John XXIII College Staff Development Seminar
Monday of Week 16 in Ordinary Time

Homily

Most Rev Timothy Costelloe SDB
Archbishop of Perth

Monday 21 July, 2025
John XXIII College, Claremont

Download the full text in PDF

Today you have all gathered together to reflect on the theme of Inspiring Hope and Excellence. It is good that we begin this day with a celebration of the Eucharist. As a college community you do, after all, look to Pope St John XXIII for inspiration and to Venerable Mary Ward and Saint Ignatius of Loyola as the founders of the spiritual traditions which underpin this college. It is impossible to make any sense of Pope John XXIII, Mary Ward or Ignatius without reference to Christ. And it is impossible to enter into the depths of the mystery of Christ, which so captivated these three people, if we do not understand that, as our Catholic tradition would teach us, the Eucharist is both the beginning and the high point, the source and the summit, of Christian faith and life.

In the light of the theme of excellence, the first of the two parables to which we have just listened invites us to think of ourselves as the sowers who go out to sow their seed. This is a theme which occurs more than once in the gospel tradition. The sowers do their work, and presumably they have previously done the necessary tasks of tilling and preparing the soil, but ultimately they are unable to determine which seeds will sprout and which will not, or even how it is that the simple and, in some ways, haphazard gesture of scattering seeds can result in the emergence of plants which provide food for people’s lives

What those sowers have to do is to scatter their seeds in hope, trusting that the results will come. This is surely very similar to the work of education. Good teachers work hard at preparing classes, coming up with new and effective teaching methods, creating physical environments which foster learning, and striving to build positive relationships of trust and confidence. Sometimes we see immediate results, sometimes we see what seem to be the opposite, and sometimes we just go ahead trusting that the seeds we have sown will at the right time and in the right ways, earr fruit in the lives of our young people.

This is what happens in the second of the two parables this morning. The mustard seed, the smallest of seeds, is sown in hope that it will produce a tree which will become a home, a refuge and a place of safety for the birds to build their nests, and from which they can venture forth into the world.

Saint Paul understood this very well when he reminded his people that in terms of spreading the good news about Jesus one does the planting, another does the watering, but in the end it is God who gives the growth (cf 1Cor 3:6). 

Those who work in any way for the education of the young must strive for excellence as they till the ground of young people‘s minds and hearts and lives and sow the seeds which can bear fruit as the lives of the young unfold. And equally, those who work in any way for the young must also be people of hope, people of trusting faith, who are ready to place into the hands of the Lord all they do for young people, knowing that it is the Lord’s grace which, working in often hidden ways can enable the seeds to take root and to grow and flower as the young grow to maturity.

This morning, as we begin this time together, I invite you all to recommit yourselves to excellence in all that you seek to be and do for your young people, and to generously and confidently entrust to God, through your prayers, your own efforts and the hopes you carry in your hearts for your young people, that their potential will be fulfilled and they will lead rich and happy lives, fulfilling not only our dreams for them, their own dreams for themselves, but the dreams of the one who has called them into existence and given them the gift of life.