Live in the Real World
A 2024 Graduation Homily
The following words were written for high school graduates of 2024 and adapted for Baccalaureate Masses celebrated at Mount De Sales Academy and Notre Dame Preparatory School, and for a commencement address given to ARCH graduates of Frederick County. The version posted below was delivered at NDP.
What I want to do is start with a story about some events that have taken place down in Baltimore City the last week or so.
We unlock the Basilica at 6:55 each morning and waiting for us most days is an older homeless man. He keeps everything he owns in these big shopping bags, anywhere from 5 to 10 of them depending on the day, and he comes to the Basilica each morning for prayer, safety, and to clean himself up. Each day is the same: he brings his bags into the church, he sits quietly for a while, then goes downstairs to the restroom to clean himself up for the day. He stays with us until it is time to go get a meal at one of the local shelters.
I’m not going to share his name with you tonight because he is as much a member of our community as any other parishioner. He is known and loved by the missionaries who serve at the Basilica, by the religious sisters who reside on our campus, and by our staff. The guy could not be any kinder or more gracious.
About a week ago, another homeless man attacked our friend while he was waiting outside the Basilica. I saw the video footage of the attack, and it was about as violent as anything you would see in a movie. Our friend was beaten for several minutes and then dragged into the street. Somehow, he avoided being run over by a car, he survived, and he has spent the last several days in shock trauma at the University of Maryland Medical Center. He has no friends or family in the area. The police needed a few days to figure out his name, and the nurses and doctors who are treating him don’t know anything about him.
But we know him, and he is loved by our missionaries, our religious sisters, and our staff at the Basilica. For the last couple of days, we have been praying for him and visiting him and keeping safe those big shopping bags that contain everything he owns in the world.
I apologize for opening with a story so dramatic, but these are the events that have been on my mind as I’ve been thinking about your baccalaureate Mass and the homily I would give. You see, I have a personal custom: each time I celebrate a baccalaureate Mass or give one of these speeches, I ask myself what I know now that I wish I knew when I was your age, about to graduate from high school with life ahead of me filled with possibility.
My answer to the question tonight comes from a week of watching a community love a homeless man beaten and left for dead in the streets of Baltimore: when I was your age, about to graduate high school with a life ahead of me filled with possibility, I wish I knew that in the real world there is suffering, and that we should want to live in the real world as much as possible. My answer requires some explaining.
I will start by explaining what I mean by the expression ‘the real world.’ The real world of which I speak is basically the opposite of what we want for ourselves when we are young: we want a life of stability and security; no illness; no violence; no struggles with money; no joblessness; no difficult relationships; no experience of homelessness or addiction or hunger. We are hardwired to want stability and security for ourselves, and any good parents—your parents—will sacrifice whatever they can to give their child a life with as much security and stability as possible; that is just what parents do; that is one reason why you received the education you have, and the opportunities that you are being given for the future. Your parents love you very much.
When I was your age, my presumption was that ‘the real world’ was life in the suburbs, more or less comfortable, with decent opportunities for your future. You didn’t have to be rich to live in the real world, but the world of poverty and sickness and family division and unemployment and war—none of that was the real world. Those were parts of the world where things had gone wrong somehow; parts of the world that existed by accident. And as a socially conscious Roman Catholic from the suburbs who belonged to a good parish and received a good education, every now and then I would go down to a soup kitchen or a halfway house to do some charity work and spend some time in a world where bad things happened by accident.
I guess I needed about 20 or 25 years to realize that in the real world there is suffering, and that the life of stability and security is an illusion. The temptation for most of us is to spend our years trying to avoid suffering (other than going down to a soup kitchen every now and then), and so we build ‘safe’ suburban neighborhoods and pursue careers advantages and work to isolate ourselves from a tough, hard world in which bad things happen that shouldn’t.
Tonight, what I want to tell you is to open your eyes to the suffering that exists in the real world with as much frequency as possible; do not spend your life with your eyes closed, trying to fabricate a world that can’t exist. Why do I say what I say?
Pope Francis said last year that contact with suffering, exposure to the real world leads to “discernment about what really matters in life, to the point of encounter with God.” He said that finding God through contact with suffering “is the vision of faith that we find in sacred Scripture.” Pope Francis said that throughout the Gospels we see Christ identify with the sick and suffering and dying, and that:
The culmination of this identification occurs in the Passion, so that the cross of Christ becomes the sign par excellence of God’s solidarity with us and, at the same time, the possibility for us to unite with him in the saving work (Col 1:24). Thus, in Christ even suffering is transformed into love and the end of the things of this world becomes hope of resurrection and salvation.
I would love for all of you to discover what really matters in life by way of direct and immediate contact with suffering because you make a choice tonight to live in the real world.
I spent some time on the NDP website this morning to try and learn what this place is about. I read that you guys are formed to follow the words of the Prophet Micah to Act Justly, Love Tenderly, and Walk Humbly with God. I read that you have been formed with a personal and communal spirituality centered on the Gospel values of Jesus Christ. I read that you guys think that charity is an immediate response to suffering and can address individual needs, such as poverty, medical or educational needs, and homelessness. I read that service and justice work are rooted in the Gospel, and both are integral to NDP’s philosophy and the charism of the school’s founding order, the School Sisters of Notre Dame. And I am told that you graduates of the class of 2024 are a part of tradition of education and formation that has prepared young women for 150 years to know Christ and to serve the Church. That sounds to me like the kind of life that brings you into regular contact with suffering; that sounds to me like the kind of life you live in the real world.
Here is what you need to know: you need to make a choice to live in that world. You will want to avoid it, pursue a career, live in safe neighborhoods, maybe going out of your way every now and then to do some intentional work of charity but otherwise you will want security and stability. You are hardwired to want to chase after an illusion, shelter yourself from the tough stuff, pursue a live of settled privilege—and you shouldn’t.
Here is something else you need to know, something that I did not know when I was your age: you should want to live in the real world. The real world is a tough, hard place to live but in that world is real beauty and goodness because that is where Christ is the most, and you should want to live your life with Christ.
Maybe you don’t think about these kinds of things, but because of Christ it is possible for us to know and love a homeless person. I am talking about real knowledge and real love, the kind of knowledge and love you find in families. The past week at the Basilica, I’ve watched people know and love a homeless man beaten and left for dead in the street as if these crimes happened to a member of their own families. To me, there is no greater kind of knowledge or love out there than what Christ shows us in the Gospels. Christ takes a deep dive into the suffering of the world, and he knows and loves each person he meets in their poverty.
The real world is where the action is because that is where Christ is, and you should want to live in that world. Christ says in the Gospel that if we love him, we will keep his commandments. And the greatest command that Christ gives us is to love: not only our family, not only our friends, but anyone and everyone we meet, complete strangers, and most especially those who suffer. There is nothing more beautiful, nothing more perfect, then the supernatural capacity that Christ gives us to love a stranger in their suffering: to identify with their pain, to know them in their sorrow, and to sacrifice for their good. The world of goodness and beauty is the real world, the world with suffering in it, and that is the only world worth living in.
I am trying to think of a way to tell you practically what I want you to know. Here is one more attempt.
Dorothy Day once said that “Everything a baptized person does every day should be directly or indirectly related to the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy.” Do you know the list? Here it is: feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, visit the sick, visit the imprisoned, ransom the captive, bury the dead, instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful, admonish sinners, bear patiently those who wrong us, forgive offenses, comfort the afflicted, and pray for the living and the dead.
When I was your age, I wish I knew that Christ makes it possible to live that kind of life: every action, every day, connected to a work of mercy. You don’t need to live down in Baltimore City to learn to love the way that Christ loves. But you can’t love like Christ loves when your eyes are closed to suffering, focused on careers and safe neighborhoods and stability and safety and settled privilege. You need to open your eyes to suffering, and live a life of constant, perpetual mercy.
For the last four years, whether you know it or not, you all have been preparing yourself for a choice you will need to make. You are well prepared to make that choice; this school has given you a remarkable gift. For the last four years you have been formed and educated to become a person who follows Christ out into the real world with all its suffering. And now you get to make the choice to get out there where the action is, to find real beauty and real goodness, and to marvel at the amazing life that Christ makes possible for us. I would love very much for all of you to make that choice to follow him.
Homily preached on May 23rd at Mount De Sales Academy, May 26th at St. Peter’s in Libertytown, and May 28th at Notre Dame Preparatory School
We finally made it, fam