Mission Report – August 3, 2017

How many of us are finding it hard to get out of bed on these cold mornings? How many of our Year 12 students are finding it hard to complete that extra hour of study as the year gains momentum towards final exams? How many of our Year 7 students are finding the routines of a long year tiring? Perhaps it is not every morning, study session or class, but for many of us the challenge of putting one foot energetically in front of the other often confronts us.

So what does keep us moving? There is the motivation of understanding what it is we are doing and what we are trying to achieve. There is the motivation of knowing we are doing the right thing. But these have their limits as motivating forces. The Gospel tells of the rich young man who asked Jesus what he needed to do to have eternal life. Jesus replied that he should leave everything he owned to the poor and follow him.- The young man understood that this would lead to the goal of eternal life that he deeply desired. He even knew it was the right thing to do. But he could not do it and walked away full of sorrow.

The young man was not open to the great motivation of life: the love of another person. It is not enough to be motivated by the desire to satisfy our own needs and wants. However, to be transformed by our love for another will help us move mountains and travel to the ends of the earth for the sake of the other. We will work for justice and peace and never falter in our efforts. When we fall in love the good of the other person becomes our horizon and we will not rest until their deepest needs are met. For our boys, this is already experienced in friendship. The lasting and life giving nature of the friendships forged at SPC are a defining story in our heritage.

Jesus frames this is in what we call the greatest commandment: -Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’- This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: -‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ (Matt 22: 36-37). Love is the greatest commandment because it is the power that overcomes all obstacles to lead us to the knowledge, choices and actions that satisfy our deepest desires. It gets us out of bed with a spring in our step to joyfully engage with every adventure of our day. It is the gift of eternal life, lived from the moment we say yes to love. – –