Baccalaureate Homily for Trinity Catholic High School - May 31, 2018

Baccalaureate Homily

May 31, 2018

Change the World by Changing Yourself

            All over the world, at every school, graduation speakers are saying basically the same thing to graduates: “Go out and change the world! Make the world a better place!” That’s a nice idea, but how do we do that?

            If we had to be honest, I think most of us will agree that the world is not becoming a better place. If anything, it’s getting worse. School shootings, broken families, poverty, division, racism, unbridled greed, depression and anxiety – it all seems to be getting worse. I think it’s interesting that in the 1950s and ‘60s, if there was ever a futuristic movie or TV show, it always showed the future as something awesome, full of cool gadgets and happy people. Think “Jetsons” or “2001: A Space Odyssey”. But nowadays, when we have a movie that portrays the future, it is almost always dismal, depressing, or dystopian – think “The Hunger Games”. Why is it, with generations of people being told to “Go out and make the world a better place” – it really isn’t getting that much better?

            Because the message is all wrong. Don’t go out and make the world a better place. Make yourself a better person. Strive, with God’s grace, to become a saint.

            “The only people to really change the world are saints,” said Archbishop Charles Chaput. I think of the beautiful story of back in 1982 when a fierce war raged between Israel and Lebanon in the Middle East. This war ended up claiming the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians alike. Caught in the crossfire of this war, in the capital city of Beirut, was an orphanage for disabled children. Mother Teresa heard about the danger these children were in, and volunteered herself to go and rescue them. Officers in Lebanon’s army urged her not to go – she would surely be shot with all the fierce fighting raging around the orphanage! But Mother Teresa was confident in God alone, and promised the general, “We will have a cease-fire tomorrow, and I will go in and take the children to safety.” The general was skeptical – there were no plans for a cease-fire the following day. That night, Mother Teresa and her nuns prayed fiercely for a pause in the military action, and lo and behold, the next day the bombs and gunfire fell silent. Continually in prayer, Mother Teresa courageously crossed the front lines in West Beirut and entered the orphanage. To the horror of everyone present, all of the nurses and caregivers had abandoned all sixty children, and the building had been hit with rockets several times. But Mother Teresa was able to rescue all of them and bring them to a safe shelter outside the city. That, my friends, is a courageous, faith-filled love of God that brought safety to sixty completely neglected children. Mother Teresa was able to gain the cease-fire, to have the courage and desire to rescue these children, precisely because she was a woman so intimately united to God.

            My friends, politics won’t change the world. Money won’t change the world. Wars won’t change the world. New laws, better fashions, catchier slogans won’t change the world. All of that is ultimately empty. We can try with all of our human efforts to change the world, but we forget that we human beings labor under a burden – the burden of original sin, our fallen nature. This makes it impossible, on our own, to improve the world.

Remember the book you read in sophomore year, “Animal Farm”? A stark reminder of how even good intentions go awry. The animals were fed up with being oppressed, with injustice and poverty and sickness, so they rebel and try to set up an government of equality. That works for a time, until the pigs realize they can have power…and abuse power. It’s a cute story, but when that idea was enacted in real life – the desire to make everyone equal only by the power of the government – it ended up with millions of lives lost to the Communist revolutions.

They forgot that real equality does not come from force, but love. They forgot that eliminating poverty is not about the redistribution of wealth, but the increase in love. They forgot that the end to violence does not come through more laws, but through more love. Don’t get me wrong – laws and politics and money has its place, but if we are looking for real and lasting change, look no further than the mirror. Have YOU been changed? Changed into the image of God, who is Love Itself?

Think about today’s feast – Mary is the perfect example of this. She is not anyone the world would consider important. She is poor, uneducated, a woman in a time when women had few rights, too young – and she changed the world because she allowed God to work through her. Her soul “glorified the Lord” – and human history was changed because of it.

If you want to change the world, first allow God to change yourself. The world doesn’t need a bunch of idealistic college students. The world needs an army of saints, people who can bring the love of God to conquer the darkness of this world. Do you want to change the world? Become a saint.