Fr. Seo’s Homily at the Baccalaureate Mass of the Holy Spirit

“The Goal of Truth is not to be Right”

by Rev. Patrick Seo (’06)
Parochial Vicar
Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary and St. Michael’s Church
Elizabeth, New Jersey
Baccalaureate Mass of the Holy Spirit
Commencement 2023
Thomas Aquinas College, New England

Just as a way of introduction, my name is Fr. Patrick, Class of 2006 of TAC. And just to be completely honest, I have been avoiding coming back to TAC — mostly because there’s too much blackmail material on me here! People just know too much about my past. But it is my great honor to be here with all of you today.

As some of you are able to tell, I am Asian — South Korean, to be exact. But I only seem Korean. Yes, math and science come to me easier than the language arts; yes, I grew up playing piano and violin; and no, despite my appearance, I’m not actually 17 years old. I only seem Korean because, really, I am quite American. Yes, born and raised here in the States; yes, if you can fry it, I think it tastes better.

And yes, I exemplify the answer to the classic three-part question, “What is someone called who speaks three languages? Trilingual. Two languages? Bilingual. One language? American.” I’m American! I don’t speak Korean, my Latin at TAC was mediocre at best. And Greek from seminary? Well, it’s still Greek to me.

But this past year, I moved from a predominantly English-speaking parish to a parish that is predominantly Hispanic. Ninety percent of everything I do is in Spanish, and the people there don’t speak a lick of English. And it’s amazing to see the effect a few Spanish words from the Korean-looking priest have. As soon as I say something even inane, like “Me gustan tacos y tequila” — “I like tacos and tequila,” just in case — my Hispanic parishioners immediately open their homes up to me. They feed me their food, they play me their music; the older abuelitas, the grandmas, dance a little salsa with me. They welcome me like family, and share with me what they love, and that’s when they open their hearts to me, to receive that which I hold most dear in my heart.

Today for this Commencement, we celebrate the Votive Mass of the Holy Spirit, and at the end of the Gospel we are left with a cliff-hanger: “Now this He said about the Spirit, which those who believed in Him were to receive. For as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:39). Here Jesus points ahead to that quintessential Holy Spirit moment in the upper room, when the Holy Spirit descends upon the Apostles at Pentecost. God enters into His people; the Church is born; we become, in a way unseen before, the Mystical Body of Christ. Incredible! What an amazing gift!

However, I don’t know about any of you, but if I had just been united to God, filled with all the power of heaven and earth, what would I have done first? I probably would have gone outside and, just for kicks, I might have cast a mountain into the sea or flown around Ascension-style; I definitely would have changed a lot of water into a lot of amazing wine. But strangely enough, the disciples do none of these things. The first thing they do after being filled with God is go out and speak to the people in many languages.

TAC changed my life, as I imagine it has changed yours. It taught us how to think; it surrounded us with so many amazing role models intent on intelligence and honing their own holiness. We received so many gifts and graces through our time at TAC — and therein lies the danger. Very easily, we can graduate and go back out into the world thinking that, and acting like, we are better than everyone else who never received what we got to receive. And that’s when we have lost the core of what TAC was trying to teach us.

The truth is important, it is central, but the goal of truth is not to be right. We have all felt this in our seminar-style classes. Sometimes a conversation gets a little heated. Passions flare, our words become a little more inconsiderate, and we leave the classroom not wanting to look at that other person in the eye, who was so obviously in the wrong, and I so clearly in the right.

The point of TAC was not to foster students who always have to be right. It wasn’t to build automatons who always have to win arguments. It was to form men and women to grow most especially in the love of friendship rooted in the Truth, Who is the person of Jesus Christ.

This is why Jesus will say in other parts of the Gospels (and I paraphrase), it’s not about winning the court trial, it’s about settling with your accuser beforehand. Because even if you win the court case, in the end you’ve lost, because then you have lost a brother, or a child, or a parent, or a grandparent, or a friend. It’s not about me seeming righteous before God on the altar; it’s about leaving the offering on the altar to go and reconcile with that other first. And that’s when we are made ready to be united to the offering offered on the altar of Our Lord.

“Here at TAC you have had four years of preparation, following upon the years of life following your own baptisms, confirmations, and frequent reception of Holy Communion. And the goal of all that was not to be right.” 

This is why Jesus, Who is Truth itself, goes to a trial among thieves and robbers, because He who can never be wrong, His goal wasn’t to be right. It wasn’t to win the trial. His goal was to live one day in loving friendship and communion with us.

It’s a crazy world out there, filled with people living so far from the truth, filled with so much fear and hatred and division: left vs. right, black vs. white, family vs. family. And I imagine, there might be within some of you a little bit of that anxiety thinking about what your lives will be like after college out there. A normal and natural response is to want to hide away from it all, to stay hidden behind the doors of TAC, like the disciples hid behind the locked doors of the upper room.

But here’s the good news, brothers and sisters: After an Easter season, on Pentecost, the doors burst open and the once-frightened disciples flowed out those doors because the Holy Spirit flowed into them, and through them, and out of them into the world, like the flowing rivers of living water. The disciples no longer hid in fear, because they knew they were never alone again.

Jesus passed through the closed doors of the upper room at the Resurrection. The Holy Spirit entered into the fearful hearts of the disciples at Pentecost. And at our baptisms, the Lord entered into us. He strengthened us in our confirmations, and at every Mass the Lord becomes more and more incarnated in us.

I love this quote from St. Francis de Sales, who said, talking about Mass and the Eucharist, “Even after so many Communions, Lord, I am surprised to see how much of me I still see in me.” Here at TAC you have had four years of preparation, following upon the years of life following your own baptisms, confirmations, and frequent reception of Holy Communion. And the goal of all that was not to be right.

The goal was to die to myself, to my pride, to my vanity, to my selfishness, so that the Holy Spirit could freely flow through us and out of us, and into the world. The goal was for our Heavenly Father to dwell within us, and we in the Father. The goal was not to see so much of me still left in me, but to die to self, so that Christ, Who is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, could shine through us. And when Christ shines through us, that’s when we become our fullest selves.

And so as you go forth out the doors of TAC, as Jesus said at the Resurrection (here’s a little bit of Greek), “Chaírete,” sometimes translated, “Rejoice.” And why? Because you can never be alone again. God dwells within you right now. And what is greater than our God? What problem is too great for God to handle?

So do not fear. Instead, perhaps, don’t be like Fr. Patrick: maybe learn another language. But whatever language you speak, God calls us all to use that language to go out into the world, not to battle against other people with whom we disagree, but to enter into their world and love them — just as Jesus entered into our world and loved us, most especially on the Cross — so that others might welcome us into their homes.

And through us, they might welcome into their lives what we have held most dear in our hearts, the Truth — that which we have received in the Sacraments, most especially in the Eucharist; that which is the heart of what we received here at TAC. The life and love of Jesus Christ, flowing into us, and out of us into others, for the glory of God and for the salvation of souls.