Class of 2025 Ring Mass Homily

What are we doing here? You would think that with a monstrous hurricane making its way to the Florida coast in about 24 hours we would all be at Home Depot buying materials to ward off the effects of Milton and standing in line at Costco filling our shopping carts with water and toilet paper. No, wait, toilet paper was for the coronavirus. For hurricanes we are more concerned with what we take in and not what we put out. With all the chaos looming just miles away, here we are, peacefully at Mass…. celebrating.   

With all the things we’ve been dealing with the last couple of days, it’s good to know there are some things that are still working pretty much on schedule. Thank God for the NFL. While some teams are struggling, it’s good to know you can sit back on a Sunday afternoon and watch one of America’s favorite pastimes. Since those days of the draft back in April when professional football players became available on the open market and even to the present, teams have been working very hard to gobble up the best prospects and there is not a single hurricane out there that can stop them. I think more people have been following the Davante Adams trade and Robert Saleh firing than the National Weather Service tracker of Hurricane Milton. 

I get it. I’ve been glued just as much to Bleacher Report and ESPN as I have to my weather app. As an avid Dolphins fan, my hope and prayer are that the general manager and head coach of the Miami Dolphins will offer a contract to Adams, arguably one of the biggest, strongest, and most agile receivers in the NFL. And then, my expectation will be that they will also look for the biggest, strongest, most agile quarterback they can find. One whose brain is not concussed.

That, my friends, in the eyes of football, is how you build a championship team.

While the NFL looks at talent with football eyes and the NBA looks at talent through basketball eyes, it’s a completely different story when we are called to look at talent through God’s eyes. Go through the Scriptures and you will notice that when God decides to build a team, He uses a completely different set of standards. God doesn’t seem to be interested in the biggest, the strongest, or the most agile. God’s idea of a champion doesn’t focus on size or strength; it focuses on the heart.

Let’s run through a quick lineup. About 5,000 years ago, with the number one pick in the draft, God chose Abraham. He was a polytheistic, nomadic, childless old man. Then, he went on to draft Noah, a drunkard. Then, after making a trade with the Egyptians, he drafted Moses who was a stuttering orphan. Then, in a later round, he picked the Prophet Jeremiah, who was an insecure teenager. And with the fifth pick in the draft, he picked Rahab, a prostitute. Don’t get me wrong, I know God owns the team, but that lineup makes you wonder who the general manager is. 

This strategy is not only in the Old Testament. Probably the most important person God ever drafted was Mary and she was a 15-year-old girl. Then there is Joseph, foster father to Jesus and, now, patron saint of the whole Catholic Church. He was an old, simple carpenter from Nazareth, one of the most insignificant villages in all of Israel. And what about John the Baptist? He was a camel-skin wearing, locust eating, madman. If you ask me, these people belonged on the Island of Misfit Toys and not in the annals of salvation history. 

And how about God’s draft picks in season 42? God hires His Son, Jesus, to coach the most important team of all. You would think he would have taken a page from the NFL playbook and drafted some really great players to assure a championship, but alas, no. His quarterback was Peter, an illiterate and hotheaded fisherman. His wide receiver was John, a fourteen-year-old teenager. His linemen were Matthew, a despised tax collector, and Simon, a violent rebel-rouser. His kicker, of course, was Judas, the one who betrayed him. Terrible lineup. But like his Father, Jesus seemed to use another standard. He saw talent with a different set of eyes. Jesus looked at the heart.

For tonight’s senior ring ceremony, we decided to celebrate the Mass of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. While we pride ourselves at Belen for an academic program that strengthens the mind and raise new buildings to strengthen the body, our focus tonight is on the heart. This is what truly matters. 

In today’s gospel, we read a portion of St. John’s version of the passion of Jesus Christ. Of the four gospels, John’s perspective on the crucifixion and death of Jesus is the most insightful because, of the four evangelists, he was the only one present. John tells us how from the moment of the Last Supper to Golgotha, Jesus was riddled with pain, both physical and mental. And yet, in the midst of all that pain and suffering, he humbly made his way to the end.

So, what ultimately led Jesus to his death? What got him to face his adversaries, pick up the cross, and make his slow walk towards Calvary? Was it his body? It couldn’t be. That was ravaged by scourging, bruised by blows of the fist, and humiliated by spitting. Was it his mind? It couldn’t be. That was plagued with fear when he asked his Father to let the cup pass from his lips without having to drink from it. It was overwhelmed with doubt when from the cross he screamed, “My god, my God, why have you abandoned me.” No, what led Jesus to the cross was his heart. It was his love for God and his love for us. It was the sacred heart of Jesus that provided for him the strength and courage to overcome the weaknesses of his body and the frailties of his mind.

Ultimately, it is from the sacred heart of Jesus that arises the gift of our salvation. Notice how John tells us that after Jesus died, he witnessed the moment a soldier pierced his side and heart with a lance. From it, John says, flowed blood and water. Now, those of you who are doctors, have studied anatomy, or know anything about the body will understand that simply from a medical perspective, that phenomenon makes sense. Jesus’s heart was severely damaged, and his lungs filled with fluids. The piercing caused those fluids of blood and water to flow out. But read John’s text with your heart and not simply your mind. From the sacrifice of Jesus, from his heart, flows the birth of the Church: the water is baptism and the blood is the Eucharist.

I want to give you a more modern-day example of this and apologize for keeping with the football references.

Rudy Ruettiger was an undersized kid from a poor, working-class family in Illinois. He wasn’t very smart and so it was understood that after high school he would go to work in the factory with his father and older brothers. But Rudy had a dream. He wanted to play football at Notre Dame. Everybody laughed at him when he told them about his dream. They insisted it was impossible. But Rudy had a heart so big it barely fit in his chest. He was determined, he would focus on his goals and put his head down and work hard. It was his heart, not his mind or body, that eventually got him on the Fighting Irish football team. 

As a matter of fact, Rudy had so much heart, that in the last game of the season his senior year the coach decided to put him in for the last series against Georgia Tech. On the last play of the game, Rudy sacked the quarterback, but more than that, his heart had made such an impression on his teammates that at the end of the game they carried him off the field. He is the first of only two Notre Dame football players to ever be carried off the field. And one more thing, of all those other big, strong, and agile football players who were on the 1975 Notre Dame football team, many of which made it into the NFL, he is the only one who had a movie made about his life. Why? Because of the size of his heart. Trust me, if you’ve never seen that movie… you should.

Gentlemen, tonight we celebrate your lives. We celebrate the many years you have been a part of the Belen Jesuit family. Years that will soon be coming to a close and will give way to a new chapter in your lives. Throughout your time at Belen, you have grown into fine young men. The little boys that made their way through the inflatable Wolverine head six years ago and past the front gates of the school and into the central patio, are no more. Now, what we have are men. And while it is true our curriculum has helped strengthen your mind and our fields have helped strengthen your bodies, it is far more important that our faith in Jesus Christ has helped strengthen your hearts. 

The rings you will receive tonight and will wear on your fingers are a powerful symbol. They symbolize not only the friendships you have made, the lessons you have learned, and the glories you have achieved. They also represent the pain and suffering you have endured. They represent the challenges Belen, your families, and the world you live in have presented you. They represent how you have overcome some and are still dealing with others. These rings are a symbol not only of how much your minds and bodies have grown, but more importantly how much your hearts have grown. These rings represent a champion.

After you graduate from Belen and leave the safety of its comfortable bosom, you will face new challenges. Your minds, bodies, and hearts will most assuredly be tested. Don’t see these challenges simply with the eyes of men, see them with the eyes of God. In the face of such adversity, I will once again remind you that it is the heart of man that will win the day. It is the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the heart of King David, the heart of Rudy that needs to beat in our breasts to face these new giants. 

Your time at Belen, represented by those rings, has helped create in you the kind of heart you need to score the winning touchdown, make the winning buzzer-beater, step up to the plate and hit the walk-off home run. It is an opportunity to be a man for others, to clear away the cobwebs of our spiritual lives and go to Mass, pray the rosary, invoke the saints, and read the Scriptures. Like the hurricane we are bracing for, let your Belen education brace you for the world you will encounter and face it with hearts filled with faith and courage because, ultimately, it is heart that truly defines a champion.