OLM Class of 2021 get ready for Graduation Ceremony.
Class of 2021, you made it!! After everything, you made it. Congratulations. You know, I stood here a year ago speaking to our Class of 2020 about how strange their eighth-grade year had been. But I think you have them beat. So much of what you expected from eighth grade never came to pass: dances and field trips, First Friday Masses, Christmas festivities, and everything else that you had looked forward to throughout your years at OLM. And while there are greater sufferings in life than missing out on eighth grade events, the absence of them leaves a sense of loss, and even sadness that lingers over our celebration this evening.
It makes sense to ask yourself what you ought to do with that sadness. And you can start by acknowledging it and recognizing it as real. The truth is that you have borne a burden this year that was not yours to bear. It has not been fair. And the old saw is that life is not fair, which, quite frankly, is a very annoying thing that adults say to children and would be supremely annoying for me to say to you right now. But there is more wisdom in that line than you might think, because for us to meet the standard of fairness is to meet the standard of justice. If we suffer for our own sins, if we bear the burdens we deserve, that is justice. But to carry those burdens we have not merited is something greater: that is mercy. That is love. Carrying the cross for others was the fundamental act of Christ, when as a perfectly sinless man, He took upon Himself all the sins of the world. The Crucifixion was the most unfair act in the history of the world. It was also the act that saved it. And you, over the past fifteen months, have engaged in the imitation of Christ, carrying a cross that was not of your making.
You have begun to walk the path of the saint. And that is a good thing. It is the saint who calls people back to God. When Christianity stood in turmoil after the fall of the Roman Empire, it was St. Benedict who launched a spiritual renewal with his monastic rule, one of whose adherents would become Pope St. Gregory the Great and restore order to the Church and the civilization that depended on it. One thousand years later, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Thomas More, and others led a Catholic revival in response to the criticisms of the Protestant Reformation. And now here we stand five hundred years later, in challenging, uncertain times of our own, waiting for the saints who will show us the way.
You may not be blessed with easy times. You certainly have not been for the past fifteen months. But history does not remember those who lived in ease. We do not look up to George Washington or Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, or Abraham Lincoln because their paths were smooth. Nor did our Church raise men and women like St. Joan of Arc, St. Francis of Assisi, Pope St. John Paul II, or St. Teresa of Calcutta to the altars because they faced no obstacles. Rather, we honor them because they lived lives of heroic virtue right on through their many challenges, and in so doing, they left the world better for those that followed them. Those are the examples for you to emulate.
Do not set your sights on the multitude of celebrities who have gained fame more for their vices than their virtues. Resist a culture that screams for your attention at every moment, and that draws it away from prayer, the sacraments, and the only truth that satisfies. Aim for virtue. Aim for sanctity. Aim to be the next Washington, Tubman, Douglass, or Lincoln, the next Joan, Francis, John Paul, or Mother Teresa. Aim to conform yourself to Christ, to call out the best that God has placed in you, and then to draw out the same in everyone around you. That is what your community, your country, your Church, and the world itself need from you. It is a time to stand up for truth, for love, for God. He is calling you to something great. Stand ready to answer.