Mission Report – September 1, 2017

Please reflect on the words of St Paul read at our Fathers’ Day Mass:

Brothers, we urge you and appeal to you in the Lord Jesus to make more and more progress in the kind of life that you are meant to live: the life that God wants, as you learnt from us, and as you are already living it. You have not forgotten the instructions we gave you on the authority of the Lord Jesus. What God wants is for you all to be holy.

Passing on the wisdom from one generation to another is one of the essential responsibilities of any community. It can occur at the school level in the most straight forward way: our hands-off rule seeks to pass on respect for each other by ensuring students feel safe at school. It also occurs in acquiring the discipline required to make progress in study, sport and the arts. It occurs when we accept the responsibilities of friendship with God and our neighbours.

The authority of SPC wisdom is not one we have given to ourselves. It is our faith in Jesus as the Word of God spoken to us. The National Catholic Education Commission says it like this in its Framework for Formation for Mission in Catholic Education: A Catholic school is

Christ centred -“ it articulates the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and his Gospel as a revelation of God’s love for us and the way to true freedom as it is proclaimed and lived in the contemporary Catholic Church (p.12)

Our Mass celebrated those unique moments when wisdom and freedom passes between fathers and sons. There is no greater -‘school of life’ than the family. Led once again by our College Chaplain, Fr Anthony, over four hundred fathers, sons, uncles, grandfathers and important men gave witness to the fact we have not forgotten the witness of Jesus when it comes to living life to the full. To be holy is to be wholly in love, remembering that God loved us first, and the foundation of our wisdom is responding to that love in and through the wisdom of the Catholic community.

May God continue to bless our irreplaceable fathers and mothers.

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