Open wide your hearts to Christ

St Mary’s College Graduation Mass 2022

Your journey through primary and secondary education comes to a conclusion in the coming weeks. It has taken up the bulk of your life to date. School is what you have known. Education has engaged you and your life in a comprehensive way. This phase of your life is about to come to an end, and new (and largely unknown) paths open before you.

Tonight, at this Mass, this moment of transition is marked. You graduate from St Mary’s College.

Your parents chose to send you to a Catholic school, a school inspired by the Catholic faith. Over the course of your Catholic education you were introduced to a person. You learnt about his life (and death). You were informed of his teaching. You came to know of him, and his importance in the Christian faith and in Christian history.

That person, of course, is Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary, Son of God.

You know that millions of people over two millennia and today believe that he is the incarnation of God Himself. You know that people believe that he rose from the dead and, in doing so, conquered the dark power of death over humanity. You know that Christians believe that he will come again at the end of time and will judge the living and the dead. Each of us will stand before him and render an account of our lives. You know that he offers eternal life with him in heaven.

Over the years at St Mary’s in the classroom and in the liturgies you have attended, you have listened to the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures, which testify to faith in Jesus Christ. As St John says at the end of his Gospel: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (Jn 20:30-31).

There are two ways we come to know a person – with our minds and with our hearts. Thus, in your studies you have learned of many figures of history. We came to know information about them. They are in our minds.

We can come to know a person with our hearts. This is how we know, for example, our parents and siblings, and our close friends. We have a living relationship with them. They matter to us. We have love towards them. They live in our hearts.

During your Catholic education you have had the opportunity to know about Jesus, you may or may not have come to have a personal relationship with him. Knowledge of him is in your minds, love of him may or may not be in your hearts.

I was deeply struck by words of Pope Benedict at the end of his opening homily as Pope in April 2015. He said this,

If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide…. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ ­and you will find true life.

I find these stirring words. Allowing Christ into our lives will not diminish us, but, quite the opposite, it will, as the Pope says, enable life for us to become “free, beautiful and great”. He testifies that through Christ the doors of life are opened wide.

Thus, he issued an appeal back in 2015 and we can hear it addressed to us tonight: “Open wide the doors of your heart to Christ”. Pope Benedict assures us: “and you will find true life”.

You may or may not have already done this. I pray that at some moment in your life you will encounter Christ and discover that what Pope Benedict has said is true.

That moment may come at a moment of personal need. It may come through a spiritual experience. It may come as a result of personal quest for truth or purpose or meaning. It may come as a pure gift of God to you. Such a moment will be a moment of grace, a moment of profound personal blessing. You will have the opportunity to join the multitude of believers over the millennia whose lives have been revolutionised by such a discovery, such an encounter.  

The Gospel reading this evening can give us hope. It speaks of the patience of God. The fig tree was producing no fruit for three years. The owner was about to cut in down, but the gardener urged him to hold back. He said, “Leave it one more year and give me time to dig round it and manure it; it may bear fruit next year, if not, then you can cut it down”. God is patient with us. God accompanies each of us in life. He desires to reach out to us in the hope that we may respond. Such is the profound love that God has for each one of us.

As you go forth from your years of school education, know that God is there with you. In all sorts of ways, he will endeavour to reveal himself to you in the hope that you will open your heart to him. And in opening our heart to him you will discover that you have lost nothing, as Pope Benedict said, of what makes life free, beautiful and great.

Archbishop Julian Porteous

Monday, 24 October 2022