How bored are you really? Perhaps that sounds a pretty odd question to ask at the beginning a homily. Maybe I should leave it until after the homily or even after Mass! So, why do I ask the question in the first place? The fact of life is all of us find ourselves bored at one time or another. Sometimes this is because life feels repetitive, uninteresting, dull, a drag. But more especially we experience boredom because life seems to have no meaning, value, purpose, or direction. Meaninglessness is in many ways a terminal disease that leads inevitably to the conclusion that life is not worthy living.
So, I wonder what do you do when you have nothing to do? Perhaps you are waiting for an appointment, a train, or you may be stuck in traffic or in a restaurant waiting to eat. What do you instinctively do at those moments? Let me hazard a guess that when you are bored, you go looking for distraction, looking for something to fill the gap and so out comes your phone. It is estimated that on average people in the UK check their phones or smart watches every 12 minutes. Perhaps as much as fifty to sixty times a day. We have learnt to anesthetise ourselves with digital devices. Now before you think I am simply going to engage in a rant against mobile phones and social media etc., spare me sometime. The fact that we self-medicate on mobile devices points to something much deeper than a concern about an overuse of technology.
Why, I wonder, do we find ourselves indiscriminately scrolling in the hope of finding something of interest, something to ease the feeling of being bored, empty, unsatisfied? Why do we not care whether what we are giving attention to on our screen is real or AI generated? Why have we substituted relationships with flesh and blood people for a digital world that simply creates a world of mirrors where everything reflects my own image and likeness?
I wonder if the simple truth is that we have largely lost sight of the real meaning and value of our lives, in fact I wonder if the harsher truth is that sometimes it is not that we have lost the meaning of life, we never had it to lose. Faced with a feeling of emptiness, meaninglessness we intuitively turn to some comforting ‘fix’, anything that might fill the gap. We become people who seek only to survive and even look for achievements rather than people who thrive and find genuine happiness. We settle for becoming human doings, rather than human beings. We get through life rather than live it.
A good number of you here at Mass this evening will be leaving Ampleforth College once your exams are completed. You will move on to a new chapter in your story. It is my sincere hope that while you have been here you have had opportunity to reflect upon some of the big questions in life, questions that have caused you to find coherence, purpose, and significance: Why do things happen the way they do? Why am I moving in this direction? Why does my life matter? I hope equally that here you have encountered people who has been able to journey with you as you discover what the real value, purpose and meaning of your life is.
In fact, my deepest hope is that you have encountered meaning Himself. In other words, I hope that you have met Jesus, not as an idea, a historical figure, a great teacher, a topic in Christian Theology, but as a person. I hope you have met the only person who can open your mind and heart to what you are really looking for. At the age of 51, the novelist Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy wanted to kill himself. This was not because he was poor, or because he felt his genius as a writer was unappreciated. Nor did he have a mental illness which had affected his ability to write.
Strange to say he was at this point in his life one of the most successful and celebrated authors of the 19th century. His great novel War and Peace was a bestseller; he lived in relative luxury; was nominated for the Nobel prize for literature multiple times. There wasn’t even a crisis in his personal life. So why thoughts of suicide?
The plain truth was despite all his success, which he imagined would enable him to feel fulfilled, he felt completely empty. There was one question that haunted him: Is there any meaning in my life which will not be annihilated by my death? Tolstoy did not commit suicide. He found, rather, what he was looking for in an unusual place. Searching for meaning he went to live in a small Russian village. They were ordinary working people and had no idea just how famous Tolstoy was. Some couldn’t even read. As he got to know them, he noticed that they had no crises of meaning in their lives. They lived in peace with themselves, their neighbours and the world around them, there was a simplicity in their lives because their faith in Jesus Christ was as alive. Jesus was as alive to them as he was to St Paul in the first reading. A person who transformed and informed their every choice. The faith of these ordinary people, which was the same vibrant faith of Paul, led Tolstoy to the conviction that only faith gives life meaning.
Your parents, the teachers who have accompanied you while you have been here, and you yourselves, you clearly want to leave Ampleforth College with good results. That is natural. For those who have given so much time in the Chaplaincy, during retreats, House Masses, one to one conversation, and certainly speaking for myself, we have only one desire, that you leave having encountered Jesus who is the way, the truth, and the life. That you know Jesus as the only one who can give genuine value, purpose, direction and meaning. The only one that can fruitfully fill the gap. That you can honestly answer the question that Jesus put to Peter – the ultimate question: “Do you love me?”
You may not be there yet to give a direct answer and that is okay. But I, for one, will continue to pray for you, and I hope one day that what I have just shared about Jesus being the only person who can make sense of and give real meaning to your life will make perfect sense. Until then, all I ask is that you remain open to the Spirit of God and if you say no other prayer then simply pray each day: “Come Holy Spirit, come now, reveal Jesus to me” and do not be surprised when he does.
Abbot Robert Igo, OSB
Ampleforth Abbey, 22 May 2026
