Graduation Homily: Loreto Normanhurst (20 September), Brigidine St Ives (23 September), Mater Maria Warriewood (24 September)
In a remarkable little novel called “The Passion” by the feminist writer, Jeanette Winterson the main character Henri declares, “To love someone else enough to forget about yourself, even for one moment, is to be free.”
There is a part of us that can consider involvement in the life of another as a loss of freedom. Commitment certainly brings a responsibility that means I can no longer live life only in reference to myself. However, Henri is saying that real freedom comes when we lose our self in love for someone else. In the novel he goes on to say that “some say love enslaves, and passion is a demon, and many have been lost for love. But I know that without love we grope the tunnels of our lives and never see the sun . . . when I fell in love it was as though I looked into a mirror for the first time and saw myself. I lifted my hand in wonderment and felt my cheeks, my neck. This was me . . .”
Henri’s underlying insight is that we discover who we are only in the relationship that we have with others. And, if this be so, what will make us truly shine in the world into which we are being commissioned this evening is not just the display of our talents and our giftedness, but actually how prepared we are to enter the risk and vulnerability of relationship, the care that we exercise toward with one another, the self-forgetfulness that we dare in our outreach to those who come within our circle of influence, the way in which our talents and gifts are put to the service of the creation of community.
The most marvellous thing is that we can bring this capability to bear in whatever we go on to do, and in so doing, in whatever we do, we can exercise the most remarkable leadership. Leadership in the end is never about our role, or our status, or about our knowledge. Nor is it ever simply about vision. Authentic leadership is always a demonstration of care. It is a way of engaging others in a genuine dynamic of encouragement through which we call forth the heart of the other and enlist others in a shared project that can transform our world. It is the formation of this leadership to which our Catholic Education has been committed. To become young people capable of this leadership is to shine forth a light in a context that too easily can become fragmented into an experience of isolation rather than of community through which alone we discover the truth and beauty of our humanity and its dignity.
Leadership and love are not things that we necessarily associate with each other. But I want to suggest that we cannot lead without loving. To lead is to love in a particular way. As the character Henri in Winterson’s novel intimates, it is to die to oneself so that another might live. It is the leadership of Jesus into which he invites each of us to participate. Yet, most importantly, in suggesting this we must also propose that love is never simple. Love in this sense is never merely a feeling. Genuine leadership is certainly never about feeling a particular way. In fact, leadership is about engaging an entire cycle of activities. This was the insight that I gained personally when I began my studies in philosophy many years ago. When I started philosophy, I was first introduced to a thinker very little known, the Canadian Bernard Lonergan. Yet, Lonergan’s framework has stood me with all these years. Lonergan understood that love was the outcome of a series of actions, and they were four in number: listening, inquiring, evaluating and acting. In order to love, we must first and foremost listen. We must ask questions about what we hear and see. We must be prepared to sit with it all in a slow process of discernment, and only then can we choose best how to act. In Lonergan’s framework, when we listen, inquire, judge and act – never one action before the other -and with as much purposefulness as we can – the outcome is always a life that is the most loving it can be. Our loving will never be what we hope for it when we are not prepared to listen, when we fail to inquire, when we short circuit our discernment and when we do not act with responsibility on the basis of all that we have attended, inquired and evaluated. So, he declares: Be attentive! Be intelligent! Be reasonable! Be responsible! Be in love!
If we were able to take these five imperatives into our world from our years of education here at . . then what a difference we would truly make to our society. We may not star. We may not win public accolade. But we will truly change the world, because the world in which I inhabit, whatever its nature or extent, will be different as a result. Let us go forth from here committed to exercise this leadership into which we are invited by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The light we shine will be unmistakable.
