Sunday, 4 May 2025Good morning. Let me first welcome our new S1 students and welcome back to everyone else.
The theme for the month of September is ‘Cherish oneself, strive for goodness’.
So let us examine the word: ‘cherish’. This word means to love. So, cherish oneself means to love oneself. We need to be thankful we have been born and have been given life by our parents, by God. We have to be grateful, have gratitude for that life given to us by being more positive and treasure each moment of life. Jesus reminds us that He came that we might have life and have it more abundantly!
I want to go back a bit today and talk about when I was your age. I went to a convent which is a school for girls only and my school was run by nuns or sisters. One of the very special part of my life as a ‘convent girl’ was going for retreats and I am ever so grateful that I had this part of my life as it was the time that probably most influenced who I became. These retreats gave me a time to reflect about God and about life.
On one of those retreats, I went down the islands which was a place where you are away from civilization, so you truly had the quiet time to reflect. It was here I had the greatest lesson, as it THE lesson that has seen me well through life. That lesson is that of learning to be alone and to treasure our own company — treasure we have been given a life by God, a life given for a purpose. I would say to treasure ourselves, our own company and to love ourselves MUST ALWAYS be FIRST. Cherishing ourselves and our life, must first happen before we can move onto others.
Cherishing ourselves is NOT about selfishness and ignoring others. In fact, true cherishing ourselves is by respecting ourselves and our lives and to have a halo of goodness about you. Yesterday, Father Vince reminded us that it is not just about us being good academically, for this is only about you, but it is going beyond that. It is about being good to not just ourselves but being good to others. Our relationships with others and how we are seen as a child of God is even more important than what we achieve academically. In our school’s mission we aim to do our best academically SO THAT WE MAY GLORIFY our Father with our works. What this means is what we achieve is not just for ourselves but to make God proud of who we are as a human being.
So how do we cherish ourselves, love ourselves and strive for goodness. We need to emulate goodness and to reflect God’s character in our actions. In John 3, verse 11: “Beloved, do not imitate evil but imitate good. Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God”. But in this day and age, being good and doing good seem to be difficult to achieve as the temptations of the devil are even stronger. We want instant gratification, we want comfort, we want not to be laughed at, not to lose face.
Be reminded Shungtakians that God has given us this life, so we must make the best of it. Your work here is not only to be a proud and grateful graduate of a great English College but a great Catholic College. Show that you respect yourselves but being the best version of yourself. Be respectful to your parents, your teachers, your classmates and to everyone. Simple things like ‘Good morning’ and ‘thank you’ are actions that are so super important, but they are also actions we sometimes ignore. Simple things like listening when others are speaking says a lot about who you are. Simple things like singing our school song, signing our national anthem show respect to our school and to our country but also show who you are as a person and how much you respect and cherish yourself and what have been given to you. Cherish yourself and always strive for goodness. Be goodness and let us see that light shine from within.
Yesterday Sr Michelle shared about thinking of others and what we have. One of the key messages I got from her sharing was the importance of gratitude. When we are grateful for what we have; for where we are; we would do so much better at being a better version of ourselves. How grateful are we to be part of this Shung Tak family? Are we truly grateful we have the chance to learn here or to work here or do we just take it for granted? Do we waste what we have and not make the most of it? This brings me to the “Parable of the Talents”, in Matthew 25 we must use the talents we have been given. The Holy Spirit has given us understanding, skills and abilities that we must use to grow and to produce spiritually. We need to experience life at a higher level—life that’s abundant in every dimension! Cherish your life and always strive for goodness.
Ms. B Lee