Hero photograph
Jesus on the cross 
 
Photo by Chris Sullivan

Kavanagh Day, Joy and Maureen

Laurel Lanner —

On the 15th August, we celebrated Kavanagh Day as we do every year, with a staff breakfast, mass, house games and the house lip synch competition. The date was chosen because it is the Feast of the Assumption of Mary who is the patron saint of Aotearoa. Mary is significant to all three of the school’s founding orders and the day is also a holy day of obligation (meaning that Catholics are expected to go to mass that day).

It is always fun but this year there was a special moment that struck me. When Fr Sani gave his homily, he had the students stand and sing Happy Feast Day (to the obvious tune!).  At first, they were a bit hesitant but then the atmosphere lifted and they got into the spirit of it and the Spirit was joy.

Pope Francis is big on joy. Two of his exhortations have joy in the English titles, “The Joy of the Gospel” and “The Joy of Love”. Sometimes Pope Francis sets a high bar, as in this comment from him, “A Christian is never bored or sad. Rather, the one who loves Christ is full of joy and radiates joy”.

There are times when this is a particularly tall order. At the staff meeting on the morning of Kavanagh Day, we heard our former colleague and school counsellor, Maureen Bretherton, had died. Joy wasn’t the emotion we were feeling. Our thoughts were with her and her family. But perhaps what Pope Francis is trying to say is joy is much more than a fleeting emotion. This statement from him gets to the heart of it,

“Joy adapts and changes, but it always endures, even as a flicker of light born of our personal certainty that, when everything is said and done, we are infinitely loved”.

Maureen certainly lived in this light.