Viewpoint

This week we have farewelled our graduating Class of 2025 with a number of special events including the Co-Curricular Assembly, Valete Mass of Thanksgiving and Long tables Dinner for graduating boarders all on Wednesday. Today, we hosted the Valete House Assemblies followed by the Valete Assembly and Lunch in the Rose Garden for our newest Old Boys and their parents.

In the Term 3 holidays, a number of student programs and events will be taking place including: the Ignatian Student Leadership Forum in the Philippines; the Drama and Music Tour to the United States; a Cape York Immersion; the Jesuit Basketball Carnival at St Aloysius’ College; Years 9, 10 and 11 Service activities; GPS Rowing Camp; the Riverview Debating Holiday Camp; the Year 9 Quads and Year 10 Eights Rowing Camp; the Oxford Schools Debating Carnival Competition; Sports training; and the NSW All Schools Track and Field. Thank you in advance to all the staff and parents who will be supporting these activities.

A reminder to parents and guardians that classes at the College recommence on Tuesday 14 October. All boys are to be in their full summer uniform, and I ask for parental support in ensuring that your son’s appearance (including hair and polished shoes) meets the standards expected of him at Riverview.

I wish all families a restful holiday period and we look forward to seeing our students return for their final academic term for 2025.

Below is the speech that I delivered at today’s Valete Assembly to graduating Year 12 students – the Class of 2025.

Good Morning; Mr Greg Mackay, Chair of the College Board; Father Rector; Special Guest, Tom Hamer; Staff of the College, our Students; to the parents, family and friends of the Class of 2025 who are joining us here today in Ramsay Hall, and especially welcome to the Saint Ignatius’ College Riverview Class of 2025.

It is the most distinctive of pleasures to welcome you here today for your Valete Assembly. You are the 145th leaving class in the history of this Jesuit school. A school that has held such an important place in the history of this city, of our Church and of our nation. An importance that will, I suspect, deepen in the years ahead.

I am so thrilled for each of you, and I hope that your formation is such that you feel a great sense of gratitude for your education that Riverview and your parents have offered you. I am equally thrilled for your families who have joined us here today.

Today is a special one for your parents and for those who have raised you. They are so very, very proud of you. This is a day for Riverview families to be together and to celebrate the good things in life.

The College thanks parents and care-givers for the sacrifices you have made to give your sons an opportunity to be educated and formed here at our Jesuit school. We especially thank and recognise the boarding parents for your willingness to entrust your precious sons to our care over many years. Please know how weighty a responsibility we know this is and how grateful we truly are that you gave it to us.

Your teachers are also proud of you boys. We recognise and thank all your teachers – both at Regis and here in the Senior School - who have contributed to the young men you are today. I hope that some of you might consider teaching as your vocation. We need good teachers.

This morning, on behalf of the entire College community - your fellow students, your teachers, your parents, and the thousands of Old Boys whose ranks you now join – I want to thank you for what you’ve given Riverview over your time at our school and wish you a graced life in the years ahead.

As you leave our gates, know how proud we all are of you.

You are a special group of young men and we have loved having you as our leaders and guardians of our mission over the last 12 months. And young men you have now become. As I said to you recently at a Year Assembly, you are no longer schoolboys. You are Old Boys. Old Boys of Saint Ignatius’ College Riverview. I’m personally grateful for the support you have given me in my first year as Principal.

You should be justifiably proud of your achievements and the legacy that these bring. We witnessed the joy that successes in Rowing, Rugby, Debating, Cricket and AFL brought to your Year Group. We also witnessed the joy that the College Production of Newsies, musical performances, public speaking and the creative and performing arts also brought.

We are proud of you not because of the trophies won nor the plaudits received. We are proud because you have endeavoured to maximise your gifts. To do so, is to offer gratitude to God for these gifts. To not do so is a sign of ingratitude. Jesus challenges us in Matthew’s Gospel to not hide our light under a bushel. Your lights shone brightly this year. For a Jesuit school, everything we do both in the classroom and outside of it is a means to mission – not an end in itself.

We are also gratified because our successes were not achieved through the compromise of those things that we hold to be good and true. We didn’t sacrifice our values for the pursuit of some vain glory. We stayed true to ourselves and that makes our excellence virtuous and unsullied. I hope that you take that lesson into your lives. That one can achieve great things without compromising one’s beliefs.

We live in an increasingly strange world that is increasingly unfamiliar to those of us from older generations. This may always be the case because change is inevitable, but this period feels more transformative than others. There is less certainty, when moral and institutional norms that have defined our experience over recent decades seem to dissipate before our eyes.

The interconnectedness of the modern world is as dramatic a development as ever seen in human history. Quite literally, everyone is potentially connected to each other through the marvels of modern technology. The result? Your generation is being influenced by forces and pressures outside of the control of those who traditionally have formed the young – your parents, your school, your governments, your Church. Movements and ideas in foreign lands are finding much greater traction in our land than ever before. Viruses that once took years to spread around the globe, now take days.

This is a strange time when the generations are colliding. When older generations intimately know what your interests are (although I still don’t know what 6.7 means!); and when we have the remarkable phenomenon of your generation discovering and embracing the music that we loved when your age.

The most concerning development of the modern age is the phenomenon of polarisation – whereby opposing ideologies and worldviews entrench themselves at the extremes and vilify those who might oppose them. Cloaked in the hypocritical language of virtue, they characterise others as hateful as they themselves spew bilious invective at their opposition. The recent assassination of influential right wing leader Charlie Kirk is the logical outcome of a discourse that demonises the other. And the disordered wickedness sits on both extremes.

My plea to you today is to commit yourselves to a worldview that rejects any ideology and its false claims of truth. I hope that Riverview gave you an opportunity to hear many ideas, but I hope we especially gave you the skills to think. To chart your own intellectual course. To seek and find the truth that does exist.

I hope especially that you might find that truth in Jesus and in the Tradition of the Catholic Church and its social and moral teaching.

I suggested earlier in my speech that we need good teachers. We especially need good Catholics. Young men who claim the Church as their own, who embrace the ancient truth of its apostolic teachings; and who challenge the Church to be better than it is. I will pray that you might remain faithful. That you might remain in communion with the Church. That the Eucharist might be an important part of your life.

The answer to today’s ills is not a return to the past. Nor is it a rejection of all that has come before us. The answer is innovating our traditions.

Jesus was on about the same thing in his public ministry. He didn’t come to overthrow the Jewish Law or to dismiss God’s Covenant – but to fulfill it.  He did this by offering us a faith that is the keys to the Kingdom. The path to the Good Life.

His loyal servant, Saint Ignatius, asks an additional question “so what are you going to do about it?” That is the gift of Ignatian spirituality. It is a way of proceeding with our faith. For the world because we are of it.

The values that we have formed in companionship with your parents will give you the moral, ethical and spiritual compass you can draw upon as you find your way. We have offered you a way of proceeding that lives inside your heart forever. You only need draw on it. It’s the gift from Saint Ignatius and the Jesuits to all of us.

And you will need it. The challenges in life are inevitable. It is the nature of the human condition. The nature of the world. When those tough times arrive, it is your faith, your family and your friends that will be what is most valuable to you and where you will be comforted.

And you will be a source of comfort for others. Let this be your commitment today. That you will use your gifts in the service of others and, through them, to God. That you are known as a man for others.

We pray that, in the coming weeks, you are able to use your intellectual gifts, that you remain committed to the end, that you feel a well-deserved sense of accomplishment after your HSC and that you use the opportunities your success offers to serve others.

But my greatest prayer is that you have a life that is loving. A truly Catholic life. That your relationships are deep and authentic and forgiving. And that God’s love for you shines through your love for others.

As you depart this College that has accompanied your parents in forming you, we pray that you take with you those special gifts that a Catholic, Jesuit school offers its students:

- that you carry within your chest, a compassionate heart seeking God in all things;

- that you recognise that true manliness is shown by love and gentleness;

- that you pursue the Magis with your commitment to human excellence;

- that you reciprocate God’s gift of Jesus with your own faith;

- and that you take your goodness as men for others into a world that so desperately needs it.

Know that you go with our love and our prayers and our gratitude.

Thank you.