practice of wearing caps and gowns for something freer! I can see us all now: the girls in their peasant dresses and platform shoes with flowers in their hair, and the boys in their bell-bottom pants and polyester paisley shirts with shoulder-length hair – we looked like extras in the recent 70’s mini-series!

Our crazy garb notwithstanding, the moment I remember most strongly came after communion. As a meditation, my classmates and I were invited to stand and sing our chosen class song. Those were the days of guitar masses and Top-40 tunes doubling as hymns, so we launched into a rendition of Elton John’s song, “Friends,” the chorus of which reads like this (I will not try to reproduce my cracking adolescent singing voice!):

Making friends for the world to see.
Let the people know you got what you need.
With a friend at hand, you will see the light.
If your friends are there, then everything’s all right.

A corny moment? Yes, ...although it drew more than a few tears! An embarrassing one? Looked at in hindsight, absolutely. (I can’t believe I’m giving my colleagues this ammunition!) However, that group of groovy 70’s graduates got one thing right on the mark – the centrality of friendship to the school experience they were celebrating at that Baccalaureate Mass. And the same reality was not lost on your classmates on the graduation committee, as witnessed in the readings they chose for today’s mass, especially our reading from John’s Gospel.

This passage, drawn from Jesus’ farewell address to his disciples at the Last Supper, is an apt one to hear today, since it marks a graduation of sorts. Having shared over the course of three years his wisdom, generosity, and loving example of service, Jesus confers on his disciples, not a degree, but something far more valuable: equal status in his heart and his mission. Viewed in traditional terms, Jesus’ role as teacher or master might seem to place his disciples permanently in a subservient position, but Jesus breaks all conventional notions of hierarchy here. In responding faithfully to Jesus’ loving call and his liberating word, the disciples have not earned but been given the gift of friendship. They are not students or servants any longer but friends, full companions around his table and colleagues in his ministry.

Of course, this is no ordinary notion of friendship that Jesus is proclaiming. As made clear in today’s gospel, to be a friend in Jesus’ sense involves much more than sharing common interests or good times. It demands love, faithfulness, and sacrifice, even to the point of laying down one’s life for one’s friends. However, the reward is great – no less than the total love and care of God. Jesus’ words here seem a tall order, of course, but we have the privilege of knowing that his are no empty promises or ideals – in his passion and death Jesus went on to practice what he preached. Our own relationships with him are the fruit borne out of his selfless friendship.

So how do Jesus’ words before his death have a bearing on our celebration today? Well, as near-graduates of this Jesuit and Catholic liberal arts college, you have been bombarded for four years with mottoes and phrases that articulate the ideals of a Jesuit education, perhaps most notably the expression “men and women for others.” I would like to add one more, if you haven’t heard it already. St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits and creator of the Spiritual Exercises, used the term “friends in the Lord” to embody his ideal of how the early Jesuits should live, and it has come to represent one of the goals that should be promoted in a Jesuit education. St. Ignatius saw this special kind of friendship as a very personal union of one’s mind and heart with Jesus Christ. As is obvious in our gospel, such a deep union should naturally go on to bear fruit – in a life which, in the words of the Jesuit Congregations, is dedicated to the “service of faith and promotion of justice” among God’s people.

I am here to tell you that the Jesuit concept of “friends in the Lord” is not one last theory or piece of knowledge you must learn before you graduate tomorrow. It is already alive and well here at Holy Cross and has been exemplified by you in myriad forms over the course of your four years. So, how has the Class of 2000 been “friends in the Lord? Let us count the ways:

First of all, the “friends” part is easy. If you’ve done nothing else this last four years, you have successfully befriended your peers. With classmates, roommates, teammates, and clubmates, you’ve made friends. Whether it was while Hogan Talking, Kimball Stalking, Pub Night Crawling or even Tim’s Tool House Tubthumping, you’ve made friends. At sports practice by the light of dawn or theater rehearsal in the dark of night, you’ve made friends. Under the sun of Spring Break or the rain of Cape Week, you’ve made friends. That part the Class of 2000 has down cold.

But what of friends in the Lord? Well, as a solid ground for your other friendships, in many ways here at Holy Cross, you have made friends with the Lord. Through your involvement in Sunday and Weekday Liturgies, the Spiritual Exercises, Manresa Retreats, Men’s and Women’s Nights Out, and Spiritual Journey, you have embraced the spiritual life of Holy Cross and grown in your relationship with Jesus Christ, sharing in the gifts of friendship promised to the disciples and bearing much fruit, as we shall see.

The concept of being “friends in the Lord” does not end with Jesus, of course. I hope and believe that you have also made friends with the faculty, despite what may have seemed an adversarial relationship at times, and that through them you have made lasting friends with the liberal arts and sciences. Whether studying a scripture text or Shakespeare sonnet, a statistical table or lab result, you have, I trust, come to develop the Jesuit ideal of “finding God in all things” you have studied, and as a result, you now see the pursuit of education and culture not merely as a ticket to a career and paycheck but as a gift from God and a habit that will enrich your entire life.

Your friendships have not been restricted to the limits of our campus gates. Although you might not have expected it when you arrived here four years ago, you have learned to make friends with the City of Worcester, especially your neighbors on this hill. Some of you became very close friends with the legal system here, as well as with the election system, bringing voter responsibility among Holy Cross students to new heights!

All kidding aside, the Class of 2000 has embodied the highest of Jesuit and Catholic ideals in making good friends with the poor and needy, locally through programs like S.P.U.D., the Mustard Seed and Matthew 25, and nationally and globally through the Appalachia and Mexico Projects, and Habitat for Humanity in places like Miami and Africa. Proving that this type of friendship has taken root in you, the Holy Cross tradition of service will continue in the future work of your classmates in programs like the JVC, JIV, the Inner City Teaching Corps, and Nativity Prep.

Your class has become companions of justice in many impressive ways. Whether through marches on Washington and the School of the Americas or rallies against sweat shop labor, hate crimes, or date rape, you have put your faith into practice and have stood up for basic human rights in concrete and effective ways. You have also learned to make friends with diversity. The list of student organizations dedicated to appreciating difference is seemingly endless. From ALANA and the Bishop Healy Society to the Women’s Forum and Allies and AbiGaLe, you have celebrated the experience and values of other traditions and cultures and shown us that, for friends in the Lord, there is no place for racism, sexism, homophobia or prejudice of any kind.

Regrettably, you have not only made friends in the Lord; you have had to mourn a few of them, as evidenced in the tremendous outpouring of love and grief at the death of your own classmate Gary VanderVeer and that of John Price of the Class of 2001. For me, one of the most powerful witnesses to your capacity for friendship in such a time of loss was seen in own championship Women’s Basketball Team this past year as they supported Samantha Vellaccio in her illness and lifted her up as pallbearers at her Mass of Resurrection, an example we should all hope to emulate.

Fortunately, you do not allow me to end on a sad note because the Class of 2000 has not only made many friends and mourned the loss of some; you have memorialized one as well. One of your final acts of friendship at Holy Cross is embodied in your Class Gift, a scholarship in the name of Gary VanderVeer (for which you have already collected over $5000) that will assist future juniors in financial need to complete their studies at Holy Cross. Through this generous gift, you will continue to make new friends at Holy Cross long after you have gone.

So many friends in the Lord, in so little time – just four short years! Class of 2000, we marvel at your many accomplishments. One final thought - remember, when you pick up your diploma tomorrow morning, you will be servants – or should I say slaves? – no longer…except for those college loans! Instead, you have become Friends in the Lord and Friends of the Cross (and I’m sure the Development Office will be calling on you soon to prove it!). May the Lord continue to bless your many friendships, allowing them to flourish and grow in the years to come.