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GRADUATION ADDRESS 2003

“You must let God work in your life…”

Father Richard Thell

In the classic prep-school novel, A Separate Peace, the narrator returns to his school fifteen years after his graduation. As he is walking around the school grounds and going through the building he reflects, “I had always felt that the Devon School came into existence the day I entered it, was vibrantly real while I was a student there, and blinked out like a candle the day I left.” What the narrator is saying is that for him he will always remember his school as it was at the time he was a student there. And in a more selfish way he is suggesting that the school was there just for him, at his time. Mount Michael students read this novel when they are sophomores; they do not fully appreciate the significance of the above quote until sometime after they graduate.

From August 23, 1999 until today, May 11, 2003, the twenty young men sitting in front of you this morning, this Class of 2003, has known Mount Michael. For this band of brothers, Mount Michael will always be remembered the way it has been during their time here – a short span of just about 1300 days.

Graduates, a lot has been made of the small size of your class. You are not the smallest class to graduate from the Mount; although you are only twenty in number, I have to say your impact has been as strong as any of the largest classes to graduate from Mount Michael. (I also have to say that given the strength of the personalities in this class, I don’t know if we could have survived your class had it been larger.)

You have worked very hard to take advantage of the Mount Michael education offered you. Your academic accomplishments, the numbers of you who have been on the Deans List, your individual and combined ACT scores, and your college and career goals all testify to the fact that you have taken advantage of the academic side of Mount Michael High School. In the classroom you have learned the nuts and bolts of mathematics, the sciences, foreign language, social studies, theology, and literature. You will not appreciate the foundation you now have in these areas until you begin college in the fall. You will be surprised how far ahead you are of your contemporaries.

There is no doubt that you leave Mount Michael with one of the best college-prep educations in the Midwest. This is due not only because of your own hard work, but it is also due to the many adults who have worked very hard to provide you with the best the Mount has to offer. Your parents, the monastic community, and the lay faculty and staff are more dedicated to you than you will ever know. You will never know the individual and collective sacrifices the adults in your life have made to bring you to this point. Today as you graduate, remember to thank your parents, the monks, faculty, and staff who have helped you get to this point in young life.

You know that Mount Michael in not just about an academic education. It is much more. You cannot think of Mount Michael High School without thinking of Mount Michael Abbey. You are graduating from a Benedictine abbey school. (Not a Jesuit school, not a Franciscan school, not a public school, but a Benedictine school.) This means that you are part of a more than 1500-year tradition of Benedictine education. Monks know what it takes to operate exceptional schools. From the beginning we have known that students must learn not only from textbooks but they must also learn what it means to have knowledge of God and a knowledge of individuals living together as part of not only the Christian community, but also the world community.

Because of the unique relationship between the abbey and school here at Mount Michael, you have had the chance to get to know many of the monks. You have known us as priests, brothers, deans, teachers, confessors, councilors, and friends.

It is the ministry of each one of the monks, whether they work directly in the school or not to set the best example possible for you. I hope you have seen us at least trying to do this not only for our brother monks, but also for you. In the Rule of St. Benedict, the monks are told that we must try to outdo one another in trying to set a good example. Saint Benedict writes, “They (the monks) should each try to be the first to show respect to the other…” Later on in the Rule, Benedict tells us that if we don’t do this we will have to answer to God!!

A monk does not have to work in the classroom to be a good teacher; each one of us knows that it is by our example that we teach you about what it means to be a Christian man in today’s world. You know us well enough by now to know that we do a pretty good job; you know that we are not perfect, when you see us every day as you do, you also see our imperfections; but you know that we try very hard each day to do our best.

Someone once asked an old monk: “What do you guys do in that monastery all day?” The monk didn’t have to think long for his answer. He said, “We fall down, we get up, we fall down, we get up, we fall down and we get up yet again.” In other words, we try. We hope you have seen this determination in us. (I want to point out to you that like the Class of 2003, the Mount Michael monastic community is small, but we are a powerful and determined bunch. We have worked hard to make Mount Michael Abbey and School what it is today; we are determined to make it even better tomorrow.)

It is my hope that the example of the monks as well as the example set by the lay faculty and staff will be a source of strength and encouragement to you as you move into the next phase of your lives.

During these past years, you have heard me talk about the importance of God in your daily life. If you do not take with you the idea that your faith in God is a major component to your character then you have not yet completed your Mount Michael education. It is your faith that will sustain, strengthen and encourage you in the years ahead. I have told you many times that you have to trust me about some of this. You are too young, too busy, too energetic to understand the importance of all this. Believe me, someday it will all start to make sense to you.

In all that you do you must have a spiritual component in you life. Accept your Christian faith, be proud of it, take it seriously and be a sincere practitioner of your faith. Don’t forget about the importance of prayer and going to church once you get to college.

The year I graduated from high school one of the New York Times best sellers was the book Markings by the Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjold. (This is, by the way, on of my “top ten” desert island books.) The book is a collection of his personal journal entries over the years. In it he says something that applies to what I am trying to say this morning. He writes, “The best and most wonderful thing that can happen to you in this life, is that you should be silent and let God work and speak.” My advice to you is to work hard toward your goals; but don’t be afraid to let God work and speak in your life. (And you know, God is sometimes going to work in your life whether you want him to or not.) Believe me, when I graduated from high school all those many years ago I had no idea that someday I would be delivering a commencement homily at a college-prep boys’ school. God works in strange and mysterious ways. Who knows: Maybe 15 years from now, one of you will be delivering the 2018 Mount Michael graduation homily!!

In conclusion I want to repeat to you what I said to you at night prayer on the evening of May 1, your last night at the Mount. I believe in God’s master plan for our lives. Somehow we have all been brought to Mount Michael at this time. In part, you are who you are for having been a member of this Mount Michael class. People move in and out of each other’s lives, and each leaves his/her mark on the other. You are made up of bits and pieces of all who have touched your life, and you are more because of it, and you would be less if they had not touched you. You are better for having been a member of this class. You are better for having come to this school.

Pray to God that you can accept these bits and pieces in humility and wonder, and never question and never regret. Never forget that you are a member of the Class of 2003; never forget the good people who have helped you get to this point in your life. Most importantly, never forget God’s goodness in your life!

I began this homily with that familiar quote from A Separate Peace. If you remember the narrator of that novel says that he believed that when he graduated the Devon School blinked like a candle and went out. For you, the Class of 2003, Mount Michael came into existence on August 23, 1999; but unlike our fictional novel the candle does not go out today. You, your parents, and your grandparents have been an important part of Mount Michael. You will be in our prayers as you continue to be an important part of the Mount.

May God bless you!