HOMILY FOR MASS FOR THE OPENING OF THE 2025 SCHOOL YEAR FOR ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL COLLEGE
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, FEAST OF OUR LADY OF LOURDES, 11 FEBRUARY 2025
Most of you will be familiar with that great classic of English literature, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Authored and illustrated by Eric Carle in 1969, it was on the bestsellers list for children’s picture books for around 19 years and has been translated into sixty languages. It has sold over 50 million copies or one copy every 30 seconds since it was written![1]
There’s no one reason why it’s been so successful. Part of it no doubt is the eye-catching cover of a caterpillar with green and blue body and red and gold face, as well as the bold and bright illustrations, die-cut holes between the pages, and easy text, with simple sentences and plenty of repetition that makes it an easy read even for young readers still becoming acquainted with letters, numbers and days of the week.
In terms of storyline, it’s ultimately about learning from experience, including our mistakes. When the very hungry caterpillar goes on a rampage of eating cake, ice cream, sausages, lollipops and other treats, he suffers a tummy ache. The next day he corrects himself by dining on a more caterpillar-friendly diet of a single leaf. He gets healthy again and this enables him to begin cocooning. It’s a story, then, of hope and transformation, where no matter our missteps or how far gone we think we are, we can yet get back on track and become all we are meant to be.
In our first reading today from the Book of Genesis (Gen 1:20-2:4) we heard another tale of transformation. God takes nothing and makes something. He takes a formless void and makes it into an ordered cosmos, full of beauty and variety. He takes dead material and makes it teem with fish, and birds, and every kind of living thing—even caterpillars.
But all this is a prelude to something greater. On the last day of His creation God says, “Now let’s make human beings, male and female, so they can fill the earth, enjoy and take care of it.” Like the fish and birds, the beasts and caterpillars, these humans are material beings, alive, and good. But there’s something special about them, something not just good but “very good”. “Let’s make them,” God says, “in our own image and likeness.”
Which means you guys are like God! Now that’s a very strange thing to say. Ask your Mum and Dad, your siblings and peers, or your teachers, just how godlike you are, and I suspect they could identify just the occasional deficiency! And after all, God is so different, so unique, so much greater than us. He isn’t limited by time and space, by gifts and opportunities, as we are. He can’t be seen and touched, live and die, like His creatures. So in what sense are the students of St Mary’s Cathedral College really patterned after God Himself?
Well, God doesn’t leave us guessing in this regard. He comes to meet us as one of us. By making the Invisible visible, the Timeless timely, the Infinite small, the Creator a creature, we can encounter Him, speak with Him, be taught by Him. Jesus came as a baby, a junior primary kid, a middle school youth, a senior secondary leader. So, instead of making us in His image, you might say He made Himself in our image and likeness. But that was for the sake of our transformation, our hope, our caterpillaring. It was so we might emerge from our cocoons more and more like Him. He came to share in our lot so we might share in His.
And after living and dying and rising among us, He didn’t abandon us: He remains present in His Word and Sacraments, and in His People who are the Church and your school—so that every day, at St Mary’s Cathedral College, amidst the treasures of a Catholic education, you will have a chance to meet Christ yourself, and to strengthen your relationship with the God who loves you so much. Through your interactions with your peers, teachers and chaplains; through your study, sport, worship, music and more; as you strive to cultivate your minds and hearts and spirits to glorify God, improve the world and make the most of yourselves; as you grow in knowledge, wisdom and virtue, into the very image of God.
But sometimes we fall short. We go for the treats rather than what’s really good for us. We do things our own way rather than God’s. We go off track. Like the hungry caterpillar, we end up with a tummy ache, a heart ache. And we might wonder, is there any way back?
Today the Church remembers a girl of school age like yourselves, who proved herself a saint. Bernadette Soubirous, a 14-year-old at a grotto outside the French village of Lourdes, saw a vision of our Blessed Mother Mary, patron of Australia, of this cathedral and of your College. Through her Mary called people to prayer and penance, to return to her Son who would always have them back. Many listened to young Bernadette, and placed their trust in God through the intercession of His Mother. Their faith was met with the miraculous, as over 7000 people have received the grace of some healing at Lourdes. When the Church celebrated the centenary of those apparitions in 1958, Pope Pius XII referred to Mary not just as a special person and a saint, but as a school, a place we can learn how to live, how to share Christ with the world, how to join with Mary at the foot of her Son’s cross.[2]
And so, my dear young friends, as your college begins a new chapter in its long history, and as you turn a new page in yours, cling to the comfort and example of Mother Mary, Virgin of Lourdes and Help of Christians, your patron and friend. Pray that through her intercession your college might truly be a place of daily encounter with God and of transformation of each one of you, not just into beautiful butterflies but into something much greater, into images of God. God bless you all!
[1] Alison Durkee, ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar tops Amazon Bestseller List after Eric Carle’s Death—but it’s been a Consistent Hit for Decades’, Forbes Magazine 27 May 2021.
[2] Pope Pius XII, Le Pelegrinage de Lourdes, 2 July 1957,
INTRODUCTION TO MASS FOR THE OPENING OF THE 2025 SCHOOL YEAR
FOR ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL COLLEGE
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, FEAST OF OUR LADY OF LOURDES, 11 FEBRUARY 2025
Welcome to St Mary’s Cathedral for today’s Mass for the Commencement of the 2025 School Year for St Mary’s Cathedral College. 2025 is a year of new beginnings as we officially inaugurate the college’s transition to being a co-educational K to 12 school. To this end, I extend a particularly warm welcome to the girls joining us for the first time since 1967 when last there were girls here; and to our new junior and middle school boys; and to the families of both.
I am delighted to see the expansion of this wonderful school and the joy in the faces of all our new students, as well as those continuing. You are all part of a tradition of Catholic education that has existed on this site, attached to the mother Church of Australia, for over 200 years. It may now be a little noisier for me and the other priests living next door, but the noise of happy school kids is no great penance! After Mass we will have a commemorative photo of the whole school in the cathedral forecourt and a blessing of the new primary classrooms.
Today the Church celebrates the World Day of the Sick on the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, recalling the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin to a 14-year-old girl named Bernadette in the French town of Lourdes in 1858. Since that time Lourdes has become a pilgrimage destination for millions of people, a site of miraculous healing for many, and a reminder of the power of Mary’s intercession.
I salute your Principal, Kerrie McDiarmid, and past College Principals; Jacqueline Frost, SCS Chief of Staff; and other dignitaries. Concelebrating with me today are the Dean of St Mary’s Fr Don Richardson and your college chaplain Fr Roberto Keryakos.
