HOMILY FOR BLESSING AND OPENING OF THE NEW BUILDING EILEEN O’CONNOR CATHOLIC COLLEGE

It was written two thousand years ago to a small Phrygian city in Asia Minor. Yet our reading today from St Paul’s Letter to the Colossians might easily have been directed to the leaders, staff and students of Sydney Catholic Schools, as a reminder of what we could and should be.

A Catholic school must be a place where young people are given every opportunity to be as well-educated and as well-rounded as is possible for them; a place where they grow up to be good members of their families and of the Australian community; a place that will help them develop their gifts and appreciate the gifts of others from different cultures, backgrounds and beliefs, people with different abilities and disabilities. To summarise this, in the language of St Paul, a Catholic school must a place where we learn not just knowledge and skills, important as these are, but also character or heart, where we “clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience,” and cultivate forbearance, forgiveness, above all love, “which binds everything together in perfect harmony”.

None of which, you might say, is the monopoly of the Catholic or even the Christian school. And so St Paul adds to his list of what we must learn, “Let the Peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body [the Church]… Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. Teach and admonish one another in all Wisdom. With gratitude in your hearts sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus…”. The Catholic school is a great school but it is first and foremost a place to meet Jesus and grow in His friendship; where young people learn to live and to love as one body with the peace of Christ in their grateful, wise, compassionate hearts. The “overalls of love”, which St Paul says we must wear over everything else, are Christ’s love for us and in us and working through us.

Catholic schools have been providing quality education for Australian children for two hundred years. There are now over 700,000 students in our Catholic schools, employing over 70,000 teachers and staff, making us the biggest non-government employer in the country and the biggest charity. Of our 700,000 students more than 30,000 have “special needs”, and the time has come here in the Archdiocese of Sydney to dedicate a whole secondary school and satellite programs elsewhere specifically to their needs. And if all I have said about what a Catholic school should be applies to every Catholic school in Australia, it applies in a particular way to Eileen O’Connor Catholic College. It represents a Church and a school system that has clothed itself in love and devoted itself with compassion, kindness and patience to helping its students with various gifts and needs fulfil their potential and encounter Christ.

In their passage through their high school years – such formative years in any young person’s life – the students of this College will have daily opportunities to come to know Jesus better, to know themselves better, to know their world, through prayer and Eucharist, from the example of their teachers and other students, from their religious education classes and all the other areas of study, from the pastoral care they receive and other aspects of the school’s life. And because our Church and society need young people of diverse abilities and disabilities, but all of them as well-formed and well-informed as they can be, with big hearts and creative minds, young people of compassion and courage, we know the whole community, not just the Catholics, will support a school like this one.

I gratefully acknowledge Dr Dan White, Executive Director of Sydney Catholic Schools, along with Michael Krawec, the Regional Director, and others had the vision to attempt such a college; Dr Ian Jackson, the foundation Principal of the school, for his hard work in making this vision a reality through its first year; the architects, Quinn O’Hanlon; Fr Sam Lynch, the pastor of Lewisham Parish with his parishioners, who count this college one of the Church’s finest ministries; and the families of our young people who love them with that special love their special needs evoke. I would also like to give my heartfelt thanks to our teachers and staff, who make the students of this College the focus of everything they do. They know that each student is a unique image of God in our world and they want to build a school community of respect, involvement and love of learning so that everyone who studies here is able to realise his or her full potential.

Above all we thank Almighty God for His wonderful creation. We thank his Son, Jesus Christ, who is our Chief Teacher and Wisdom itself. And we thank the Holy Spirit who inspired the building of this school, including its latest additions, and will inspire the spiritual building that is each one of its students in the years ahead.