From Archbishop Donoghue

Today is a very special day for several reasons. First, anytime I am able to come to visit I consider special, for I have always felt a close friendship for your school, for the Legionaries of Christ, and for all your parents, who have worked so hard to make this school fine and beautiful, a place which just by itself gives much glory to God, who has given us so much to be thankful for.

Today is also the First Friday of the Month, and all Catholics know that every First Friday is a special dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus – a day to remember that the Lord loves us with His whole heart, that He understands us as we are, and that He will never leave keep from us the answers to our questions about life, and its problems.

And finally, today we are celebrating the tenth anniversary of Pinecrest Academy . Now, anniversaries are for two things – they are for looking back into the past, to remember what we have done – and they are also starting points – days on which we turn our thoughts to the future, to the goals we have yet to reach, to the dreams we have that haven't yet come true. In other words, anniversaries are days for thanking God for what He has already given us – and days asking God to give us whatever we need in the future, to stay faithful to Him, to keep our love for His Son Jesus Christ, and to keep our love for one another.

These reasons are plenty, to celebrate this as a very special day, this tenth anniversary of one of the Catholic Church's best schools, and one of the very best schools in this state or in this country.

But there is more to be thankful for, and to be happy about as well. For even though it is something we do on a regular basis, the most important thing we are doing today, is having this Mass together, and having the chance, once more, to receive our Lord in Holy Communion – to take His Body and Blood into ourselves - to try and let ourselves be more like Him – and to let Him be a greater part of who we are.

And the Gospel for today's Mass, talks about this very thing – about how other things become a part of us, and the best way for that to happen.

First, Jesus talks about how to mend a garment, and He says that no one tears up a new coat, in order to get a piece to mend an old one. If you want to repair a shirt or a coat that is torn – if you don't want to throw it out – then you have to look for just the right kind of patch – it has to match up in texture, in color, and it has to be big enough to cover up the tear that you want to mend. In other words, you have to be very careful to match the new piece to the old, if you want the repair work to be good, to take hold.

And the second story Christ tells is about putting new wine in old wineskins. Nowadays, no one uses skins to hold wine, or any other drink. We have glass and plastic bottles and aluminum cans – we even have little cardboard boxes with straws glued to the side to hold our drinks. But in Jesus' time, first of all, people never drank many things other than water or wine, and there weren't any containers to put wine and water into other than clay jars, which broke very easily. So, people would take leather, and shape it into a large bag, and they would store wine in it. Now old leather becomes dry and brittle, and if you put new wine into it, the new wine would start foaming and bubbling, and the leather would burst, and the wine would spill out. So you had to have new, soft leather for new wine – otherwise the wine would have no room to expand.

Now what Christ is teaching us with these stories, is that, in life, we have to deal with things that are both new and old – and if we want the new to get along with the old, if we want the new to be able to co-exist with the old, then we have to be very careful how we match them up.

And that is what Pinecrest Academy is all about. Here at this school, we have something that is very new, and I am not talking about the school itself. The things we have that are very new - - are you – your minds, your hearts, your souls. I don't think the oldest student here is more than sixteen or seventeen, and in terms of human life, that makes you new. On the other hand, there are old things around here as well, and I am not talking about your teachers or parents or me, although we are all getting along. I am talking about the truths that you are here to learn, especially the truths of our Catholic Faith. None of them are new. They are as old as Christ, and even older, because some of them go back to the seven days when God created the earth, and when He created man.

In a very true way, you are like new wine. Wine makes people feel refreshed and joyful, and it can be very good for you, so long as you don't drink too much. And that is the way young people are for the Church. You are very much, what makes your parents and teachers and all of us happy, for we can look at you, and know that the future is going to be OK – that the future will be good because you will be there to make it good.

So you see, when Christ talks about new things and old things, He wants us to see that the two are necessary for a good life. He wants us to understand that the young need the old to help them handle all the things they have to learn. He wants us to understand that the old need the young, in order to have someone to pass the important things on to, to have someone to hand on the truths of our Faith, and the great traditions about our country and our cultures. And He wants us to understand that the best people, and the best ways to live, combine what is old and what is new, what is young and what is well-worn and experienced.

I truly believe that the spirit of Pinecrest Academy is to combine these two things – the old and the new – and to make them available to you, our young people, so that you will have the best future you can, so that the world will be better for what you have learned here, and most important, so that our Faith, the Catholic Faith, which is very old itself, will always be new in your hearts, and always visible in you, especially to those who want to make it new in their hearts and their lives.

Finally, always remember too, that the Mass, and the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made for us, His death on the Cross, happened a long time ago, and can be called old. But every time we have Mass, every time we celebrate the Eucharist, Christ's sacrifice also becomes new, because it makes us new in Him. Our love is renewed – our love for Him and for one another – and our strength is renewed – our strength to remain faithful to Him, and to treat one another as He wants us to treat one another.

Dear friends, dear young people, let us pray, that whether we are celebrating the tenth anniversary of Pinecrest, or the twentieth, or as some of you no doubt will be doing one day, the thirtieth or fortieth – let us pray, that God will keep us fresh in our souls as new wine in new wineskins – that He will keep us as whole in our belief as a well-mended coat – and that in His love, which comes to us so powerfully in the love of Jesus Christ, we may all be young in spirit forever.

God bless you all, and God bless Pinecrest Academy on its Tenth Anniversary.

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