Following a successful Catholic Education Conference 2021, we are proud to present a five-part series based on Archbishop William Goh’s address at the conference. In part 2, we consider how our Catholic schools facilitate a relationship with God.

The theme of our conference is “celebrating, encountering and creating our God experience.” This theme has to be seen in line with the overall theme, which is “to ignite and shine”, and most of all, in relationship to our founders’ mission.

It’s good for us to ask ourselves – if we were to really benefit from this celebration, in recalling what our founders have done for the last 200 years – we need to ask ourselves, what is the key to their success? Why is it that Catholic education, Catholic schools have played a very important part not just in the lives of our Catholics, but also the nation?

For our founders, real education is more than imparting skills and knowledge: it is to provide a solid holistic education, and this includes social, intellectual, physical and spiritual aspects.

Without a holistic formation and education, we would not be able to fully be human and be fully alive.

A Personal Relationship with Jesus

Now, when we speak about a Catholic education, it is more than just imparting a God experience, otherwise we would just be considered a religious school.

From the Catholic perspective, a God experience is ultimately a Christ experience, and that’s the reason why the heart of celebrating, creating, is for the sake of encounter.

It is this personal encounter with Jesus which is what we want to meditate on, simply because Jesus for us as Christians, is the way, the truth and the life. Jesus is our mediator, our way to encounter God deeply in a very personal way, because in Jesus we see Who God is, the mercy of God and His unconditional love.

Just to explain the doctrinal message of why God is present in Jesus: if you remember the Gospel of John chapter 14, Thomas said to the Lord, “How can we know the way?” and Jesus answered, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father except through Me. If you know Me, you will know My Father also.”

Now, when Jesus said, “I am the way”, He was not saying He is a conduit or a means to an end. To come to Jesus is to come to the fullness of truth and life, and that is why Jesus is a sacrament of God.

Sacramental Life

What do we mean by sacrament? A sacrament is a sign that makes real what it signifies. So, to encounter Jesus is to encounter God, and that is why in the Catholic schools, our task is to mediate a Christ experience – but what is a Christ experience? A Christ experience must be real, it must be personal, it must be incarnational, in tangible relationships, so that it can be life-transforming.

I cannot underscore enough that encountering Christ is critical and fundamental, because our faith is rooted in Jesus and our commitment to Him as our Saviour and Lord.

Faith is not just intellectual – Christianity is not simply a set of doctrines or some ethos, some morality. Christianity is fundamentally a relationship with Jesus, falling in love with Him, so that this relationship with Jesus will help us to see life in perspective and to live our lives with purpose and meaning.

Passion and Purpose

A real passion for Christ can only come about when we have real encounters with the Lord. If you read the scriptures, those who were witnesses to Christ’s resurrection walked with the Lord. Martyrs, our foreign missionaries – have you ever asked them why they give up so much of their lives, so to speak, for nothing? They left their homeland, their families, their culture, to go to alien lands.

Certainly, for missionaries to give up their life and to suffer for humanity, it is because they have encountered Jesus’ love.

In the first letter of John, chapter 1, verses 1 to 4, Saint John said, “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life.”

Indeed, my dear brothers and sisters, helping people to encounter Jesus is to help people to encounter God. To encounter God is what gives us meaning and purpose in life – that is why following the question of Thomas, Philip asked the Lord Jesus, “Show us the Father and we will be satisfied.”

The Father stands for ultimate meaning, truth, love and life.

Reflection Questions:

1. Teachers – how do you inspire your students to encounter God in daily life?
2. Students – are there ways in which you can help your friends grow closer to God?
3. Parents – how are you an example of faith to your children? Do you prioritise family prayer and time with God?

Following a successful Catholic Education Conference 2021, we are proud to present a five-part series based on Archbishop William Goh’s address at the conference. In part 1, we recall the legacy of our Catholic schools’ founders, the missionaries who sacrificed everything to answer God’s call to bring the Gospel to the ends of the Earth, serving our local community by providing quality education and human formation.

A Missionary Legacy

In the past, Catholic schools had a major role in the spread of the Catholic faith.

We know that our Catholic schools were very often supported by foreign missionaries. We see all the brothers and sisters who have started Catholic education in Singapore: the Infant Jesus Sisters, Good Shepherd Sisters, Marist Brothers, Brothers of St Gabriel, La Salle Brothers, Canossians, Franciscan Missionaries of Mary Sisters, and [we also have] our diocesan schools [such as] Holy Innocents’ High School and Catholic High School. The foreign missionaries came to Singapore two hundred years ago, in order to give their lives to us and to bring us the faith.

And so, as we are celebrating this 200th anniversary, it is important that we are not just trying to celebrate our achievements – what is more important is that the celebration is to be in gratitude to our founding fathers and mothers.

Profound Sacrifice

When we celebrate the past, the whole purpose of celebrating it is in order to remind us of what our forefathers have done, so that we can continue their legacy. I think it’s very important for us in this celebration, to really call to mind the spirit of our founders, who have given their lives.

The greatest gratitude we can give to someone, is to honour them by continuing the work that they begun, and that is why it is important for us during this celebration to return to the roots of our founders. We need to rediscover their apostolic and missionary zeal – what it is that gave them the impetus to sacrifice their lives for us all.

Without the missionaries, without the Catholic schools, we would not be where we are today, because when the foreign missionaries came to Singapore, the brothers and sisters, they came not just to provide us with a good education. Of course, that is important, but their ultimate goal was to save us, to give us fullness of life; it was not just concerned with academic performance, it was principally concerned with imparting Gospel values that can help us to live a meaningful life by having faith in Jesus.

Reflection Questions:

1. Teachers – how do you incorporate the charisms of your school’s founders in your everyday work?
2. Students – how do you make the best of your education? Are there key virtues which you can exercise in school and at home?
3. Parents – how do you support the mission of your child’s school? Are there certain values which you prize in your child’s education?

“Go home” Jesus said, “your son will live.”

These are Jesus’s words to the court official who seeks healing for his sick and dying son. These are words of hope that today’s Gospel reading offers you and me.

They are hopeful, hopeful because they are Jesus’s promise that this court official’s son will live, and it comes true because Jesus always heals.

You and I gather across this island this morning in many schools, and we gather because we begin this day for our conference, the Catholic Education Conference of 2021.

We are each like the court official, because we come to this conference with different desires and different wishes; and we believe that in this day together, God will grant all our desires and all our wishes. He will grant them, as Jesus granted the court official’s desire for his son to be healed.

Genuine Hope

Whatever our desires or our wishes are, our readings tell us that we can hope; our readings express a core belief in our Christian faith, and this faith is filled with hope. We can believe in God, because we’ve all experienced the numerous examples of God’s goodness in our life, of God’s love for you and me.

Each of today’s readings expresses this reality of God with us, of God loving us.

In our first reading from Isaiah, God promises new things that will invoke in the humans a response of infinite rejoicing and happiness. There will be no more sad sounds of weeping all around them, only rejoicing in happiness.

In Isaiah’s description of this happy time, life is in abundance in both quality and quantity. What an inspiring and hope-filled promise of the fullness of life that God wishes to offer all of us – but this goodness, aren’t we experiencing it right now in our schools every day?

God’s Gift of Catholic Education

The hard work of the early missionaries and teachers has taken root and flourished, and so you and I enjoy what is school today in all our Catholic schools. Surely this is the goodness we have of being community, of being together in the schools, that we are enjoying God’s many gifts in our lives, and we are the recipients of this goodness that helps us to be better people, living purposeful lives by making a difference to all.

This is why we have come today, to celebrate, to celebrate God’s gift of Catholic education in Singapore, not just in our schools, but over the last 200 years.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus acts with great mercy and compassion. The court official comes to Jesus with faith, with faith that Jesus will heal his dying son, and Jesus heals the son.

This encounter between the official and Jesus is not for our hearing only, or even for our seeing as words on the page; this encounter is offered to you and me today as the experience of you and me in faith, knowing the love of God that works through Jesus to heal the official’s sick son.

It is an experience of our faith, that God will always save, that you and I, we experience even now as the Good News proclaims.

Seeking God

We have come, all of us in all our schools – we have come also to seek God in an encounter in this conference, in prayer and reflection, in learning and sharing, and even envisioning the kind of school we want to be as a place of grace. We are all hoping throughout the course of today for an encounter with God.

The good news that Jesus announces in today’s Gospel is that God will meet us, God will come to us and God will lead us forward as Catholic schools and as teachers and students, who come to know the love of God in our schools, and God will do this as God did so for the official who experienced God’s goodness through Jesus’ healing.

Sing Praise

Our responsorial psalm today appropriately invites you and me to praise. Praise is the most human expression of gratitude to God; praise naturally springs from a grateful heart, and in gratitude, you and I want to say thank you to God for so many things, so many gifts that we have received. Especially for His mercy, that reminds us that we are always forgiven, because we are His beloved children.

In our conference today, we will learn how to recreate similar experiences of encountering God’s love, in order to praise God. Indeed, the psalmist who wrote this wonderful psalm created for us a space of prayer, a space of praise, and it’s precisely through the words in the psalm, that we have the space, this time to praise God, to pray to God and to truly give thanks.

This is what we hope to do today as well, to learn how to create these spaces of prayer, reflection and praise in our schools.

Signs of Love

Today God will give us many gifts through the conference, many moments in which you and I will experience the love of God. I wonder what you will see and hear, what you will taste, smell and feel, as the visible expressions and signs of God’s faithfulness meeting us through the conference, as signs of God’s infinite love, to bless us through this conference, as signs of God’s love, that moves us forth to allow others to share in the experience we’ve had in this conference.

For me, an example of God’s faithful love each day in school, is when my students and teachers wave “hello” or say “good morning” or even say “God bless you.” These are the simple ways my students say, “God is with us and God is good.”

You and I, we are all searching for God. We are searching for God in all the many things and all the many moments in our daily life, and this search is worthwhile, as worthwhile as the verse we hear before the Gospel: “Seek good, and not evil, that you may live and the Lord will be with you.”

This is the promise for all of us today. We are seeking the good and God will meet us in our search, and God will be with us and God will live with us. This is the promise God makes us.

Will you and I then, hearing this promise, celebrating this reality, encountering this God and recreating these moments of knowing this God, will we then celebrate the education we have, know the goodness of God in our lives, and like the psalmist, go forth and share the good news with many in our schools that we are in God’s holy presence? Let us pray we will, so that we can go home after this conference and live with God alone. Amen.