Our People

This night is the coincidence of several occasions. It is, of course, the College's Annual Prize Giving on which we honour the achievements of some of our best and brightest and the efforts of all. It is also the first time I have been back to the College, at least in any formal capacity, since my time here as a student in the early 1970s and since my ordination as a bishop last year. That gives me an opportunity to thank the College for the contribution it has made to my life and to wish each of you, my fellow Holy Cross boys, every blessing for the future. And tonight is, more importantly than both of these things, the night on which the Church throughout the world celebrates  the 150th anniversary of the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

 

Tonight's Feast marks, in a sense, the very dawn of salvation: for more than a thousand years Israel has been waiting; now God creates a daughter of Israel from whose flesh fifteen or twenty years later God's own Son and hers would take flesh. The Feast of the Immaculate Conception, then, like this Prize Giving Night, marks an end and a new beginning: the culmination of years of waiting, preparation, prayer and hard work; but the beginning of the next stage, full of promise and hope.

 

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception is also, in a sense, the Feast of the beginning of the Church. Normally we think of that as Pentecost Day. Yet today the first Christian is conceived and baptised, as it were, in her very conception. Today the first temple of Jesus Christ is built, more wonderful than any basilica, a temple 'full of grace' in which God himself would one day dwell as an unborn child. So this Feast points our eyes to the first faint glimmers of the Church to come. And this Prize Giving on this Feast Day reminds us that in all it does this College must have before its eyes the Church's mission. It does what it does under the sign of the Holy Cross and the inspiration of the Patrician Brothers, founded so that boys might be instructed in the principles and lifestyle of the Gospels. That is why the College enacts and promotes the Catholic faith through religious education, liturgies, pastoral care, prayer at the start of meetings and assemblies, reflection days, retreats, and a host of appeals for the missions, St Vincent de Paul and other good causes. That is also why the staff are seeking greater qualifications and in-servicing in religious education and are encouraged to be people of prayer and service. This College does what it does not for the fame of its boys, the celebrity of its staff, or the glory of the College itself, but to build up the kingdom of God.

 

The declaration of the Immaculate Conception of Mary might seem to the secular mindset a kind of honour or prize or degree granted to Mary. In a sense that is not too far from the mark, for Catholics have always delighted in honouring the Mother of God as a way also of honouring her Son. Tonight we will give and receive rather less exalted awards to some of you here. No one should imagine that the arts and sciences he has studied, the humanities and technologies he has been exposed to, the faith and values inculcated in him, the leadership activities, sports, music, debating, public speaking or film he has taken in part in, are all now just things of the past. They are experiences you will take forward into your future. Hopefully you did not do them just to get prizes or even bare passes. They were offered and embraced so as to make a man of you, a man of many qualities and experiences and possibilities. They were done to open new horizons for you as you enter a wider stage.

 

When we consider Mary Immaculate we consider a woman of courage who went wherever her God led her, not knowing in advance where that might be, but open to those new horizons. She was courageous enough to give her great fiat, her yes to God with all her life, handing herself over in confidence to God and ready for whatever life dealt her. When I first came to this College 35 years ago next month, I had no idea what lay ahead of me. I certainly didn't imagine I would one day be a bishop addressing an assembly of Holy Cross boys with their proud parents and teachers. So, you might wonder, how does that happen to a Holy Cross boy-and how might you avoid it?

 

Well, being a bishop isn't a job you train for: it comes from the blue with a decision from the Pope and knocks you for six. Yet part of the story that brought me this far is undoubtedly this College. Here I was given or confirmed in a sound Catholic faith, a love for people, a range of interests, and a knowledge of literature, history, geography and other key subjects. I remember Mr Whyard in Year 6 drilling us with all the stations on the Canadian-Pacific railway line and all the rivers from North to South in Australia: I guess that played its part in my love for this planet and my desire to travel around it. I remember a green-sashed, white habited Patrician Brother drilling us in Year 5 with the commandments and the beatitudes and much else besides: I suppose that played its part in my future passion for theology and my work as a lecturer in bioethics. I remember our prayers before class and at midday and in the chapel: maybe they were a faint premonition of a priesthood which would start for me on my ordination on the Feast of the Holy Cross. I remember, too, my feeble attempts at football in a school where everyone seemed to be a football champion: even that no doubt played its part in teaching me team spirit-and humility!

 

The College was rather different in those ancient times when we still had a primary school here. The facilities were not as comfortable, especially in the summer months when the junior class rooms could get so hot that we would be sent across the road to the old Olympic pool. Though we swam to cool off, Rugby League was the only sport we took seriously and we knew we were good at it and in any case there were no real facilities for anything else.

 

Class sizes were very big by today's standards: there were nearly 60 in my 5A class and 53 in my 6A class here at Holy Cross. Big classes meant we were close not just desk by desk but in the sense that the College in those days was a school of friendship, a place where old fashioned Irish-Aussie mateship was taught to a then very new-fashioned multicultural Australia. I hope and pray that that has never been lost: that this school is a place where you have learnt the art of friendship by having great friends yourself and learning tolerance and concern towards others.

 

During the breaks we kicked the ball around with our friends or played marbles on the asphalt. Many of the boys came from very poor families and could not pay even the meagre fees that were charged, so it was fortunate that marbles were cheap. I remember that one of my best friends had dirt floors at his home in Gladesville:  not dirt floors of the kind some of you boys probably cultivate at home to your mother's distress; I mean a home so poor there was no carpet, no floor-boards, no concrete, just the earth. The college is not so poor anymore, but I hope your motto-In cruce salus-is a continual reminder that salvation is found in the cross; not in accumulating material possessions or serving yourself. Mary of Nazareth was of course a poor woman who gave birth to her son not in a palace but a manger; yet she held the hope of her great hymn the Magnificat, that one day God would "cast the mighty from their thrones and raise up the lowly, fill the starving with good things and send the rich away empty". I was very pleased to hear Mr Williams report on the social justice focus of College in 2004.

 

Mary Immaculate was a woman of justice and courage, the first member of the Church and the mother of salvation: she was also our first saint. It is often said that "to sin is human", or that some peccadillo is "only human". Yet the Woman whose conception we celebrate tonight shows each of us this is nonsense. Do we really mean that what is truly human is sin and sinfulness, that doing wrong is unavoidable, that we are being most truly ourselves when we choose evil and avoid good? When we say someone is acting 'humanely', or is a true 'humanitarian', or that Christ was 'fully human' do we mean they are experts in doing harm to themselves and others? No, the fact that Mary was from the beginning and chose to be thereafter free from sin draws our attention to the fact that sin is no part of God's plan for us. We are not being true to ourselves when we choose evil. When we do wrong we diminish and demean ourselves. We make ourselves less human, inhuman.  But when we do good and avoid evil we fulfil ourselves, become more fully human and by God's grace more divine.

 

Tonight, then, we celebrate human possibilities under grace. We celebrate the fact that each of you can and has done good. We celebrate your achievements so far, but do so with full confidence that even more is possible in the future. You, every one of you, are made for greatness. That may or may not be signalled by millions of dollars or public acclaim or professional fame. Far more important will be whether you have made the most of the man you are, of the gifts you have been given; whether you have loved and been faithful and just; whether you have been a good husband and father, employer or employee, friend and volunteer. I hope and pray that some of you here might one day be Patrician Brothers or Dominican friars or Diocesan priests or-perish the thought-bishops yourselves. But whatever you ultimately do with your life, I pray that you will write a life-story you can be proud of, even if it will never appear on the newsstands. Never accept any less for yourself, whatever the world tells you. The same God who created Mary to bear God in her womb created each one of you here to bear his image in your minds and flesh.

 

Why do adults always say that schooldays are the best of our lives? Not because of the festivities, the freedom, the football, the fun. But because at school we are still developing, our options are still open, our final choices are yet to be made, there is the excitement of things that could go either way. That means that the best way to approach school and the few years after it is to throw yourselves fully into everything available to you; not to be afraid to fail, not to be over-proud of your successes, even those we reward tonight; and to be very, very thoughtful towards others who have not done as well as you or never had the opportunities to do so. Embrace all this College has to offer you and thank God for it and who knows: one day you might end up a bishop!