A Catholic Worldview

The following is the address I gave to the graduating Year 12s at their Valete Assembly yesterday at St Aloysius' College:

Good Morning Father Rector; Mrs Kate Quinane – our Acting Principal in 2025; Staff of the College, to the parents and friends of the Class of 2024 who are joining us, and especially welcome to the St Aloysius’ College Class of 2024.

It is the most distinctive of pleasures to welcome you here to the Great Hall today for your Valete Assembly. The 145th leaving class in the history of this Jesuit school. A school that has held such an understated, but important place in the history of this city, of our Church and of our nation. An importance that will only, I suspect, deepen in the years ahead.

I am so thrilled for each of you and I hope that our formation is such that you feel a great sense of gratitude for your education that St Aloysius’ College and your parents have offered you. I am equally thrilled for your families who have joined us here today.

Today is a special one for your parents and for those who have raised you. They are so very, very proud of you. This is a day for Aloysian families to be together and to celebrate the good things in life.

Your teachers have similar sentiments. They are also proud of you. In the citations we will hear over the coming hours will be filled with the gratitude and respect that you will express for your teachers. We recognise and thank all your teachers – both in the Junior and Senior schools - who have contributed to the young men you are today. I hope that some of you might consider teaching as your vocation. We need good teachers.

This morning, on behalf of the entire College community - your fellow students, your teachers, your parents, and the thousands of Old Boys whose ranks you now join – I want to thank you for what you’ve given St Aloysius’ over your time at our school and wish you a graced life in the years ahead.

As you leave the gates of Wyalla, know how proud we all are of you. We love you.

You are a special group of Aloysians and we have loved having you as our leaders and guardians of our mission over the last 12 months. Today is the opportunity to recognise each of you individually; and we will have this special honour over the coming hours. The size of our school makes this possible. No one is anonymous at St Aloysius’ and we do this because each of you is important, each of you have contributed to the College and each of you is leaving a legacy as a young man.

And young men you have now become. As I said to you recently at a Year Assembly, you are no longer schoolboys. You are Old Boys. Old Boys of St Aloysius’ College, Milsons Point. In his speech yesterday, the always impressive Jacob Harper spoke of the passionate school spirit that you have exhibited as a Year Group and (he offered) this will be how you are remembered. This is true. You are bonded, spirited, passionate. We all witnessed how you loved your school.

I want you to know that this is how I view Catholicism and what I consider a Catholic worldview. To be authentically Catholic is to love. It is a state of being that, like you, is deeply passionate about the human condition. Deeply passionate about who we are and what we are capable of. It considers life as a gift, a gift that must be responded to with gratitude. A gratitude that manifests itself in generosity. A generosity that ‘eats’ life. That orients itself to the belief in the inherent goodness of everyone – especially children and the promise they hold for a hope-filled future. A Catholic worldview holds in tension our sinfulness and our inherent goodness in that we are made in the image and likeness of God. A Catholic worldview seeks the individual and collective Magis whilst accepting our flaws. That we are all works in progress. This is its mystery.

More than anything else, a Catholic worldview situates Jesus as the model for human life. Not because He is God. But because he is both God and man. He is our brother. He knows what it is to feel joy and He knows what it is to suffer. He suffered for us. He didn’t have to, but His Father sent Him for this purpose. Ours is a God who is one of us. For the world and of the world. Just like Jesus of Nazareth.

This is my interpretation. My Catholic life. But it is imperfect. I can’t do my faith justice.

It is best not explained, but lived. Experienced in the slums of Manila. In the dust of Arnhem Land. In the classrooms of Wyalla. It is best read in the great novelists. In the great poets. Shakespeare. Proust. Hopkins. Greene. Waugh. Winton. Auden.

Tomorrow night at the Valete Mass in the Boys’ Chapel, look up at the stained-glass windows. Witness all those heroic Jesuit saints including our own Saint Aloysius Gonzaga. Some of them martyrs. Observe that their orientation in the windows is towards Jesus. Then, look at Jesus offering you a faith that is the keys to the Kingdom. The path to the Good Life.

Then, when you leave the Chapel, observe Saint Ignatius to your right with his palm out as if asking you “so now what are you going to do about it?” That is the gift of Ignatian spirituality. It is a way of proceeding with our faith. For the world because we are of it.

The values that we have formed in companionship with your parents will give you the moral, ethical and spiritual compass you can draw upon as you find your way. We have offered you a way of proceeding that lives inside your heart forever. You only need draw on it. It’s the gift from Saint Ignatius and the Jesuits to all of us.

And you will need it. The challenges in life are inevitable. It is the nature of the human condition. The nature of the world. When those tough times arrive, it is your faith, your family and your friends that will be what is most valuable to you and where you will be comforted.

And you will be a source of comfort for others. Let this be your commitment today. That you will use your gifts in the service of others and, through them, to God. That you are known as a man for others.

I suggested earlier in my speech that we need good teachers. We especially need good Catholics. Young women and men who claim the Church as their own, who embrace the ancient truth of its apostolic teachings; and who challenge the Church to be better than it is. I will pray that you might remain faithful. That you might remain in communion with the Church.

We pray that especially, in the coming weeks, you are able to use your intellectual gifts, that you remain committed to the end, that you feel a well-deserved sense of accomplishment after your HSC and that you use the opportunities your success offers to serve others.

But my greatest prayer is that you have a life that is loving. A truly Catholic life. That your relationships are deep and authentic and forgiving. And that God’s love for you shines through your love for others.?

As you depart this College that has accompanied your parents in forming you, we pray that you take with you those special gifts that a Catholic, Jesuit school offers its students:

·?????? that you carry within your chest, a compassionate heart seeking God in all things;

·?????? that you recognise that true manliness is shown by love and gentleness;

·?????? that you pursue the Magis with your commitment to human excellence.

·?????? that you reciprocate God’s gift of Jesus with your own faith;

·?????? and that you take your goodness as men for others into a world that so desperately needs it.

Know that you go with our love and our prayers and our gratitude.