Staff Spirituality Day for Presentation Schools
Monday 27 July 2026
Corpus Christi Church, Bellerive
Welcome to each and every one of you.
It is a joy to gather with the staffs of St Mary’s College, Corpus Christi School, St Brigid’s School and St Cuthbert’s School as we acknowledge the 251st anniversary of the foundation of the Presentation Sisters whose charism is tangible in each of your schools. It is the celebration of a dream that has been unfolding for two and a half centuries, and one in which each of you now shares.
Sister Noela Fox of the Wagga Wagga Presentation Sisters chose exactly the right title for her biography of Nano Nagle: ‘A Dream Unfolds’. God’s work rarely begins with fanfare. It begins quietly, in the heart of someone willing to listen.
That is precisely the image Jesus gives us in today’s Gospel.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed…” Tiny at first, it grows into a tree where others find shelter. The Kingdom does not usually arrive with noise or spectacle. It grows through faithfulness, through generosity, through lives quietly offered in God’s service.
Nano Nagle understood that.
As Sister Noela recounts, when Nano sought Bishop Butler’s approval to found her congregation, she made an extraordinary request. She did not want a community enclosed behind convent walls. She wanted sisters who would pray deeply and then go out to the poor, especially women, and educating children who had been denied opportunity and dignity. It was a courageous vision. Prayer would not separate them from the world; prayer would send them into it.
That conversation changed history.
The lantern carried through the streets of Cork has become a light that has reached many countries. It shines today in your four schools and in the lives of thousands of young Tasmanians since the Presentation Sisters first came to our island state one hundred and sixty years ago.
The question posed on the memorial plaque at St Mary’s College is how will that light continue to shine through us.
Jeremiah gives us an answer. In that somewhat strange first reading, God tells the prophet to wear the linen cloth close to himself because it symbolises the closeness God desires with his people. “I had intended the whole House of Judah… to cling to me… to be my people, my glory, my honour and my boast.”
The mission begins there.
Schools are busy places. There are lessons to prepare, reports to write, meetings to attend and countless demands on your time. Yet beneath every task lies a deeper vocation. Catholic education is not simply about forming capable students. It is about helping young people discover that they are known, loved and called by God.
That is why Presentation education has endured for all these years.
You continue Nano Nagle’s mission every time you encourage a struggling student, challenge someone to do better, restore confidence after failure or help a child discover gifts they never knew they possessed. You may never realise the full impact of those moments, but God does.
Jesus speaks of the yeast hidden in the dough. It disappears from view yet transforms everything around it.
That is a wonderful image for a Christian teacher.
Most of your finest work will never attract headlines. It happens in conversations after class, in patient explanations, in quiet acts of kindness, in expectations held with love. Years from now, your students may not remember every lesson you taught, but they will remember how you made them feel. They will remember whether someone believed in them.
That is how the Kingdom grows.
As we acknowledge the anniversary of the foundation of the Presentation Sisters and the commencement of their mission in Tasmania, we do not look backwards with nostalgia. We look forwards with gratitude and hope. The needs of young people have changed, but their deepest longing has not. They still need truth. They still need hope. They still need adults whose lives point towards Christ.
In this Eucharist we ask the Lord to renew the dream that began in Cork 250 years ago. We ask him to make us a light for those entrusted to our care. We hear again his gentle promise that we are his own. Soon we shall be nourished with the Bread of Life, receiving Christ himself so that his life may shape ours. Then we shall leave this place strengthened to rise with fresh courage and continue the mission.
May the Venerable Nano Nagle intercede for us. May the Presentation Sisters who have served our schools inspire us by their example. May every child who passes through our classrooms discover not only knowledge, but the love of Christ.
Then the mustard seed will continue to grow, and the dream that God planted in the heart of Nano Nagle will continue to unfold here in Tasmania for generations to come.
Most Rev. Anthony J. Ireland
Archbishop of Hobart
27 July 2026