St. Ninian’s High School, Mass for the Opening of School Year 2006-07

Thursday 31^st August 2006

1. As you begin this new school year of 2006-07, I am sure you are full of hopes and expectations of what you may achieve during this session. You will all want to have a happy, successful and fruitful school year.  You will want to learn well and you will have educational targets appropriate to the stage you have reached in the school. You may have sporting ambitions which the resources of the school can help you develop. You may have interests in music, art and drama with which the school can assist you. You may well be keen to exploit the cultural opportunities which the school can offer through social projects and travel. You will enjoy the social dimension of school life and the simple enjoyment of hanging out with your friends. This is what you can look forward to in school session 2006-07. The words of St. Paul this evening are perhaps relevant to your experience: “There is no limit to the blessings which God can send you. He will make sure you will always have all you need for yourselves in every possible circumstance, and still have something to spare for all sorts of good works.” So even at this early stage of the school year, you can count your blessings, be thankful and hopefully be ready to share the benefits of your blessings with others.

2. And this brings me to the point I really want to make this evening. The hopes and expectations of the pupils and staff, and the opportunities of the school curriculum and programme are broadly the same in every school, and many school communities throughout the land are looking forward to their school year in much the same terms are this one is. But I want to suggest to you that as a Catholic school, there is another and deeper dimension to the school and to the aims and expectations of staff and pupils alike. The scripture readings for our Mass this evening can help us with this.

3. The Word of God gives rise to a recognised theme in the tradition of Christian thinking which acknowledges God as the source and goal of knowledge, and this is an insight which can be appreciated by people of other faiths too: true wisdom comes from God and leads to God. “For the Lord himself gives Wisdom, from his mouth come forth knowledge and discernment”, says the Book of Proverbs to us this evening. I have always thought that learning in any subject opens me up to the wisdom of God arrayed in the world and at the same time knowledge of God is the ultimate goal of my learning, which is fulfilled in the act of faith.

4. But this interplay of education and faith is not just in the world of ideas. This is about how we live. “He goes on helping those who are honest, and protects those who are honourable. He stands guard over the paths of justice; he keeps watch on the way of those who love him”, continues the Book of Proverbs. Education cannot stand aloof from right living, and goodness, and virtue and justice. So education in a Catholic school will want to put before you the way of life which comes from the wisdom of God which is revealed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a way of life which adherents of other faiths can see to be good because it is a way of life which worships God above all, which loves our neighbour as Christ loved us, which respects the dignity of the human person, which recognises human life to be sacred and which honours marriage and the family.

5. Catholic education here at St. Ninian’s aims to plant a seed of true wisdom, knowledge and goodness in your hearts and minds. My prayer for you today is that that seed will fall on the rich soil of your intelligence, your talents and gifts, your generosity and your love, and that it will produce its crop a hundredfold in the way you live and in what you achieve in the future.