Faith & Mission

Reflection 

Over the past weeks, we have had Year 8 classes prepare our Tuesday morning masses. It has been my privilege to attend these masses with their mature and insightful themes, prayers and readings. 

Last week, the Year 8 class chose the theme of ‘Harmony’. 

I do not need to explain how appropriate this theme is, in the face of the wars, violence and disunity that afflict our modern world. 

There is a theory of change that concentrates on the ‘near edge’. The theory posits that if we seek change, we must begin at the level of our personal interactions with our communities and environments. 

I wonder how many parents considered this when they chose to send their daughter to a Catholic school in the Mercy tradition. A school that sets the Mercy values of respect, compassion, hospitality, courage, justice and service as the bedrock to all of its actions. In their mass, the Year 8 students chose as their first reading, the following passage from the Book of James: 

"But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy." 

In their Prayers of Intercession, the Year 8 students prayed for the Church: 

"As others might think it's just doors and windows it is more than that. We thank you, Lord, for having your doors open so that we can pray. We pray for the members of the church so they can follow in your footsteps." 

How much does our suffering world need communities and institutions that have the mercy, wisdom and courage to have ‘open doors’. 

In our Year 10 Community Action Day, our key note speaker, Rachel Prince, an ex Academy student (Year 12 2010) spoke of the mirror on our College motto, ‘Speculum Sine Macula’. A translation from the Latin is ‘Mirror without Blemish’. 

Rachel quickly dismissed the literal understanding that we should all be without blemish! Such thinking quickly leads to ‘doors that are closed’ and large doses of ‘partiality and hypocrisy’. 

Rachel’s challenge to the Year 10 students was to greet each day with the courage to look into the mirror of the soul and to respond to what they observed with honesty and integrity. To find a peaceable, gentle willingness to redirect our lives away from those circumstances that run counter to the Mercy values. 

Pope Francis often writes about the need for the Church to accompany and grow with seekers after truth. Maybe our College symbol of the ‘Mirror’ can act as a powerful symbolic guide to the directions in which truth will be found.

Mr Mark Hyland

Director of Faith and Mission