Reading 1 Jude 17:20b-25
Beloved, remember the words spoken beforehand
by the Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit.
Keep yourselves in the love of God
and wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ
that leads to eternal life.
On those who waver, have mercy;
save others by snatching them out of the fire;
on others have mercy with fear,
abhorring even the outer garment stained by the flesh.
To the one who is able to keep you from stumbling
and to present you unblemished and exultant,
in the presence of his glory,
to the only God, our savior,
through Jesus Christ our Lord
be glory, majesty, power, and authority
from ages past, now, and for ages to come. Amen.
Gospel Mk 11:27-33
Jesus and his disciples returned once more to Jerusalem.
As he was walking in the temple area,
the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders
approached him and said to him,
“By what authority are you doing these things?
Or who gave you this authority to do them?”
Jesus said to them, “I shall ask you one question.
Answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things.
Was John’s baptism of heavenly or of human origin? Answer me.”
They discussed this among themselves and said,
“If we say, ‘Of heavenly origin,’ he will say,
‘Then why did you not believe him?’
But shall we say, ‘Of human origin’?”–
they feared the crowd,
for they all thought John really was a prophet.
So they said to Jesus in reply, “We do not know.”
Then Jesus said to them,
“Neither shall I tell you by what authority I do these things.”
…………….
The founding headmaster of Priory, Fr Timothy, has a great gift. He can preach homilies of three sentences which are most eloquent and give food for thought for weeks.
Unfortunately he has not passé don this gift to his successors, at least not this one. So I apologize if my remarks seem rather long, as they surely will to my brethren.
Today all of us, esp. the class of 2014, lift up our hands to God and exult as we make our prayer of praise and thanks for their taking a significant forward into the high school.
It is so right that we are gathering as community in the Eucharist, which means thanksgiving… the Eucharist which is so integral to the mission of St Louis Priory School, and which was integral to the mission of the Apostles, like Saint Jude from f whom we heard in the first reading this morning.
The Apostles were men boldly inspired and fed by the Lord in this sacrament we celebrate, and their mission was characterized by His courage, wisdom, sincerity and humility. Without the Eucharist, there would be no Church as we know it, and we would not be here this morning.
St Jude tells his readers this morning that they must remember what they have been taught and that they must grow up in the faith. You young men have completed 2 years, 1/3 of the Priory curriculum. And although 2 years feels like a long time to you, we adults know that 2 years is a very short time…in this short time you have learned and grown up a lot. Now the time has come for you to make the significant transition to the H.S,
Even though a few of you will be leaving us for other schools, the reality & significance of this transition applies to you as well.
I hope that the readings we heard this morning, speak powerfully of your experience these last two years.
Saint Jude, by his letter & by his preaching, and St Mark in his Gospel are seeking to build up the community, the family of the church. They teach and encourage their contemporaries ..and us … to believe the truth as revealed by Jesus, and to have mercy and compassion, to care for the sick, to watch out for each other, and to pray in the Holy Spirit;
I know you have experienced prayer here at Priory; We begin each School year praying with the Mass of the Holy Spirit. We begin most days and most classes with prayer. And I am sure, that apart from everything else, part of your preparation for exams was prayer, asking the Lord to help, because it is very human to turn to God when we need his help most. And it is very Benedictine, because St Benedict teaches us to begin any worthwhile activity or work with prayer.
But surely you have learned that prayer is not just a way to get God to do something for us. It is our fervent hope that you have begun to actually experience God, to hear God speaking to you in your prayer.
And we hope you have experienced the care of the Priory Family.
The Gospel this morning calls the Apostles and those following Jesus “disciples”, which you all know from your Latin means students, those desiring to learn and know the truth. It is truth that we seek here; and it is truth that we teach.
And as learners and truth seekers here it is our duty as brothers to correct each other when necessary. This is also very Benedictine, and we call this fraternal correction; It is built into our honor code and it is part of Tutoria as you will come to know it in the high school.
Two years ago, before you arrived, when you were younger & less mature, you didn’t know what it would be like for you to be here. You were at least nervous & maybe had 2nd thoughts, & maybe some of you have them now about entering HS here. You wanted to come here, in your search for knowledge & education, … you did come, and now you know what it is like. The Holy Spirit empowered your choice to come here back then & so you have surely acquired some measure of knowledge & wisdom.
It hasn’t been easy, of course. Any A’s you received were not just compliments or favors, but the results of your hard work; you earned them. But the really wise among you will be happy regardless of what grades you received happy about what you have learned and how you have grown.
10 years from now, even 3 years from now as you are applying to colleges, no one will care about those A’s or C’s in 7th & 8th grade,
but the knowledge you have gained in getting those grades no one can take from you and will make you a better person every day you use it.
That is the secret of the straight and level path through life, knowing why you’re walking the path and knowing what your destination is.What happens along the path is not as important as that. Saints Jude and the Apostles knew that and they relied on the weight of the truth, the truth of God’s love & God’s word, to give them courage & their mission success through all the hardships they endured.
Studying, fixing new knowledge into the mind, and –believe it or not – teaching it, is a hard work. No doubt one of the first things you learned here is that Priory is tougher than the school you came from. I hope that challenged you and you enjoyed at least some of the challenges, because life without challenges is full of personal and spiritual danger.
Your time has come, and you will be challenged in high school.
If you are having a little bit of trouble with knowledge and wisdom, it may be because what you are really striving for is fun, and unfortunately you can’t have fun by striving for it. You can only have fun by learning to enjoy the things you need to do, like studying or learning, or spending quality time with family & friends. The really happy and wise people have fun in their work. And that is really worth striving for.
Yet striving for worthwhile goals, of course, isn’t all fun…not life, not school, not marriage, not anything. Sometimes learning and work is torment. As the adage of physical training says…no pain, no gain. Saint Jude and the Apostles suffered for the truth, just like Jesus did, but they did not let that stop them.
The pain is a sign that you are losing something you are attached to but something you don’t need, a something that gets in the way of your goal. I could never give up my dislike of & my idea that I couldn’t do math, and so I never learned how, and rather than suffer the pain of doing what it took to learn, I was tormented every year I had to take math. Sometimes we make our own pain, by not following what Saint Paul says in one of his letters, by not giving up childish things at the proper time.
Now your time has come. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are healers and fixers of pain, but they can only heal the pain of what you bring to them, and are willing to be healed of.
Jesus tells us where your treasure is there is your heart. For the most part, we get what we really want in life, so it’s pretty important to want the right things. If your heart is set on knowledge and wisdom and truth, you will get it, and you will also get God in the bargain, because God is wisdom and truth itself.
In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus invites us, invites you especially, to rely upon and accept his authority. In his name pray for right and good things, and the Father will indeed give them to you, so your joy may be complete, so you can be happy. God and we want you to be happy.
Jesus was a great seeker of knowledge & truth himself at your age; remember the story of him when he stayed behind in the Temple; He stayed there to learn and ask lots of questions of the great knowledgeable Rabbis. And as an adult too he asked great questions like “What does it profit a person to gain the whole world, but lose eternal life and their soul ?”
You see in today’s Gospel that the Scribes & Pharisees too liked to confront Jesus with questions. But they weren’t trying to learn the truth. Their questions were accusing, insincere and manipulative. They were trying to shame Jesus, to make Jesus look bad, But being a good teacher, Jesus always beat them at their own game, and it was they who were shamed.
As you make the transition to high school and seek knowledge, asking good questions is important. It is important not only for you to get the answers you need to grow in knowledge, it is important for us teachers too. Believe it or not, sometimes you ask questions we never heard before, about things we never thought of just the way you do. And so you make us teachers grow in knowledge and wisdom too.
If you are striving for wisdom and knowledge and truth then, you have come to the right place & in the 4 years to come you will find that your teachers can open it up for you in exciting & even unexpected ways because we do care about you. In fact, we love you.
To make this wonderful process work largely depends on you. Remember that what the Pharisees were often concerned about and questioned Jesus about was “authority”. As long as they did not accept Jesus authority to teach, they could learn nothing. They thought they knew everything about religion, but Jesus realized they didn’t know God; they didn’t know what was really important.
So this wonderful process of mutual learning depends on you working with and accepting the authority of your teachers. It depends on your honest questioning, even questioning yourself, in pursuit of truth.
We adults, and God too, depend on you talented young men to learn as much as you can, to ask good questions to learn from us what you need to know, and to ask good questions …..challenging that which in us and our world needs to be challenged and changed. Believe me, in both you and us there is much that needs to be challenged & changed for us to achieve what God wishes for us.
We will pray in a few moments “Thy kingdom come”. Well, it will be up to you to bring some of the Kingdom to this world, …to Priory in fact, & it will be up to you to deliver us from some evil. And to do this, you must be free. Jesus tells us that wisdom, the truth, will set us all free. And it is Jesus himself who is the way, the truth and the life.
St. Benedict tells us in his rule that God frequently speaks to us through the voices of the youngest. Saint John was the youngest of the Apostles, the one who listened carefully with rapt attention to the Lord, and his gospel presents to us the most authoritative voice of Jesus. So we are very much looking forward to hearing your young, voices in the high school.
I hope you listened well to the readings this morning. There will be a test. The test is your life, most specifically the next four years in the high school.
But don’t worry, this is your time. You’ve prepared well and we are all proud of you; we wish you complete joy and we congratulate you for moving up to the 9th grade.
May God bring to perfection the good work he has begun in you.
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