Homily For Graduation Mass For St. Therese’s Catholic Primary School

  

HOMILY FOR GRADUATION MASS FOR ST. THERESE’S CATHOLIC PRIMARY SCHOOL
St. Therese’s Church, Lakemba

Congratulations!
Today is your day!
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.

So began the last book by Theodor Seuss Geisel – ‘Ted’ to his friends or ‘Dr. Seuss’ to those of us who grew up on his story books. I remember The Cat in the Hat when it was still a fairly recent book: Ted wrote it with Year 1 students in mind, using only 236 different words which he was assured every Year 1 kid knew;

it was possibly read to me or even by me here when I was in First Grade. But Geisel’s ‘farewell salute, his last parade’[1] was Oh, the Places You’ll Go! a poem-book addressed to a nameless pilgrim. It tells of all the ups and downs of life, from the ‘wide open air’ and the ‘high heights’ to the ‘hang-ups and bang-ups’ of any journey.

When Ted Geisel was your age and a bit older, and people asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he didn’t answer astronaut, movie star, or even writer: no, Ted wanted to be a teacher – an English teacher to be precise – and so after finishing school he studied at Dartmouth and Oxford. But he was going nowhere with his doctorate, and so returned home to America to write children’s books and poems – as well as being a political cartoonist, animator, screenwriter and filmmaker, even an army captain. Ted did end up being an English teacher in a sense, as his witty books influenced so many children and adults, and eventually Oxford University gave him an honorary doctorate so he could honestly call himself Dr Seuss!

Some of our graduands are no doubt already wondering what they’ll do with their lives. Ted’s life says there are many possibilities for each one of you. But his last book, Oh, the Places You’ll Go, seems to be especially addressed to you as you make your transition from Primary to Secondary schooling, as you make new friends while hopefully keeping some of your old ones, as your learn new things while hopefully building on what you learnt here, and as you take your first tentative steps into adolescence and adulthood.

Oh, the places you’ll go! Dr Seuss prophesies. As you walk the road to adulthood, he says:

You’ll look up and down streets,

look ‘em over with care.

About some you will say,

‘I don’t choose to go there.’

With your head full of brains

and your shoes full of feet,
you’re too smart to go down

any not-so-good street.

 But how to know which by-ways to choose? Well, you won’t be going into high school entirely unprepared. You’ve had up to seven years here at St Therese to prepare you. You’ve learnt the wisdom of the Church handed down through the centuries and the great Bible stories such as the one in our Gospel this morning (Mt 1:18-24).

Last time Joseph saw Mary, she was a young woman who then disappeared for a time to go and look after her pregnant cousin Lizzy and help with the birth. Three months later Mary’s back and it’s evident she’s going to have a baby herself! Her fiancé Joseph knows he’s not the Dad. What’s poor Joe to think and do? The Jews used to stone women to death for having children before they were married or for infidelity after they were. Not Joseph.

You see, Joseph was in that line of David described in our first reading, a man of wisdom, honesty and integrity (Jer 23:5-8). He is presented with a choice as old as humanity: the choice between respect and humiliation. Rather than publicly humiliating Mary Joseph chooses to show her respect. He can’t yet make sense of what has happened; he’s feels surprised, humiliated, betrayed. Yet rather than humiliate Mary in return by calling her out as an adulteress, he decides to treat her with dignity and respect. Then God’s angel makes the situation clear, and Joseph makes the even braver decision to repair Mary’s reputation by taking her to his home and heart when no-one else believed her.

On the other side of this story we have Mary. She knows where this baby comes from, knows how important He is. But she’s been rejected by all around her. She, too, is presented with a choice as old as humanity: the choice between trust and despair. Does she break down and ask God to take the baby away? Does she get angry? No, she trusts in God. As Dr Seuss said:

Out there things can happen
and frequently do
to people as brainy
and footsy as you.
And when things start to happen,
don’t worry, don’t stew.
Just go right along.
You’ll start happening too.

So as you finish your journey down St Therese Street and start happening as a high school student, I encourage you to learn from Joseph and Mary. There have already been times in your life when you’ve felt disappointed like Joseph or embarrassed like Mary; there will be more such occasions in the years ahead. But every time you have to make a choice ask yourself which option shows the most respect, trust, dignity. Then, as Dr Seuss says:

You’ll be on your way up!
You’ll be seeing great sights!
You’ll join the high fliers
who soar to high heights.

Seven years at St. Therese’s Catholic Primary School have prepared you for this. For the Catholic school seeks to inform minds and form hearts; to ensure you are well-educated and as well-rounded as you can be; to form you as young adults of faith and ideals, ready to worship god and do good for others; a place to develop your gifts and your character. You have been formed to be, in the words of our school motto, ‘people of love, people of hope, and people of faith’.

This is a journey without end in this life: every generation, every year, must commit again to respect, to trust, to dignity, to the Christmas Babe. But if you do that, if you follow the lessons of our Gospel and of our school, then in the words of Dr Seuss:

And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)

KID, YOU’LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!

So…
be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray
or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O’Shea,
You’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So… get on your way!

 

INTRODUCTION TO GRADUATION MASS FOR ST. THERESE’S CATHOLIC PRIMARY SCHOOL
St. Therese’s Church, Lakemba

 Welcome to the Graduation Mass of the 2018 Year 6 graduating class, followed by the Presentation of Class Achievement Awards and finally the Archbishop Anthony Fisher Award for Witness to Gospel Values and Personal Achievement.

I acknowledge Fr Peter Ha, Parish Priest at St. Therese’s Parish; Mr Kelley Conlan, the Principal of St Therese’s School; and Mrs Sybil Dickens, Inner West Regional Consultant for Sydney Catholic Schools.

It is, of course, a special pleasure for me to be here at my first school where I was a student back in ancient times, in 1965 and 1966. After my first day at school here at St Therese, I returned home to tell my mother that my teacher – Sr Mary Paul RSJ ???? – was “so old”. “How old dear?” my mother asked. I stared at her and said “I think she’s older than you!” My mother was 26 at the time. So I welcome today our very old teachers, parents and friends of our graduands. But especially to our very young graduating students, a very warm welcome!

 

[1] Judith Morgan & Neil Morgan, Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel (Random House, 1995), p. 273