Mass for the Australian Catholic Primary Principals’ Association

Mass Celebrated By Archbishop Denis Hart
at Melbourne Exhibition And Convention Centre
on Sunday, 27th June, 2004, at 9.00am

Introduction

My dear Friends,

Melbourne is honoured to welcome you as gifted Principals from schools throughout Australia. Thank you for placing your special gifts at the service of the Church.

“Serve one another in works of love,” Saint Paul tells us in the second reading today. “Your duty is go and spread the news of the kingdom of God,” Jesus says to us in the Gospel. We come together around the Lord’s table, conscious that we have been called and chosen for a great task in the Church.

Let us turn to the Lord then, that he will strengthen us for our mission and forgive us our failings.

Homily

My dear Catholic leaders in education,

It is natural to think of education as a process of putting in to people what they do not yet have. It is always a little startling, then, to remind ourselves that the word education comes from the Latin educere, which means not to put in, but to draw out and to lead forth. A good teacher does not just impart knowledge, but ultimately seeks to awaken students to their potential and to lead them towards a fuller life.

In our Catholic schools we have set ourselves an even higher task: the knowledge we seek to impart is above all the truth that God reveals about ourselves and our world; the potential we seek to awaken is all that is given to each of us by God; and the fuller life to which we want to lead people is the full maturity to which we come only in the Spirit.

In our Catholic schools, we aim to do everything in the light of the Gospel, and so all of us who teach in any way must live with the challenge of Jesus’ command: “Do not allow yourselves to be called teachers, for you have one teacher, the Christ” (Mt 23.10). Our teaching in some way must draw life and meaning from the teaching of Christ. Our teaching is our participation in the mission of Christ and of his Church.

Thank you for your magnificent sharing in the mission of the Church and drawing people to our risen Lord.

I would like to share some reflections with you today on the subject of evangelisation and to invite each of you to think of your own work in this context. As you know, Pope John Paul has made evangelisation one of the key themes of his teaching during his whole Pontificate. It is, he says in his Encyclical, “The Mission of the Redeemer”, the “primary service” of the Church (Redemptoris Missio 2).

You are very well aware how difficult it can be to find a hearing for the Gospel and the Church’s teaching among young people today. They belong to a consumerist culture, which presses other values upon them with formidable insistence and persuasiveness. It would be unfair to say that the post-Christian elements in our society are closed entirely to religious and spiritual values, yet their influence can be very counter-productive to your work. They constantly invite us to consider Christian experience and Christian teaching in the most negative possible way. It is a great challenge to our schools to find attractive and positive ways to present the message of faith, the person of Jesus, and the challenge of the Gospel.

We have much to teach because we ourselves have been taught much. As Catholics we are heirs to a magnificent tradition, a tradition well summed up in the phrase “love of learning and desire for God”. I am convinced of the importance of communicating to young people as much as we can of their heritage in all its dimensions; intellectual, doctrinal, cultural, artistic, and so on.

We owe it to the young to teach them of the heroes of our faith, and of the hard-won wisdom of the ages. We must not shirk the challenges of this teaching and learning: we cannot impose the Gospel, but we must never give up proposing it.

Nevertheless, as you know, this process cannot be compared merely to filling empty vessels. To educate means to draw out. In his teaching on evangelisation, Pope John Paul has spoken again and again about the foundation of evangelisation in the baptismal life of every Christian. Because we are baptised, the Spirit of Christ is at work in us, and we are related to the Church, whether we recognise it or not. A good teacher awakens his students to their potential, to knowledge of who they really are: and we are God’s own, called and chosen.

Evangelisation seeks to draw people towards a response of faith. This can only happen when we sense that the truth revealed in Christ is the answer to fundamental human questions: “What is man? What is the meaning of suffering, evil, death? What is the purpose of human achievement, purchased at so high a price? What happens after life is ended?” (Gaudium et Spes 10).

That is the form in which Vatican II posed these questions, but they take many forms, and the good teacher must be alert to the moment when the questions of the young, their search for meaning and personal identity, the challenge of grief, the longing for love, provide a seed bed for a personally interiorised faith. We cannot make faith happen, but we can point people to Christ, who in his self-giving love and vulnerability wants to draw everyone to himself.

To educate also means to lead forth and the best leadership comes from example. Are we losing our readiness to proclaim the Gospel? Are we reluctant to be identified as Catholics? Are we able to respond to the issues of the day with real spiritual insight? Unless we teachers interiorise our own faith, we will be never be convincing teachers, especially for the young.

To teach is a mission, which must include a consciousness of being sent. We teach because we have been taught. We need to keep renewing ourselves and our enthusiasm by connecting and reconnecting with Jesus, the source of our life.

We need to keep ourselves in contact with the Church and its faith and its prayer – especially to love the great prayer of the Mass - if we are to have the strength to share Christ’s gifts joyfully with the world.

If we are inspired with a sense of mission, we will communicate enthusiasm for the Church’s mission in the world today and lead our young people forth to take up their part in building the Church and a new and better world, a world where every human being can exercise his right to live a decent life in peace with justice. A commitment to our brothers and sisters, especially to the poorest, is a demand of God’s life within us.

Your work is of the greatest importance in the Church’s mission of evangelisation. I want to recognise your service publicly and to thank you most sincerely for all that you do. I assure you of my continued prayers.

+ Denis J. Hart,
Archbishop of Melbourne.