For many years, on large ocean-going ships, there has been a certain very important room. Usually it is called the chart room. Here are kept the maps, the drawings, the charts, which contain all that is known of the great waters of the world - shore lines, ocean depths, islands, reefs, rocks. Here the ship's officers check to see where they are, what their position is, how best to steer in order to reach their distant port.

When you come to church, you are checking the charts, as it were, for the guidance of that precious life of yours. As you move on from here, you will be sailing in waters you've never sailed before: every day is new, and not one is like any that were before it. You need to know all you can of what others have discovered before you. If there is some half-hidden reef on which other lives have foundered, you need to know it is there, so that you may steer carefully by.

In the Church you have the world's most complete chart room for the guidance of human life. For purposes of charting life's course, here you are exposed, more than anywhere else, to the accumulated wisdom of the ages. Elsewhere there may be as much knowledge or more, but nowhere is there more wisdom.

So we welcome you to the chart room - and may your voyage from here be smoother, safer, and more pleasant because you have checked in here today.