2019 Baccalaureate Mass Homily

Father Guillermo M. García-Tuñón, S.J. '87
(Father Guillermo García-Tuñón, S.J. delivered this homily at the Baccalaureate Mass on May 15, 2019 held at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Doral.)

On the very day I turned fifteen, I stood in line at the DMV to get my restricted driver’s license. I had been dreaming for a while about getting behind the wheel of a car and this was one step closer to achieving that. Already thinking ahead, I had spent the night before putting together a speech that would convince my father that I should get a car as soon as I turned sixteen. I would explain to him, that as the oldest of five brothers and sisters, having a car would be a blessing for the whole family because I would relieve him and my mother of so many inconveniences they had, having to drive us around every day.
 
I would tell my dad that having a car meant I could drive to Belen and not have him brave the traffic back east to his place of work after dropping me off. Having a car meant that I could pick up my brother Manny from soccer practice, my brother Eric from play rehearsals, my brother Beto from his friend’s house, and my sister from ballet. Having a car meant I could get bread and milk when it ran out, visit my grandparents when they called to complain that we hadn’t seen them in a while, and take the dog to the vet when he needed his shots.
 
Gentlemen, I can assure you that in the history of speeches, none had been better thought out or prepared. I was ready to deliver a masterful stroke of logic and prose. I remember the car ride back home from the DMV like it was yesterday. After my father congratulated me for passing the driver’s test, I began to speak. The words flowed from me like a mighty river. There were no “ums,” no “likes,” and no awkward pauses. I felt as if the Holy Spirit had descended upon me and was helping formulate my argument with extraordinary precision. I remember seeing my father’s face as he nodded at every sentence, agreeing with the concept, almost expressing blessed relief at the endless possibilities. In the fifteen years of my life, this was a moment of greatness for me.
 
When I was done, I sat relieved, wiping some of the sweat from my brow and asked, “Well dad, what do you think?”
 
To my surprise, my father agreed. He told me that with all of the work he and my mother had, having my own car would be a godsend and expressed how he would be counting the days to when I would become the family chauffeur. He told me the idea was like music to his ears. He then added that he was proud of how mature I was in presenting my argument and stating my points clearly and with solid conviction, especially because I was motivated by a pure and selfless desire to help. But then came the catch. He asked me, “How are you going to pay for a car?” What? Me? Pay? The whole purpose for the pitch was to convince him that he should buy the car so I could do all of those things. His understanding was that I would do all of those things, but I had to buy my own car.
 
So, a couple of weeks later, as a junior at Belen Jesuit, I sent my application to work on the weekends at a neighborhood ice cream shop. There, I spent Friday nights, Saturdays, and Sundays scooping ice cream and scrounging together enough money to buy a 1973 Volkswagen bug. It was red. The paint was chipped. I remember it had a little electrical fan on the floor because the car had no AC. You could hear the car coming down the street from a mile away. But, it was mine. I had bought it and it was the greatest car I ever owned.
 
I confess that I was upset about having to work for my own car when I was so busy trying to juggle my studies and an active social life. I moaned every weekend when I had to put on that God-awful work uniform and complained under my breath with every scoop of ice cream I had to dish out, but I learned a valuable lesson from my father that has never left me. That experience taught me the value of money and hard work. It helped eliminate any trace of unwarranted entitlement and it engrained in me a conviction that you appreciate more what you struggle for and work hard to have. I learned from that experience one basic and fundamental truth: I am owed nothing.
 
So, let me pass on the lesson to you. I will be abundantly clear: gentlemen, the world owes you nothing; if anything, you owe it. In the words of the great American writer Mark Twain, “Don’t go around thinking that the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”
 
In the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius of Loyola begins the retreat by having the person contemplate the beauty of the world and the glory of God’s extraordinary creation. Ignatius reminds us that God is the only necessary being and that our existence is contingent on Him. Ignatius goes on to encourage the retreatant to think about his sin, his lack of gratitude, his selfishness, and pride. How many times do we think the world revolves around us, because it does not. How many times do we think we deserve things, because we do not.
 
Within that very context, Ignatius then goes on to emphasize that though we are sinners, we are loved and forgiven and that our creator God is a God of compassion and mercy. In an extraordinary act of kindness and love, God sent His only Son into the world to die for our sins, redeem us by His blood, and save us. Then, what Ignatius does is no less than masterful. He invites the person to contemplate a scene. He asks us to imagine Jesus as a king who addresses his knights and calls them to serve; to work and to toil in and for the world He created. Ignatius says, “consider what the good subjects ought to answer to a King so liberal and so kind, and hence, if any one did not accept the appeal of such a king, how deserving he would be of being censured by all the world, and held for a mean-spirited knight.” Ultimately, God calls us to give and to serve because He deserves it. We owe it to Him.
 
This past weekend I traveled with Father Christian and Brother Mike to Toronto, Canada for the diaconate ordination of one of our Belen alumni. On Sunday, we took a trip to the Shrine of the Canadian Martyrs in Midland, Ontario. The shrine is in recognition of five Jesuit priests who, in 1625, left their home in France to mission to the Huron and Iroquois Indians. It was a difficult task. They went to a land that was harsh and foreign to them. These men knew that more than likely they would never see their families or homeland again. They braved the bitter cold and the harshest of elements to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. They met with much resistance and had little success, but they trudged along.
 
Then, on a winter’s day in 1649, they were captured and martyred. Father John de Brébeuf, the superior of the mission, was forced to parade naked through the snow from one village to another. He was severely beaten with clubs and doused with scalding hot water. They tied him to a pole and hung red-hot hatchets around his neck. Throughout this whole ordeal, witnesses said that Brébeuf continued to preach the Word of God, spoke clearly of God’s love and mercy. Eventually, they gnawed off his fingers, cut out his tongue, and then tomahawked him.
 
As I sat there in the very place of his martyrdom and read his story I wondered, what would possess a man to suffer such an ordeal, what would motivate him to sacrifice life and limb in such a manner. The answer kept coming back… gratitude. Brébeuf and his companions clearly understood that God did not owe them anything, they owed Him. They were convinced that any bit of hard work and sacrifice, any sort of pain and suffering, was owed to God because of everything they knew they had received. That clarity of vision, my brothers, is the reason why more than 400 years later there is a shrine in their honor. That is the reason why hundreds of thousands of pilgrims descend on that sacred land every single year.
 
Brébeuf and his companions were a product of the Spiritual Exercises. Like all men and women who experience the Exercises through retreats or a Jesuit education, they too heard that very call to serve their King and understood as an obligation, not an alternative, their need to respond as gracious knights. Respond they did. No bitching or moaning, no crying or sobbing, no complaints about what is fair or unfair, no need for constant positive reinforcement or consolation prizes. Simply the conviction of duty, surrendering to the task at hand, and the passion for fulfilling an obligation to what they owed God... ultimately, everything.
 
Gentlemen, let me once again be abundantly clear, you do not deserve a college degree, you do not deserve a good job, you do not deserve to be CEO of a major corporation or a partner of a prominent law firm. You do not deserve to be a senator, a ambassador, or a governor. You do not deserve a great wife, beautiful children, or a good and happy life. You do not deserve any of these things unless you work for them, unless you understand them to be simply a response to the love of God for you. The quicker you understand that, the more assuredly you will attain them.
 
Look, you are not simply the consequences of your surroundings or the victims of your circumstances. You did not fail a test because a teacher was bad or ride the bench because a coach did not like you or got a penance hall because the disciplinarian was unfair. You are not bound to repeat your parents’ mistakes or destined to wallow in the mire of previous administrations. You, gentlemen, are the consequence of your own actions and choices, you are the result of your hard work and determination. Abraham Lincoln put it best, “You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.”
 
My brothers, this is the last time I will address you as a class. So, let me take the opportunity to send you off with this advice. Take ownership of your lives and understand your extraordinary place in the world. Like the apostles in today’s first reading, who filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit, went out into the world and preached with their words and lives the gospel of Jesus Christ, be the change in the world that you want to see. It is only in this way that, you can truly consider yourself to be an alumnus of Belen and, more importantly, a son of God.

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BELEN JESUIT PREPARATORY SCHOOL
500 SW 127th Avenue, Miami, FL 33184
phone: 305.223.8600 | fax: 305.227.2565 | email: webmaster@belenjesuit.org
Belen Jesuit Preparatory School was founded in 1854 in Havana, Cuba by Queen Isabel II of Spain.  The task of educating students was assigned to the priests and brothers of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), whose teaching tradition is synonymous with academic excellence and spiritual discipline.  In 1961, the new political regime of Cuba confiscated the School property and expelled the Jesuit faculty.  The School was re-established in Miami the same year, and over the next decade, continued to grow.  Today, Belen Jesuit sits on a 30-acre site in western Dade County, only minutes away from downtown Miami.