SHOWING THE WAY TO GOD
By Mark Tannock, Principal, Saint Ignatius’ College Riverview
Many years ago, a Jesuit priest told me that the Jesuits are at their best living in the tensions. Since that time, I have often reflected on this remark and found it to be true not only for Jesuits but for their lay companions as well. Much that distinguishes a Jesuit school from others is this capacity to be comfortable in the tensions of our lives.
Living in the tensions means holding fast to those things that you believe to be good and true, whilst recognising that you will be shaped in your life by what you experience and the people whom you meet. Living in the tensions means being able to use your mind; but to also listen with your heart. To think and to feel. Ignatian spirituality is imbibed with this worldview of living in the tensions. At its best, so is Catholicism.
In his seminal work, American theologian Richard McBrien, said that: “Catholicism is …. characterised by a both/and rather than an either/or approach. It is not nature or grace, but graced nature; not reason or faith, but reason illumined by faith; not law or Gospel, but law inspired by the Gospel; not Scripture or tradition, but normative tradition within Scripture; not faith or works, but faith issuing in works and works as expressions of faith; not authority or freedom, but authority in the service of freedom … the Church is at once holy and sinful, not in the sense that sin exists alongside grace, but in the sense that even graced existence is ambiguous, fragile, and subject to disintegration. The record is always mixed. The Kingdom of God is neither coextensive with the Church nor totally divorced from the Church.”
A Catholic, Jesuit-educated student loves the world because it is good but works to make it more like the Kingdom that Jesus preached.
The College recently celebrated National Reconciliation Week with our Reconciliation Assembly on Wednesday in the Gartlan Centre. Riverview has a special responsibility to support the cause of Indigenous Reconciliation in our community and across Australia. Our daughters and sons have inherited from us and our parents the cause of Indigenous Reconciliation in our land.
This is, in itself, a tension. The dispossession of Indigenous land that began at Bennelong Point in 1788 is the birth stain of modern Australia as it is for many modern nations that were colonised by Europeans from the 14th Century onwards.
This isn’t some recently discovered woke fad. Since the early days of British colonisation, people of goodwill recognised the negative impact on the First Australians of this dispossession and sought to address it through education and health care. The Catholic Church was often at the forefront of these efforts.
Much has been done in Australia in recent decades to address this historical injustice and to seek practical reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. The tension is to recognise this historical injustice and seek to address its ongoing impacts, whilst celebrating those dimensions of modern Australia that have made it one of the most peaceful and prosperous modern nation-states; to work towards practical improvements in the lives of Indigenous Australians, whilst being grateful that we live in a country that cares for its people in this manner. It is possible to love Australia so genuinely that you want it to be better than it is.
The response to the cause of Reconciliation from Saint Ignatius’ College Riverview over recent decades has been its First Nations Program. We are so blessed that First Nations families choose to have their sons educated at our Jesuit school. These young men are proud of their cultures and add much to the rich tapestry that is the Riverview community.
In Reconciliation Week, we recommitted ourselves to a hope-filled, just future for all Australian children – tomorrow’s inheritors of our legacy.
Banner image shows a stained-glass window in the Dalton Chapel at Saint Ignatius’ College Riverview. Photo: David McMahon
To enquire about becoming a Jesuit in Australia, contact vocations@sjasl.org.au and for more info, visit our Vocations page.