Mission Report – November 15, 2018

If you have a piece of paper and a pen handy, I invite you to complete a little activity.

Firstly, draw a rectangle on the page. The space within this rectangle represents all the questions and answers of a flourishing human life, all the hard-won knowledge about the choices, actions and commitments needed to live life to the full. That is, to be fully human is to have asked all these questions in this field and to have answered them perfectly. This task requires much experience, insight, wisdom and courage.

Secondly, draw a small circle in the bottom left hand corner of the rectangle. This circle represents the set of questions and answers that concern a twelve-year-old child -“ a Year 7 student at St Patrick’s College. It is to be expected that their personal horizon of questions and answers do not match the total field of questions and answers for a flourishing human life. There remain much to be experienced, to be understood, to be judged, and many commitments on the journey to a mature heart.

Thirdly, can you represent the impact of education on this diagram? How should all that we do for our young men as families and as a school impact on the horizon of our young men within the field of living? I suggest it is to expand that little circle in the corner to grow until it is the same dimension as the rectangle. That is, for the questions and answers that satisfy the hearts of our young men to be the same as the questions and answers that constitutes a full and flourishing human life.

Fourthly, a question emerges. How do we get this circle to expand to the rectangle? How do we invite students to expand their horizons freely so that they take up the responsibility of living a life worthy of their human capacity and dignity? How do we awaken within their hearts the desire to know the truth, to choose the good, to act with courage to bring about the good in the world, and to form commitments that will guide them to a beautiful life?

I invite you to reflect and pray upon this during the upcoming week. In the next Crest, we shall discuss the shape of a possible way. May the love of God, the friendship of Jesus and the unity of the Holy Spirit fill your days.-