From the Counsellor (1990s)
Symbols are the way we communicate. The expression of the inexpressible. Last Friday night was very special for students, parents, teachers and all connected with the college.
It was a genuine ritual, a rite of passage for our students and our sons. It was an extremely sacred moment. There was a tenderness and sensitivity that brought us out of the normal flow of life. We were there for a reason. We were stepping out of our routines so that we were able to touch something essential in life. We seek ceremony when we feel something special and profound is happening in our lives.
The Valete mass and dinner was a deeply symbolic event and it allowed the depth of what we felt to shine through. More than 130 students who had been at the college some for as long as 10 years were being farewelled. They were part of a myth that goes deep into the human heart. They were now at that stage where they were to enter and explore the mystery of who they will become in the world outside of school life. And we as family, friends , teachers and others were able to rejoice with and for them.
What we really want for those young men is for them to find their centre – what it will be that will give them the satisfaction of finding the key to their humanity and hence their spirituality. We are given two chances at happiness. One is when we are at school, the other comes later in life. We all need heroes along the way on the trek to find our centre.
It doesn’t come through books or even academic learning. Rather it is when we are able to go beyond the externals. It is when we find who we are that the genuine self emerges.
When we enrolled our sons in the life of St. Aloysius College the relationship they entered into with the teachers, fellow students, the Jesuit community and the families of other students was distinctive. It allowed them to search for and to find a destiny, an opening to the potential life that was to be their future. That search meant that they were to acquire the makings of wisdom through learning and listening.
Yet with all of life there are traps. The quest for the real self is not an easy task. I remember so well Darth Vader from Star Wars. He could never listen to the demands of his heart and insisted in following programs. He had designed a program for life. He had stopped listening to himself and instead listened only to others to learn what he ought to do and what values he should be listening to. He had not been on the road less travelled. He had allowed himself to be controlled by others.
When his mask of certainty was peeled off he was seen for his real worth. He was a shell of what was real and vital. He had lived his actions out of obligation. He had allowed himself to be driven by others. And we as parents and teachers for that matter can fall into the trap of driving those under our care with the mandatory must, should, have to, etc. The students, our children can succumb and allow themselves to be driven to do things because it seems the easy option. In the long run though it is destructive to human growth.
When Darth Vader was unmasked he became a new man. He discovered who his son was. It was Luke Skywalker the one who shed him of his false image and in doing this a son discovered a father and a father his son.
Let us go back to the Valete.When those students at the end of the night sang their farewell song they wanted us to share their joy. It was overwhelming. Their lives in those moments were beyond words and their human condition beyond laws. For them ecstasy, creative energy and freedom were prefered to the security of obligation and mandatory commands. They were able to dance with gay abandon and to see in that moment that they were pilgrims in the search of what for the more cynical and cold was unattainable.
Their exams will be shortly upon them. It was in those precious moments of last Friday evening that they discovered what it was to rejoice. They were leaving a stage of life to shortly begin another. They were participants in their own rite of passage. We were privileged to be part of their rite and that is why we so readily thank them for who they have been for us
