Sacred Heart Church—June 5, 2009

By Charles V. McPhillips

Young ladies and gentlemen of the Saint Patrick Catholic School Class of 2009, I have had the great privilege and the true joy, as Chairman of your school, to address you on many occasions over the past four years. With great admiration for all of your growth and achievements, I cannot help but suffer a tinge of melancholy on this last occasion I have to address you. Especially after you have just survived the ordeal of polishing your Journey Portfolios and making your Grad at Graduation presentations, it would be only fair if I finally shared with you my own personal Journey Portfolio.

I stand before you in the very Sacred Heart Church where I was baptized in September 1959. It is the Church that my grandfather, a native of County Monaghan, Ireland, helped to build in 1925 as a member of the Parish Building Committee. My father was baptized here in February 1927 and my parents were married here in October 1958.

Like your parents, my parents sent me to Catholic elementary school, the old Blessed Sacrament School at 37th and Colley, where I learned most of what I know about the Catholic faith. Like Kailee Cunningham, I went on to Norfolk Academy for high school. I loved it so much I stayed an extra year. Then, like the smartest boys in this class will eventually do, I matriculated at Hampden-Sydney College. From there, just as the craziest people in this class will likely do, I attended law school, in my case the University of Virginia—so that the rest of my life would be tormented by watching my team blow big leads in crucial ACC match-ups.

I have been blessed in my career and fortunate to travel on some exciting adventures. Indeed, Theresa and I just returned from Africa, where we visited the Cape of Good Hope. Fast approaching age 50, it seems that my life is now crossing that Cape, leading me to wonder what I will discover on the other side, and why, after traveling so far, I am back here at Sacred Heart, right where I started.

Class of 2009: I pray that you will explore this world and enjoy far-flung adventures. I wish for you a full, exciting and successful life. Spread your wings and soar like an eagle. But I pray that you too will return safely to the place of your baptism. By that I do not necessarily mean, as for me tonight, the same physical place, but the same emotional and faithful place to which your parents and godparents brought you with such hopefulness on the day of your baptism.

Remember, as you purchase your ticket to explore the wide-open life that lies before you, to book a round trip.

After all, a one-way ticket, one that’s only about seeking pleasures and riches—one that’s all about you—is a ticket that will inevitably lead you into a dead end. You will not find happiness or meaning there. You will have wasted precious years and a small fortune going nowhere.

Along your route, you will encounter the secular scribes and pharisees of self-help and self-indulgence, whether in the movies or on TV, whether “twittering” or “texting”, who will tempt you to believe that “it” is all about you. By “it“, they mean the meaning of life.

I confess, Class of 2009, that I am not learned or profound enough to divine “the meaning of life.” Being somewhat old fashioned, I am not much on meditation, gazing at my navel or singing Kumbaya. And I am simply not bright enough to answer all of the riddles, reconcile all the contradictions, decipher all the codes, and solve all the equations necessary to discover the “meaning of life.”

I can, however, with God’s help, examine the meaning of my own life. Mark my words, Class of 2009: you will never be satisfied by all of your adventures, by all of your acquisitions, or by all of your pleasures; they will disappear with the morning mist, unless you also acquire meaning in your life.

The meaning of your life. Not the meaning of the universe. Not the meaning of existence, not the meaning of some abstraction called life. No one who ever walked the earth (other than Jesus) has ever solved those mysteries. Please take no offense, but none of us here is Jesus.

But through Jesus, his Heavenly Father and the Holy Spirit, each of you has been given a precious, but temporary gift. It is your earthly life and it is yours, but only for so long as God gives it to you. As you later cross your Cape of Good Hope, wherever that may be and whenever that crossing may occur, you will appreciate how precious this gift really is. The gift includes God’s grace upon your life, and God’s answers to your prayers, but in the end it will be your decisions that will determine the meaning of your life.

It is yours, but it is not about you. It is yours, but —I would submit—it is about what you decide to do for others.

In my case, blessed by the selfless teamwork and guidance of great friends, and navigating by prayer, I found meaning for my life in the founding of Saint Patrick’s. I find it in you, Class of 2009, in the impressive young adults you have become, in the leaders you are destined to become, in the bright future you offer for our parishes, our neighborhoods and our City. I pray that I might continue to find such meaning for my life whenever, by God’s grace, I overcome my faltering nature to work for a better community. Too rarely do I rise above my selfish flaws, but when I succeed in doing so, it brings me here, back to this place and the promise of my baptism.

You may certainly prefer a different life than mine and you may find a more profound meaning for your life than I did for mine. I pray that your life will take you wherever you dream to go. Return often, however, to where you started. Return also to your Journey Portfolio; keep it up in some fashion going forward; analyze where you have been heading; and, by virtue of your own reckoning, chart a future direction that will bring real meaning, real purpose and real happiness to your life.

Not all of your chosen life will be smooth sailing. The seas are especially treacherous when you approach the Cape of Good Hope. The turbulent waters conceal rocks and other dangers. One must therefore be well prepared to navigate that Cape. Many unprepared ships and crew have been lost in those fearsome waters. Be prepared, Class of 2009, for none of us knows the day or hour when we will round that Cape, filled with hope that God’s embrace will await us on the other side.

So as you depart tomorrow on the next leg of your journey, prepare well Class of 2009, prepare well each day for what I pray will be a full and happy life. Prepare well for a lifetime of Grad at Graduation presentations made privately with our Lord, as the meaning of your life is decided by what you decide. May you safely cross the Cape and then return home to the peaceful, holy waters of your baptism.

Thank you and may God bless and hold the Class of 2009 in the palm of His hand.

Category: Milestones