Congratulations to the Graduates of
2013!
● Thank you to Diane Emanuel and all the others who
organized the graduation reception!
●Thursday, May 30, is the Solemnity of Corpus Christi. The abbey/students will have Holy Mass at
11:00 AM (no afternoon classes). There
will be a Eucharistic Procession that evening immediately following 5:00 PM
Vespers. All are welcome!
● The last day of school is June 6. Students will be dismissed at 10:00 AM (and
no sooner). Students who need to spend the night of June 6 at the school due to
travel plans are allowed to do so.
● The New Family BBQ is on Saturday, June 15, at 12:00 Noon.
● Reminder to all moms about our “Mothers’ Retreats.” There will be two different weekend retreats
at the Norbertine convent in Tehachapi:
August 2-4 and August 9-11.
Contact Rimini Esser for more details:
riminiesser@gmail.com
● The first day of classes for next school year is August
26. Students return on Sunday, August
25. We begin, students and parents, at
7:00 PM in the abbey church with Eucharistic Benediction, after which there
will be a parent meeting in the school refectory (i.e. dining hall). Football players return the week before, August
18, at 4:00 PM.
Graduation Speech
Given by Mr. Christopher Check
Ut cessavit autem
loqui, dixit ad Simonem, “Duc in altum et laxate retia vestra in capturam.”
And when he had ceased
speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a
catch.”
Father Abbot, Father Prior, Father Victor, confreres,
faculty, parents, grandparents, and godparents, friends and benefactors of
Saint Michael’s,
It is equal parts honor and joy for me to be welcomed back
to offer the commencement address at this holy abbey.
I feel something of an obligation to alert you, Father
Abbot, that institutions that invite me to speak more than once are very likely
courting the unwanted scrutiny of some sinister federal agency: And here I am
thinking of something rather more malicious than the IRS of the Obama
administration; something more like the amorphously defined agencies that lurk
behind all the malice in a Dean Koontz novel. So when the black SUVs start
climbing the drive from El Toro Road or descending from the mountains behind
the abbey…Well, you may have me to blame.
On the other hand, my sense is that St. Michael’s has long
been regarded by the authorities as a subversive organization.
And indeed it is. The confreres of St. Michael’s--in the classroom,
or from the pulpit, behind the confessional screen, and before the Altar of
God--have been joyfully undermining the work of Satan and his demons for more
than half a century.
 |
| Class of 2013 |
The confreres of St. Michael’s Abbey each day draw down from
heaven countless graces as they unite their voices in song in the Divine Office
with the voices of the heavenly host. And let me underscore here--men of the
class of 2013--host means “army.”
It is the army before which your Archangel patron unsheathes
his broadsword and leads these eager confreres into battle against the
organized forces of evil.
Now—men of the class of 2013—it is common in our age—to
regard evil as some vaguely defined failure on the part of men to organize
properly human society, but—once we apply the right social systems and the
right technologies, we will at last eradicate all forms of human suffering.
This fool’s errand in the perfectibility of human society often goes by the
name of progress and its chief proponents throughout history include such
figures as guillotine enthusiast Robespierre, communist Karl Marx, eugenicist
Margaret Sanger, and mass murderers, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung.
And following in the footsteps of these monsters, knowingly
or not, is virtually every commencement speaker at virtually every commencement
exercise. I’ll give you their speeches in one sentence: This venerable
institution has made you brilliant and wonderful, now go out beyond its walls
and make the world a better place.
Very well. Here’s my question: How is it then that countless
graduating classes have been sent forth by countless commencement speakers to
go forth and make the world a better place, and yet it is patently obvious that
we are well into what Christopher Dawson seventy years ago called the
“disintegration of Western Civilization.” I could use up all the time that Fr.
Victor gave me just going over that data, but suffice to say that it is plain
that we live in a world afflicted with a profound cultural divide, and one that
is only going to get worse. The dominant
culture has declared war on marriage, on innocent life, and on Christianity.
Oh very well: here are two statistics. When I was married 22
years ago last Saturday, most American households were married-couple
households. That is no longer true. Most
American households today are not. When
I was born 47 years ago, three quarters of 24-year-olds in America were
married. Seventy-five percent. Today, that figure is nine percent.
The superabundant schemes that the meddlers of the world
have inflicted on mankind since the so-called Enlightenment---and here
gentlemen we have the definition of a liberal: someone who cannot mind his own
business: there is a line somewhere in Pascal where he states: the world’s ills
are the work of people who are not content to stay home— The superabundant
schemes the meddlers of the world have inflicted on mankind in their effort to
eradicate what they call evil are in reality denials of original sin.
But the confreres of St. Michael’s Abbey, thanks be to God,
are not afflicted with this illusion. They know that evil is not something to
be overcome by a political or economic triumph. They know that evil is not
something to be overcome with a legislative or therapeutic solution. They know
that evil is personal and that it is supernatural. You don’t have to take my
word for it. Saint Paul’s stirring final chapter of his letter to the Ephesians
settles the question: “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but
against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of
this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the
heavenly places.”
So when we speak of making the world a better place—men of
the class of 2013—it is the confreres of St. Michael’s Abbey who are doing the
heavy lifting, the central work. If you want to know who is holding back the
gates of hell here in Orange County--and I think we can all agree that that is
not an assignment for the faint of heart--it is the confreres of St. Michael’s.
And now, because you young men have been formed here in this
place, amidst the beauty and the reverence and the virility of Abbey life, you
are now called to stand shoulder to shoulder alongside the confreres in the
army of St. Michael.
May we linger for a moment on that word virility. You all
see in it the Latin root, vir, meaning “man,” as in man the sex not man the
species. It is not an accident that this same root, vir, is in virtue, and when
we go back to the Latin word, virtu, and understand the word as the Romans did
we can see why. Indeed, the word appears in the Latin text of Leo XIII’s prayer
to St. Michael. “Virtute Divini.” By the Divine power. Power is in inadequate translation. Go to
Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy if you want the Roman understanding of
“virtu.” It is really something closer to “manly strength” or even “courage
under fire” or “courage in the face of adversity.” It was the special fire, as
Machiavelli explains, in the hearts of Romans that gave them the strength to
suffer one defeat after another from the brilliant Carthaginian General
Hannibal Barca and at last crush his army on the plains of Zama under the
command of Scipio Africanus.
And it is this manly courage to which you are now called.
Now in practice what do I mean? We have all heard speeches
and sermons exhorting us to this or that disposition of heart with precious
little clear direction. I do not wish to be accused of this so I am going to
tell you three truths. And, in honor of Father Victor--and so that you can remember
them to your grave--I have to each attached a Latin sentence. (The wise among
you, by the way, will continue with your Latin studies. It is the language of
Christendom, and as Pope Benedict XVI understood, restoring its use is
necessary to the restoration of civilization. And the Holy Father did not mean
merely Latin’s liturgical use, though he did understand that necessity.)
Here is the first truth, a well-known Roman aphorism: Nemo dat quod no habet.
Nemo dat quod no
habet. No one gives what he does not have.
Gentlemen, there is only one meaningful way to change the
world and that is to restore the binding force that Christianity once exercised
on the world. You can be part of this effort only if you first transform your
heart in Christ. You cannot help save the world if you do not see first every
day to your own salvation. Our Lord is explicit on this point: “Seek ye first
the Kingdom of God.”
You have had the best Catholic formation available in
America. I don’t need to tell you about the Sacraments, personal devotions, and
norms of piety. But let me underscore something you have heard about everyday
here. The interior life. You must attend every day to your interior life:
spiritual reading, the reading of Scripture, especially the life of Christ,
prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. It is impossible for you to do good work
if you first do not put your own soul in order. Nemo dat quod no habet. You cannot share love of God if you do not
have it, and it is in the interior life that you will cultivate love of God.
The venerable French Abbot Dom Chautrard in the book that would become Pope
Saint Pius X’s beside book, The Soul of the Apostolate, makes clear that unless
apostolic work is suffused with Love of God it will bear no fruit.
Again, I call in Saint Paul to back me up. This time from
Corinthians: Absent love, an insight capable of penetrating the deepest
mysteries of human experience is worthless.
Absent love, heroic acts of almsgiving are nothing more than a blaring trumpet
or a clanging cymbal. A man can be eloquent and energetic, clever beyond his
peers, or wise beyond his years, but these talents will not serve him in the
least unless they are leavened by love of Jesus Christ.
So: Nemo dat quod no
habet. No one gives what he does not have. If you do not cultivate love of
Jesus Christ in your interior life you cannot share it with others and you will
not be fit for service in the army of St. Michael.
And St. Paul makes clear that love is not self-seeking. It is, in fact, the opposite. Love seeks the
good of the other.
And this takes me to my second truth.
Here is the Latin: Non
est bonum esse hominem solum.
It is not good for man to be alone.
Gentlemen: let me cut to the chase. Today young men, and
increasingly not-so-young men, when it comes to the fairer sex, are in a state
of perpetual shopping. I am not
suggesting that any one of you will become one of the serial fornicators that
are so much a part of the Southern California landscape, but there are a growing
number of boys—and yes--boys is the word, be they 25 or 35—who are devout
Catholics who won’t go find a young lady and get married. They may be daily
Mass goers; they probably tell their beads every Saturday in front of the local
abortuary; they love to get together on Saturday nights, open a bottle of
cabernet, and discuss the social-justice encyclicals. And all this while QUOTE
“discerning their vocations.” Well, let me help: the single life is not a
vocation. Man is not meant to live alone. Man is intended to live in the
context of a vow.
Frankly, discerning the vocation to marriage does not take
much effort because the call to marriage is universal. Marriage is the natural
institution without which there can be no civilization. Marriage preexists the
Church and all human society. As G.K. Chesterton observes, “More holy than the
gods of the city; [are] the gods of the hearth.”
Because of the universal human inclination to marry, the
only discerning you gentlemen need to do is this: will you sacrifice the good
of marriage for the higher good of priest or religious? Should you decide the
priesthood is not for you, then go get married. There are whole parishes these
days to which young people seeking orthodoxy and liturgical reverence are
flocking. These parishes are overflowing with young ladies who are looking for
a man to step up to the plate and be the head of the household. They want to be
wives and mothers and rear joyful Catholic families.
Are they supermodels? Thank God, no. Nor are they perfect saints
the likes of Teresa of Avila or Joan of Arc. Thank God again, men, because
hobbled by your own shortcomings you could never live with such a lady.
Look—no one is ever “ready” to get married (or to have
children, for that matter). There will never be “enough” money, “enough” higher
education, “enough” job security, “enough” of a house, and indeed, “enough”
certainty that she is the one. All these objections boil down to something
embarrassingly pusillanimous: a lack of faith. Gentlemen do not be pusillanimous.
Be the opposite. Be magnanimous. Magnanimity—or greatness of heart—was one of
Aristotle’s favorite virtues. And magnanimity requires not only greatness of
heart but also the capacity to give that heart away. Msgr. Ronald Knox once
said that the problem of our age is not one of broken hearts but hardened
hearts. To this I would add that the hardened heart is the heart not given.
Only in giving ourselves away are we fulfilled. Is there risk in this? Yes.
Magnanimity requires a capacity for risk.
And this takes us to our final Latin injunction. It is the
one with which I began.
Duc in Altum. Put
out into the deep.
All of you know that on October 7, 1571, the galleys of the
Holy League squared off in the bay of Lepanto against the galleys of the
Islamic East. Christendom was saved by the intercession of Our Lady and we
honor the event each year on the day by celebrating her Holy Rosary.
But perhaps you do not know this detail:
The Holy League was commanded by the 24-year-old Don John of
Austria, and as his flagship, Real, was about to collide with the Ottoman
flagship, Sultana, Don John, who was famous throughout Christendom as a great
dancer, broke into a galliard on the prow of his vessel.
Since the gridiron playbook has probably received somewhat
more attention here at St. Michael’s than have the manual for courtly dances of
the 16th Century, I will go ahead and tell you that a Galliard is a vigorous
dance based on five steps that was—as we would say today—all the rage
throughout Europe.
Imagine the 24-year-old captain general, altogether overcome
with anticipation of the impending battle, leaping and landing by the bow
cannons. And now imagine the cheers the
sight of his manifest thrill must have sent throughout his soldiers. And now
imagine seconds later, Spanish infantry, the world’s finest, boarding Sultana,
Don John himself leading the charge and receiving, and brushing off, a wound to
the leg that just moments before was dancing.
What is this? It is putting out into the deep with Battle
Joy. We should expect nothing less from a Christian soldier squaring off
against the forces of evil.
Chesterton describes in the Ballad of the White Horse Alfred
the Great who has lost all of his kingdom but a marshy island the size of a
football field. Yet does he curl up into a ball? No:
The men of the East
may spell the stars,
And times and triumphs
mark,
But the men signed of
the cross of Christ
Go gaily in the dark.
From Alfred the Great badly outnumbered by the Danes, to
Christopher Columbus reading aloud the Last Gospel every night at the bow of
Santa Maria, a sea-tossed vessel that could easily fit in this small cloister,
To Hernan Cortez conquering the demon-worshipping Aztec kingdom with 500
Spanish soldiers, to Thomas More cracking jokes on his approach to the
shambles, to Don John dancing with sword drawn about to give battle, Christian
men have ever gone “gaily into the dark.” The have always put out into the deep
with battle joy.
It is this battle joy, gentlemen, that is your patrimony as
Soldiers of Christ. It is sanctified and made holy in the service of Christ but
like all the great things in Christendom we find glimpses of in ancient times
as the world anticipated the Incarnation.
Remember the Spartans defending the hot gates at
Thermopylae. They are outnumbered 500 to one by the armies of Xerxes. As they
prepare for battle one Spartan declares that he has heard that the Persian army
is so numerous that when they let fly their arrows they block out the sun. What
does Dienekes say? “Good. Then we shall have our fight in the shade.” That is
battle joy.
Gentlemen, you will not have your fight in the shade. You will
have it in the black of night that threatens to consume our troubled age.
But “Nil Desperandum!”
Despair not. Grace is most abundant when it is in greatest demand
(There’s Saint Paul again). You are well armed with the formation this Abbey
has given you. You have the infinite graces of the Sacraments of the One, Holy,
Catholic, and Apostolic Church, and you have something that I can assure you
has seen me through every possible challenge, the maternal solicitude of the
Blessed Virgin Mary. Remember men, Our Lady is a mother most mericiful, but she
is also the fierce fighter who crushes the head of the serpent and is
prefigured in the Song of Songs, “Who is she that cometh forth as the morning
rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array.”
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