Mission Report – March 15, 2018

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new. (2 Cor 5:17)

Our annual celebration of St Patrick’s Day experienced newness as Fr Justine Driscoll, Vicar General of Ballarat and Fr Anthony Nagothu our College Chaplain, led us in the Eucharist. Gathered around the altar of Christ, our present custodians joined with old boys and guests to raise hearts in thanksgiving and praise for the great heritage of St Patrick’s College.

However, our celebration is not the repetition of some closed ritual but the annual issuing of a profound challenge. Immersed in the same faith that inspired Blessed Edmund and the Christian Brothers, now nurtured by the Edmund Rice community through Edmund Rice Education Australia (EREA), we are personally called to become new creations in Christ. Our tradition is not a dead letter but the Spirit of God invoked and evoked in every heart.-

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 the gift of our heritage, Fr Justin will join us again on Saturday to mark 125 years of St Patrick’s College Ballarat. If this is to mark a point of genuine progress in our history, and not mere celebration of the past, then we must be open to that original animating love of Christ that led courageous men to traverse seas to a strange new land.

The love of God in Christ is the challenge we must actively take up to continue one hundred and twenty years of progress led by the Christian Brothers and EREA. Without this love we may still see many changes, but we would be setting aside the real task of progress – that of renewing and transforming our world through our witness to God’s healing and creating love. An exciting new stage in history is about to be written and we are all called to be contributors.