Judging from my experience teaching middle school, I found the idea of Satan coming to earth as a young teenage boy entirely plausible, even probable. So it seemed an apt story to read in 8th grade Religion. In fact, in my imagination, it was difficult for me not to insert the faces of my own 8th graders in the roles of the three boys and Satan-and I should add here that the roles weren't gender-specific. Just because Mark Twain named his characters Theodor, Seppi, and Nikolaus doesn't mean I couldn't mentally re-name them Rosa, Anja, and Leigh, or Liz, Tia, and Sam, or a few other trios, male or female. I won't say whom I imagined playing Satan, of course, but you're free to guess-just not out loud.

Mark Twain, as you know, was a dark humorist. The irony of his story lies in the fact that Satan persuades the three boys to tell lies not because they want to harm other characters, but because they want to do favors for them. The boys consistently intend for good things to happen to their friends, and Satan convinces them that lying is a convenient and reliable shortcut for bringing about good things, such as debt relief, heroism, and happiness. But as a result of their lies, several people die, a witch-hunt ensues, and their favorite priest is driven mad-another entirely plausible detail, it has often seemed to me.

The moral of Twain's story is obvious: lying only ends up hurting both the ones lied to and the liars. It doesn't matter whether you want to do someone a favor by lying or not, you just can't accomplish good things with bad methods. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and only the truth will set you free.

Pop quiz: Can anyone here, graduates, students, faculty, or parents, tell me what the motto of St. James Academy is? It's at the very top of page one of the Student Handbook and printed under the shield on all our stationary. Answer: "The truth shall make you free." Our motto is taken from John 8:32. Just six chapters later, we hear a certain teacher (or "rabbi") tell his students (or "disciples"), "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth…" (Presumably these commandments we are expected to keep include "Thou shalt not lie.") Later in the same passage, Jesus adds: "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth."

These are important words to hear this evening, because they remind us, among other things, that the purpose of an education is to pursue the truth, and to live truthfully. If nothing else, I hope that St. James Academy has helped prepare you graduates to live in the truth: to speak the truth and to hear the truth-even when speaking or hearing the truth is painful.

The gospel reading reminds us also that speaking and hearing the truth is not something we can do entirely on our own. In fact, I don't think we can do it on our own at all. Rather, it takes an Advocate, who will be with us forever. In Christian theology, this Advocate has been identified with the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. That is, our Advocate is God's own Self.

I was struck, in reading this passage from John, by the term "Advocate." In some translations of the Bible, this word is simply transliterated from the Greek as "Paraclete." I remember, as a middle schooler myself, hearing preachers refer to the Holy Spirit as "the Paraclete," and thinking they said "the parakeet." This confused me, because in art the Holy Spirit was often portrayed as a dove. If the Holy Spirit is a parakeet, I wondered, why did the artists paint a pigeon? Did they just not know what a parakeet looked like? It was one of the more perplexing theological questions of my childhood.

The confusion, however, was cleared up when I learned that "Paraclete" meant, in essence, "defense attorney," and that it was meant to refer as the one who opposes Satan, which I also learned is not actually a proper name, but a title, meaning "Accuser," or, in essence, "prosecuting attorney." The image John is trying to set up in his reader's minds, then, is of a cosmic courtroom, where the Father is the Judge, the Son is the evidence in favor of acquittal, the Holy Spirit is the defense, Satan is the prosecution, our sins are his case against us, and we, of course, are the defendants. And John's gospel is good news because, in this analogy, you can see that the odds are actually stacked in our favor. If this were an American courtroom, the Judge would have to recuse himself for being related to the defense attorney (not to mention the defense's star witness), but, thank God, it's the heavenly courtroom, so as defendants before God's judgment, we stand an excellent chance of being found "not guilty," thanks to the Son's witness to the reconciling power of love.

This cosmic courtroom scene struck me as paradoxical, though, because in America, we're used to thinking of the prosecution as the good guy and the defense as the sleazy liar who will say or do anything to get the defendant off. But here, it's just the opposite. The liar-in fact, the Father of Lies-is Satan, the Accuser, the prosecuting attorney, while the Sprit of Truth is the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the defense attorney. I realized that this is so because in the cosmic courtroom, only the truth will set you free, just as Mark Twain had illustrated in The Mysterious Stranger, just as our own school motto affirms. "The truth shall make you free." This statement is the very heart of the gospel, which proclaims that forgiveness of sin is available to us when we face up to our faults and weaknesses and confess them before the only perfect Judge. But unlike the American justice system, where a confession guarantees conviction, imprisonment, and perhaps even the death penalty, in the heavenly justice system, confession is one of the primary ways of demonstrating that one truly does love Jesus and desires to keep his commandments. In the heavenly justice system, instead of imprisonment, we are granted not just release, but perfect freedom and everlasting life.

And so it is fitting that as we get ready to graduate these students, we remind them (and ourselves) that not only is honesty the best policy, it is the only path to abundant, even eternal, life. It is a lesson I hope you graduates have learned not just in my classroom, but throughout your entire time at St. James.

At the end of my very first year here, I was given this key ring, a bright red number one with the phrase "CATCH THE SPIRIT AT ST. JAMES ACADEMY" on it. Since the phrase is printed all in uppercase letters, I'm not certain whether it was intended as "spirit" with a small "s" or "Spirit" with a big "S." Obviously, I have a notable bias toward the latter.

We put a lot of emphasis here on school spirit, and the next school you go to will have its own sense of school spirit. But while there are many school spirits, there is only one Holy Spirit, and I hope that in addition to catching the spirit of St. James Academy, you have caught the Spirit at St. James Academy, for it is this Spirit, the "Spirit of truth," who alone can guide you along the right pathway. Whatever spirits you encounter, whatever spirits you may someday be tempted to imbibe, I hope you will remember that only the truth will make you free.

This is now the end of my fourth year at St. James Academy, and the end of my tenure as one of your teachers; in August I will depart for other halls, where I will encounter other spirits. Because you are the last class I will ever teach here, I have to admit I've been thinking of myself as a kind of honorary member of the class of 2005. So I felt perfectly comfortable when Brandon Walsh put his plastic mortarboard on my head at the Boordy graduation picnic today. I was tempted not to give it back.

My prayer for you is that when you are faced with trials and tribulations, temptations and tempests, you remember that you have an Advocate, the Spirit of truth, and that you caught that Spirit here, at Saint James Academy. As you and I depart this place, may we always remember that wherever our journeys take us, the same Spirit that we caught here will always be with us.

The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Let us pray.

A prayer of Thomas Merton, adapted:

O God our Father: We have no idea where we are going, except for maybe the name of our next school. But even so, we cannot see the road ahead of us. We cannot know for certain where it will end-though we hope it will end in at least a diploma. Nor do we really know ourselves, and the fact that we think we are following your will (at least sometimes) does not mean that we are actually doing so. But we believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And we hope that we have that desire in all that we are doing-even if we know that's not always very likely. We hope, though, that you will teach us never to do anything apart from the desire to please you. Even when we fail, we know that the Spirit of truth will lead us by the right road, though we may know nothing about it. Therefore, we will trust you always, even when we seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. We will not fear, for our Advocate is ever with us, and your Spirit will never leave us to face our perils alone. We offer these our prayers and praises in that Spirit, in whom all our intercessions are acceptable through your Son our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.