STEPS

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily – the title of my talk for tonight – for the Class of 2011 - our 8th Grade graduating from St. Mary's -  is, “Steps!”

The word “graduation” is from the Latin word, “gradus”. It simply means, “step” or “grade”. When you make it up all the steps – when you go through all the grades: K,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, you graduate. It means your name is called and you can climb the steps in a place like this and receive your diploma.

When you finish all the steps in high school: freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, you can graduate – and you climb some steps and receive another diploma.

Millions of young people – as well as some middle aged as well as some older people – have walked up steps these past few weeks and received their college or master’s or doctor’s degree and diploma.

I was at a college graduation just three weeks ago and I heard several yells for graduates that went like this, “Way to go, mom! Way to go, mom. Way to go! mom!” And the mom who received her diploma, waved to her fans and family in the crowd with her degree in hand and a big smile on her face.

Graduation.

It’s never too late to step right up.

It’s never too late to graduate.

Step by step – we make the grade – step by step – we move through life – and for those in wheel chairs – it’s the same procedure – push by push – we can graduate – and make it up the ramp – and hopefully – they have more and more ramps and elevators for those who can’t make it up the steps.

LITTLE KIDS

Jesus loved little children. Little children loved Jesus.

Jesus came as a little child – a baby – Christmas – and showed us God knows the steps we all have to take – starting with baby steps.

Jesus said to us, “Learn from me!”

Jesus also said, “Let the little children come into your life and they will teach you about life. They will teach you about the Kingdom of God.”

Parents. You have let little children come into your life and they have taught you all about the kingdom of God. They have taught you about giving and living. They have taught you about sacrifice. They have taught you love: loving God and loving neighbor – especially when your neighbor is your child and he or she is crying in the night – or has taken up Irish Dancing or fencing or rowing or tuba playing and lessons are so expensive and the best teachers are sometimes so far away –and driving there sometimes takes place is the worst time for traffic – late afternoon.

And in giving you have received – and in a moment like tonight – you say, “That’s my kid there. It was all worth it.”

Kids: there was a day when you began to crawl.

Kids: there was a day you crawled to your first step – and you couldn’t walk yet – and you saw all those people so much bigger than you – walk up those steps to the second floor or up there in your house or into the sanctuary here or at your cousin’s house and you couldn’t climb any steps yet. That first step …. so, so high. And us older folks – often forget how big a first step can be.

There are two kinds of kids: those who scream when they come to obstacles like steps and those who try to climb it on their own – struggling over and over and over again till they make it – and then there is that second step – and on and on and on – and sometimes we fall – and sometimes we have to start all over again at that first step.

Life: it can be a bummer.

Life: it’s a lot of steps.

Chinese proverb: a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.

Italian proverb: The hardest step is over the threshold.

Alcoholics Anonymous: Do the 12 steps – a step at a time.

4 KINDS OF PARENTS

There are four kinds of parents:

A) Those parents who know how big steps can appear – and can be – to a kid. Steps are like mountains. And they let the kid struggle to climb those steps on their own – because they know that’s what their kid need if they are going to grow.

B) There are those parents who pick their kid up and carry them to the top of the steps – because they don’t want to hear the whining or the screaming of a kid who whines and screams when things are tough and they know this is how to get their parents to do what they want them to do for them.

C) Then there are parents who take their kid by the hands and let the kid dangle their feet and touch the rug and then parent and child walk up the steps, step by step, together – and that parent then claps for their kid when then make it to the top of the stairs and the kid claps for their parents and for themselves because they have just climbed Mount Everest together.

D) Then there is the fourth type of parent. It all depends on how much time they have, how their kid is, if the steps are dangerous – and how their back feels today, and then sometimes they do A, and sometimes they do B, and sometimes they do C. They have discovered, life is an “It all depends!”

Steps!

PIANO

If you want to learn how to play the piano, you start with the do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do – 8 keys – 8 steps – but we only have 5 fingers, so the first step is learning how to make that do, re, mi, with these 3 fingers and then to learn to make the thumb cross over, and hit the fa key with the thumb – and use the next four fingers on the piano keys to get so, la, ti do – that last note with our pinkie finger.

Steps!

Sometimes you just follow the steps.

Sometimes life is tricky. Sometimes life is complicated – but to make music you got to learn the keys – black and white, the sharps and the flats – or if you take up the guitar, you have to learn the strings and the cords.

A CATHOLIC SCHOOL

School – St. Mary’s School – like any school – is all about learning the steps – learning words, reading, writing and arithmetic – the 3 R’s – but the second two words, writing and arithmetic, don’t begin with the letter “R”. School is learning little things like that – as well as big things – the things that really matter – not just marks – but how to interact, how to treat one another, how to deal with difficulties.

Catholic Schools – like St. Mary’s School – an opportunity to learn what Jesus taught one of the Pharisees as we heard about in the gospel you picked for your graduation Mass tonight: “The greatest commandment, the secret of life, the big learning is: to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind and to love our neighbor as ourselves.”

Learn those two steps – practice those two steps – and blessed will be your life.

THE CROSS

Catholic Church – sitting in a big church like this – with this gigantic cross up here – can help us learn what life is all about:

A) Jesus is saying from the cross: “Greater love than this no one has than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

B) Learning that the Cross is a gigantic STOP sign. Stop doing this to people. Stop hurting one another. Stop killing one another. Stop crucifying each other.

C) Jesus said from the cross: “Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” To forgive those who wound us – or hurt us - is a very difficult thing – but if we learn how to do that, we have learned another great step in life – and we put an end to get backs.

D) The Cross is a Ladder. Climb the steps of the cross and learn who and what Christ is all about. Or take the steps in every Catholic Church – walk the14 stations of the cross – all of which leads to this big cross here behind us in this sanctuary.

Steps.

YOUTH AND IDEALISM

I remember hearing someone say that young people when they are around 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16, they are at the highest point in their lives for idealism – for seeing possibilities with their lives. This is the time of their greatest dreams. Then reality can start to seep and step in. It happens. I would hope every school presents young people with big visions. I would hope classrooms don’t put kids asleep – but put them into deep dreams.

A BISHOP NAMED JIM

I remember being at a confirmation in the last parish I was in. This took place about 12 years ago. The bishop was preaching and he stepped down the steps of the sanctuary and stood right there in front of the young men and women sitting there who were about to make their confirmation – in the Catholic Church.

He talked about possible visions and dreams jobs for their future. The one that stood out for me – was his call for some kid there to become a great journalist – a great newspaper columnist – someone who challenge the country and the government – the world – to tackle big problems like poverty and immigration – and that the Catholic Church has great letters written by popes and bishops’ conferences on Labor Unions and Immigration and the Poor and the economy – as well as the ecology.

That was 12 years ago. Those kids are finished college by now. From time to time – I wonder if one kid there heard that – and went that way – step by step by step – and today he’s working for some newspaper or is on the editorial team for some News Station.

A PRIEST NAMED TOM

I worked for 8 ½ years with a priest named Tom and one day in some church he said out loud the story of his life. He said he was in church as a kid and he looked up and saw a priest saying Mass and preaching and baptizing and he said to himself, “I like that.” Another time he said to himself, “I could do that. I could become a priest.” Another day he said, “I want to do that.” Another time he said, “I’m deciding to do that!” Step by step he clarified the vision of what he wanted to do with his life – and he did it.

It took him 4 years of college, a year of novitiate, as well as 4 years of theology studies – and then he went on for a Ph.D. after that – besides being a priest he did studies and teaching in sociology – with special studies and awareness of people in the rust belt areas of the United States – where people are out of work and are stuck.

Hearing his story hit me because that was sort of like my story. A priest who was working in Brazil came into a classroom in our Catholic School when I was a kid and talked about his life and his work and asked us if any of us would like to be priests – and I raised my hand – and I have never taken it down. I studied Portuguese in the seminary – the language of Brazil – and every year in the steps of becoming a priest when they asked us what we wanted to do when we ordained – I wrote “Foreign missionary - Brazil.” It didn’t happen. I also took a vow of obedience to go where the Redemptorist wanted to put me.

You have to dream. You have to grow. You have to learn about “yes” and “no”. And one has to learn how to deal with changes in plans.

Every time I say Mass and preach I hope some young person sitting there says, “I would like to be a priest when I grow up!”

Every time I’m at a moment like this, I would hope different young people will want to be teachers, nuns, and good parents like their parents.

When I was in the 8th grade – I want to stress 8th Grade – because that’s what you are just finishing – besides wanting to be a priest, I also wanted to be a writer. So I wrote and sometimes I would read out loud stuff I wrote – funny stuff – stream of consciousness type writing – to my classmates and they would laugh. I forgot that dream somewhere along the line – but found out after I became a priest, I could do that. I have 6 books and lots of magazine articles and lots of poems published. I’ve learned about rejection slips – one book was rejected by 10 publishers – but number 11 said, “Yes.”

I add that because life not only has moments like tonight – when someone is called to step forwards – life also has moments when we area rejected. In time to come as you date, expect rejection slips. In time to come, as you apply for jobs, expect rejection slips. When that happens one has to knock on other doors and go find a different staircase.

Step by step, word by word, page by page, chapter by chapter, a book or a poem or an article or a homily or a sermon is written.

I’m almost finished this talk on steps. I want to give one more example and then close with a favorite poem from Langston Hughes.

EXAMPLE: BOARDWALK

I once was working at a retreat house in New Jersey – right on the Atlantic Ocean – and this huge Nor easterner storm hit our place – and picked up our boardwalk and dumped it about 15 yards away on our lawn from where it was. It had pulled apart most of the boards.

About a week later I decided to rebuild the boardwalk on my own.

As I was building it – with all the loose planks lying on the lawn – I found myself saying as I nailed each board to the framework that was still there, “Board by board, the boardwalk is built.” It took me about 2 months, but I got it done. My sister in law saw it that Thanksgiving and dubbed it, “The Worlds Shortest Boardwalk.” On first instance that hurt, but as I reflected upon it, I was glad I built it, because it taught me one of life’s great lessons: Board by board, step by step, one’s life is built.”

I got changed from there and came back a year later. They had replaced my boardwalk with a bigger and better and longer one – and that hurt. Then I laughed. That’s life.

The secret is to keep going. So that’s my homily, my talk, my message for tonight on your graduation.

CONCLUSION

Now I want to close with a poem that says everything I said to tonight in 104 words. Now you tell me. It’s a poem by the Black poet, Langston Hughes. It’s the story of poor black woman climbing an apartment house stairs with her son and she’s giving him one of life’s greatest lessons: Keep climbing. Keep stepping. It’s called, “Mother to Son.”

MOTHER TO SON*

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks on it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
When there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down in the steps
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now --
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.



Notes:

*“Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes: © 1926 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and renewed 1954 by Langston Hughes. From Selected Poems by Langston Hughes