Mission Report – March 21, 2019

The Feast of St Patrick is always a day of great joy at our College. Led by Bishop Paul Bird and our College Chaplain, Fr. Anthony Nagothu, the Mass is a thing of beauty that invites and evokes participation in the great loving mystery of God. A special mention must be made of the students of our liturgical choir under the direction of Mr Mitch Leviston for their leadership of the singing.

To celebrate St Patrick is to celebrate our history from St Patrick to the present day. In St Patrick, we encounter the Irish people from whom Blessed Edmund Rice and the first Christian Brothers emerged. From the Brothers we can trace many great men and women who established places of education and formation, including our own. We must also acknowledge the rich tradition of old boys who took the message of mercy and justice into the wider world.

All these effects of course come from the One Cause. It is the One God, who is mercy and love, who enters the hearts of people to inspire such great transformations of the world. The history of our College is intimately tied to the history of those people who acknowledged the great gifts received from God. These people used all their knowledge, skill and patience to offer their own lives in service of God. Our celebration was a joyful continuation and celebration of this reality.

The love of God in Christ is the challenge we must actively take up to continue one hundred and twenty-six years of helping families educate their sons. When we call Jesus our teacher we are not asking for a set of values to live by or a program to follow. Rather, we seek the conversion of heart and mind that comes from being faithful to our friendship with Jesus. – In the light of such conversion, education does not exist as a commodity bought and sold in the market place. Education abides in the relationships between teacher and student, and has no existence or life apart from the trust and faithfulness of those relationships.

The personal call to be a new creation in Christ is what marks mere change from genuine progress in the College story.- With a deep sense of passing on the riches of our heritage, we look to our future with great hope. We must always be open to that original animating love of Christ that led courageous men to traverse seas to a strange new land.