From the Principal
During the week there have been many opportunities to celebrate the significant contribution that our graduating Class of 2025 has made to the College. Equally, our outgoing Year 12 students have seized the opportunity to acknowledge the College’s contribution to their own development. Our graduating Year 12 students are certainly ready for their next chapter, but also conscious of the importance of expressing gratitude to their teachers, which has been pleasing to witness during the week. At the time of writing, the finishing touches are being made in preparation for tonight’s Year 12 Valete and Supper, which we are all looking forward to. Yesterday, we celebrated the significant contribution our Year 12 students made to our College during their Day of Invitation Mass and Assembly. Please find an excerpt from my Address to our graduating Class of 2025.
…..I am thrilled for each and every one of you…
This year, as you know, we have been called to be pilgrims of hope. When the late Pope Francis set the theme for this Jubilee Year he wrote, ‘We must fan the flame of hope that has been given to us and help everyone to gain new strength and certainty by looking to the future with an open spirit, a trusting heart and far-sighted vision.’
But what is hope?
It is a word we often use… I hope I do well in my exams… I hope I am selected for the team… I hope I find a good job… I hope everything works out…
Hope encourages us to think about what might be in the future ….but hope also challenges us to work towards it.
Our hope for you is twofold, firstly, we hope that each and every one of you utilises all you have learned here at the College as a springboard for your own human flourishing. I am confident that when you are faced with life’s inevitable challenges and have to answer life’s difficult questions, you will do so well informed by our College values.
Secondly, we also hope that you will be courageous enough to call out any limitation to human flourishing that you experience in your future adventures…
….So what is it that we need to ‘take on’ in the modern day?
In his book, The History of Ideas, David Runciman writes, ‘We should continue to fight to make modern life less alienating than it would otherwise be, particularly given we have become self-conscientious creatures, human beings who spend a ridiculous amount of our time, not pitying each other but comparing ourselves to each other, wondering whether we are better or worse than that person, wondering whether we can survive or not without that person, entering willingly and sometimes unwillingly and often unknowingly into relationships of co-dependency, given we are so obsessed with appearance, we shouldn’t give up on a project about trying to make the appearances more real, …’
Interestingly, this notion of making our appearances ‘more real’ is not new. Mother Gonzaga Barry, the founder of Loreto in Australia 150 years ago wrote to her students in 1892,
‘Shun affectation and imitation of others, study and strive to improve yourselves, and then be your own true selves. If people took half the pains to improve themselves that they take to be like other people, whose manners and ways they affect, the world would be much the better for having many more original and genuine types.’
As you depart our College and embrace your new adventures, then, we pray that you take with you those special gifts that a Catholic, Ignatian education offers, all helping to make your appearances much more real and dare I say, original and genuine…
As you have heard me say before, kindness is the greatest wealth of all. May you always have lots of love to share, lots of good health to spare and lots of good friends who care.
Daniel Mahon
Principal