Address at CEO Student Leadership Forum St Mary’s Cathedral Hall

A very warm to our Forum for the student leaders in the systemic and congregational schools of the Archdiocese. I thank Dr Dan White, Mr Anthony Cleary, other CEO staff and teachers for this initiative. I especially welcome our student leaders for the year ahead, since you represent the 90,000 students in the Catholic schools of Sydney and many of you will in due course become leaders in our Church and society.

On Melbourne Cup Day we had a staff party in my building so we could all watch the race together. On my way I was asked to pick a horse for the sweep. To be honest I don’t know much about horses. But I’d been part of staging The Pirates of Penzance when I was at school and so chose “Prince of Penzance” as my horse, even though the official odds were very much against him. I warned my companions my horse usually came last and so recommended that no-one put any money on him!

But Prince of Penzance won the Melbourne Cup and Michelle Payne was the first female jockey to ride a Cup winner. Our internet connection failed and by the time we reconnected Michelle had made Australian sporting history. And Australian women’s history. And Australian Catholic history as well. Many of you probably watched and shared something of her exuberance.

Michelle is a young woman from rural Victoria. The Weekly Review said “Hell hath no fury like a spunky Irish-Australian Catholic woman scorned” – referring to her strong and somewhat controversial words after the race.¹ Michelle hoped her win would encourage young people with dreams, and especially young women, to believe in themselves.² She, for one, had known she would win the Melbourne Cup since the age of seven.³

Yet her self-belief is not arrogance. She tries to live her father’s lesson: to be polite, grateful and humble.⁴ She is especially grateful for the “awesome” experience of growing up in a big family.⁵ Yet life has not been easy for “the Queen of the turf”. Her Mum died when she was a baby and so her Dad had to raise the ten children. Her eleven year old sister was so tired from getting up at night to feed Michelle her bottle, that she’d fall asleep at school the next day.⁶ Life on the farm was hard and on the racecourse hazardous. Her sister Bridget died in a horseracing accident. Michelle herself almost died the same way when she was your age. She has experienced the trauma of a fall and the field riding over her.⁷ A woman of faith, her immediate instinct was to pray that the horses would not trample her to death. In fact, whenever she feels troubled she prays, often to her deceased mother whom she believes is with God.

Michelle is proud she attended Catholic schools – Our Lady Help of Christians Primary and Loreto College – and talks fondly of her school days and school friends.⁸ After her family and faith they gave her her self-confidence and drive.

Michelle and her family are also devoutly pro-life,⁹ a commitment sharpened by their love for her brother Stevie who has Down syndrome. He was celebrated alongside her on Cup Day as strapper of the winning horse. Reporters have commented that his smile lights up the greyest Victorian skies. Michelle says her brother shows people with disabilities such as Down syndrome can hold down real jobs.¹⁰

Michelle and Stevie are inspirational: two young people who have faced real adversity and come out the other end finer people. In modern Australia 19 out of 20 Downs babies are aborted in the womb and so never get to see the light of day, never get the chance to fulfil their potential as a Melbourne Cup winning strapper or in other ways: but thanks to his mother’s generosity Stevie’s beautiful smile has brightened our world.¹¹ As leaders in our Catholic schools, your future is bright also. With faith and ideals, dedication, support of others, and God’s grace you too can believe in yourselves and dare to do great things. The God who created and sustains you wants nothing less than your flourishing in this life and your eternal happiness in the next.

Everyone knows Tolkien’s Hobbit and Lord of the Rings series. Not as well-known is the prequel, The Silmarillion, which may not ever be made into a film. It starts with the God Eru singing the world of the spirits into existence and giving each a theme with which to make great music. But Melkor, the most powerful of them, wanted to call his own tune and so repeatedly intruded discordant notes into the symphony of the cosmos. Some of the demiurges joined him. How was Eru to respond? Should he stop the orchestra, stop sustaining the universe? No, his response to this rebellion was time and again to introduce a new theme that cleverly took up Melkor’s noise into the melody and made it even more beautiful than before. Eventually through waves of natural destruction Melkor and his devils set themselves to mess up the material world being prepared for elves and men. But this, too, only contributed to ultimate beauty of things: without a volcano like Mount Doom there would never have been fertile valleys like the Shire. Against this backdrop would play out the epic human struggle between good and evil in which many would shine.

Before you dismiss such fantastical legends as the stuff of fantasy films not real life, let me remind you that J.R.R. Tolkein, like Michelle Payne, was a pious Catholic. He knew that God the Father does indeed eternally sing the Word who is His Son and that the mutual love between them is the Holy Spirit. That divine music keeps playing itself out, in creation itself and in re-creating human beings for greatness. It makes them images of God (Gen 1:26) – free, rational, loving beings destined for eternity. It takes up every human dissonance and natural evil, conducting and harmonizing, correcting, until eventually all creation will be one great symphony of love and life, beauty and goodness. In the meantime there are some sour notes – forces that would stop the Stevies being born and the Michelles ever succeeding. Some reduce human beings from images of God to mere consumers of pleasure; others proclaim that wealth, sex, technology, power and privilege are all that matter. Our hymn is different.

In the year ahead your faith, ideals and leadership will be tested at times by anxieties and busyness. Keep cultivating character, practising good habits of thought, prayer and action, focusing on serving God and others. That will set you up not just for 2016 but for life beyond. In due course I hope some of you will be spouses and parents, priests or religious, teachers or other professionals, all people with a sense of purpose, mission, even heroism. In due course, I pray, but that course starts now. Mass on Sundays (at least), the Sacrament of Mercy that is Reconciliation, charitable works, being mindful of the ‘poor’ in your own school such as the less popular, gifted or fortunate students – these are opportunities for goodness and for character development. They make your school a kind of gym for the soul.

As leaders with so many gifts and opportunities, you have the chance to introduce your own best chords into the great symphony of life and love, and help correct the discords. You have the chance to run the good race, like Michelle and Stevie, and in the process make the world a better place for women, the disabled and others. Lean on your families, friends, school and Church, then, and run the race of your life. God bless you!