Children of Light

When I was six years old, I told my parish priest-Fr. Zorbach-that when I grew up I wanted to be a part time priest and a part time magician. Fr. Zorbach told me that the Catholic Church had enough of "them" already! (I was never quite sure what he meant by "them". Did he mean part time priests or part time priests who were also part time magicians? It still puzzles me.) In any event, I became a full time philosophy professor; which, oddly enough, some people interpret as part priest and part magician!!!

Be that as it may, here we are, together this evening, to honor and celebrate those among us who have completed their studies with honors, made the Dean's list, or who have over-achieved in some other socially acceptable and equally intellectually, stellar way.

This evening, I want to talk just a few minutes about celebration; about joy and delight. Every morning at breakfast, either alone or with my family, I offer up to God the very same prayer. I pray that each member of my family might find joy in the presence of others, and that each might be a source of joy to everyone he or she meets that day.

And that is my prayer for you; that you might both find joy in the presence of others and that you might be a source of joy to a world desperate for gladness. I pray too that you might delight in God's world and in the tasks God gives you to carry out. Delight and joy.

The picture of God's kingdom given in the gospels often has celebration at its very center. A woman finds a lost coin, and celebrates. A man finds his lost sheep, and rejoices. And in that most arresting of stories about lost things found, a son who was lost is found, and a jubilant father calls for a celebration to beat all celebrations. Our God is a God who rejoices and celebrates, and God invites us to participate in his joy.

You are honors students. And it has been my privilege, and a source of great delight, to get to know many of you, and to learn from you. From you I have learned about music-about gangsta rap and ska. You've introduced me to intriguing and hilarious movies, like Donny Darko and Waiting for Guffman; you've even managed to get me hooked on The Simpsons. One of the most interesting things I've learned from you over the years is that you are a lot like me, or I'm a lot like you-you're driven, you're anxious, you're insecure. And like me you are called to joy and delight, as son or daughter of the kingdom. But delight and joy do not sit comfortably on the same bench alongside anxiety and insecurity. So, how to accept the invitation and fully enter into the celebration when we are anxious and insecure, when there is so much darkness?

I just returned from a trip during which I took the opportunity to spend some time with a very dear friend. He's the only true friend I have from my undergraduate days. We've managed to stay in touch over the years and to visit each other regularly. He's dying. A malevolent tumor is eating away at his brain. It's robbing him of life, of strength, of love, and of his very personality. And I am called to enter into the celebration and joy that is characteristic of life in God's kingdom.

There are too the monsters that war within our own flesh-our addictions; addictions to pornography, or greed, or consumption or amusement. Left unchecked these moral cancers promise to rob us of joy and delight in God's kingdom as sure as the organic cancer within my friend's brain is robbing him of life itself.

So what to do? I have only humble suggestions, born not so much out of personal achievement, as out of hope.

First, cultivate courage and learn to live against the grain of the world. Learn to experience joy even amidst the darkness by learning to attend to those glimmers of light that God shines into the world, and rejoice in them; with reckless abandon, rejoice! Be forewarned, however: it takes practice. For you and I live in a flash and sizzle culture; and yet God refuses to satisfy our north american appetite for flash and sizzle. God comes to us, God's light comes to us, usually in small, mundane and all-too-ordinary ways-it's easy to miss.

When God wrapped himself in human skin he went largely unrecognized. Practice finding God in the ordinary, and each time you succeed, rejoice.

Second, don't deny the sadness of the world, but-as Henri Nouwen puts it-transform it into fertile soil for more and more joy.

Third, shun the cynics and the cynic within you. The cynics will seek to steal your joy. Don't let them! Cynics see only sadness and baptize their cynicism with the moniker of realism. They will say that you are young and naïve. They will sneer at your enthusiasm for joy and ridicule your cultivation of delight. And they will wrinkle their cynical noses at your public, charismatic and passionate display of grateful worship of the God who calls you to joy. They may even call you an "evangelical"! If the cynics desire to sow and to reap darkness, that is their prerogative. But don't let them steal your joy. Don't-let-them!

Finally, join yourselves with others who have accepted the invitation to joy-amidst-sadness, even if it's a community of two. Confess your sins to another; hear the confessions of another, and help to point each other in the direction of joy and delight. And then go out into the world, and sow, however small, your own parables of God's coming, consummated kingdom of joy and delight. For that is your calling as children of light.