Graduation Homily   St. Pius Xth 2009 Class    By Fr. John Barry

“Running and Finishing the Course Set Forth”  Gospel:  Mt 28:16-20

Getting from the start of your elementary school years to this finish line of 8^th grade graduation is the longest journey in school that most of you will complete in life.  Feel good about crossing the finish line!  You’ve finished the course!

As I give “props” to you for your graduation tonight, I am using some props for this running analogy.   I have a runner’s jersey.  It usually is light-weight, has a number on it, and sometime has the name of the race is on the shirt.   Call yours the Pius Cavalier Race.  2009 is the number. So, you each come across the finish line as winners, and the hope was for all to finish, whether in or near the front or back in the pack, all 103 of you. I am holding the tape that is crossed when someone in the marathon or the sprint breaks when getting across the line.   Consider your class tape broken as the first graduate walks up from the first pew to get that diploma, and consider the last person in line as the celebration that your team “all came in.” I have running shoes, (recently sprayed with Dr. Sholl’s heavy-strength shoe spray)--they represent the work the runner makes in his course, the discipline of her mind, and the willingness for the task at hand. Good job, academic runners!

The wreath or laurel that is worn by the victor is the graduation cap and tassel on your heads in this ceremony tonight. The ‘running coaches’ have been your teachers, and sometimes one another when you have shared good advice or example to one another, and the other ‘coaches’ have been the administrators and office of the school, and especially your parents and guardians.

The Lord and His Word and His using this Catholic faith have been the path directions for this academic and spiritual track you have been on. As King David said: “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and light unto my path.” Indeed, we have celebrated and welcomed the Lord’s part in your education and the light of faith in all your subjects learned at St. Pius X.    I shall appreciate always the same blessing I had years before you at this same school of St. Pius X for 4 years, and the prior years I had it at a parochial school in New York.   I have kept faith included in all the areas of my life.  It’s been a blessing. Others, like Bishop Knestout, and some of you parents here, also, have been blessed with a lasting holy impact from Pius.

Happy Graduation to you, class of 2009.   It’s like I am gathered here with a bunch of runners who have all finished a great race and gathered in a winner’s circle.  Some have been in the school for the marathon of all your elementary school and middle school years; others have joined in later (and perhaps had my sister Jeanne Barry Slifka for class one year) and others joined in at middle school.   Now you cross the finish together.  Tonight’s Gospel in this Mass (Matt: 28:16-20) is of Jesus Christ and His final words in fulfilling His mission on earth.   In the  victory of His resurrection, Jesus says:  All power is given to Me in Heaven and earth—go in My name now with my message and I’ll be with you always. Or paraphrased, it’s like He has said:  I have been victorious in My task, now your training is completed, my apostles and disciples, my students, so I send you to go in My power and make a difference in this world.  Live out My love.

All of us here from the school, the churches, and your homes echo that Gospel:  Jesus sends you forth tonight, O students, to go make a difference in high school and beyond with what God gave you in these St. Pius X school years.     Hebrews 12: 1 puts our future in terms of a Christian running motto:  “Let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us!”  The goal of that “race?”  It’s to Graduate Earth with Jesus’ honors!   Yes, one day, with Jesus’ holiness and grace and power in us, we will “graduate earth”, too. Last Summer we had the 2008 Olympics, and I recall the feats of a female marathon runner named Shalane Flanagan who won the bronze for the U.S.A.  She did so well!   You know, St. Paul likened faith to Olympic running.   We started a Year of St. Paul from last June to this June, so it’s timely to read from Paul in 1^st Cor. ch. 9, as he explains: “You strive and run that you might obtain the prize.  For the world it is a corruptible crown, but for we (who are under Christ) it is for an incorruptible one.  I therefore so run, and not aimlessly, for the purposes and glory of God.”   To the Phillippians (3:18)  Paul wrote:  “I press on to the mark, to the prize of the upward call in Christ Jesus… I have run the race to the finish, fought the good fight, I have kept the faith and lived well for God.”  Young men and women, that’s the Graduation that we all have our whole lives to live for!   May we run well to the upward call of Christ Jesus!  Remember that.   For you adults here, as well as the students—I have a phrase for you.  Run the Maranatha-on!  Run in faith to glory.  Or do the marantha-on!   It’s a play on the Aramaic phrase for “O Lord, Come!” and the image of our running in faith into Jesus’ arms for the finish.   Run the Maranatha-on.  This kind of life leads to the ultimate graduation and honors.

To finish this homily, I think of where the word marathon comes from.   In 490 B.C. on the plains of Marathon, the Greeks battled King Darius and the Persians and won there, even against the odds, and the great news of it was carried back to Athens, some 22 miles away, by a soldier running day and night to deliver the report.  The soldier reached the Greek magistrates after that long run from Marathon plains, and said to them:  “Rejoice.  There is victory.  We won.”   Then, the soldier reportedly collapsed in exhaustion.   Well, don’t collapse tonight, my graduates, but you still can exclaim:  “Rejoice.  There is victory, dear parents and countrymen, we have graduated!”

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