To the community of St Edmund’s College,
Last Wednesday we celebrated our Opening College Mass at St Christopher’s Cathedral. We were most blessed in having Archbishop Christopher Prowse preside over our Commissioning Ceremony and Father Baiju Thomas celebrate our Mass. We thank them both for their time and are so pleased that they were able to be a significant part of such an important College event. I also thank the many parents who took time out of their day to join us in community.
I congratulate our student leaders on their formal commissioning and look forward to working with them closely this year. It is of vital importance that students have a voice in the school, and it is through the student leaders that the wider student body can be heard. I would encourage any of our students, regardless of age, to approach our student leaders or myself with a concern or an issue that they would like to have discussed at the fortnightly student leader meetings.
The Commissioning Ceremony for both myself and the student leaders was very symbolic in its actions and its words. Our commissioning was conducted in the context of being faithful to the good news of Jesus Christ, holding true to the vision of Blessed Edmund Rice and the first Christian Brothers. We committed ourselves to working with and for the community. This is an important commitment – to work for and with the community embedded in Gospel values. This sense of leadership is known as servant leadership – a leadership practice centred on a desire to serve, emphasising collaboration, trust, empathy and the ethical use of power. The goal is to enhance individual growth and a sense of community. Catholic servant leadership reaches out to all with the Gospel challenge of faith, love and justice. The lasting example of servant leadership in the Gospels is Jesus washing the feet of his disciples as recorded in John’s Gospel (13:1-17). This act of Jesus was a reversal of the social and cultural understanding of leadership of the time. In our own time we have the example of Pope Francis washing the feet of juvenile prisoners. Pope Francis has also recently written that priests must be where the people are … to take on the “smell of the sheep”, that is, they are to be amongst the people to understand the needs of the people and act on these needs.
The final verse in our Offertory Hymn at the Opening College Mass, Christ Be Our Light, clarifies our roles as servant leaders,
“Many the gifts, many the people, many the hearts that yearn to belong.
Let us be servants to one another, making your kingdom come”.
This sense of servant leadership is of absolute importance in a Catholic school setting. It calls on the important elements of collaboration, consultation, communication and mutual respect. It calls on the practice of careful listening and discernment. This is a significant challenge to both myself and the student leaders, and I ask all members of the St Edmund’s community to pray for us – that we develop strength, courage and wisdom in carrying out our various servant leadership roles.
This week is a week of camps and retreats for our high school students. Our camp and retreat program offers our students an opportunity to be free of the many demands of school and home for a few days and focus on themselves as individuals and their relationships with fellow students, their teachers and their families. Camps and retreats are invaluable experiences – there js often not enough time for self-reflection in our busy lives, and I sincerely hope that our young men take the time to reflect on who they are at this point in time and where they fit in with their friends and families. This goes back to the challenge I set our young men at our first College assembly – how do you care for yourself and how do you care for others? Self-reflection is of special importance during this time of Lent – we use the reflective model of Christ in the desert for 40 days and his period of intense self-reflection at Gethsemane to guide us in our reflective practices. I would hope that our students come away from their camps and retreats understanding just a little more about themselves and their place with their friends and families.
God of compassion,
you call us to come back to you in love.
Cleanse our hearts, so that through our Lenten prayer, fasting, and giving,
we might grow in love for you and our neighbours.
Through Christ our Lord,
Amen.
Christus Lux Mea
Joe Zavone (Principal)