Good morning, Father Rector, Mrs Smith, Mr Walker, staff, invited guests and students. Congratulations to those who have been named today as our College leaders for the next 12 months. Your recognition by your peers and your teachers is a credit to the qualities you have displayed as students at Riverview—not just in recent months, but throughout your time at our Jesuit school. We pray that you will lead us well and in a manner that is aligned with our essential identity as a Catholic school. 

For those who may be disappointed that their name has not been called today, have hope. Your time will come. You are young men and you have so much in front of you. This is not your last opportunity to lead. It was only the first. At the entrance to Centre Court at Wimbledon – the best tennis tournament in the world - there is a line from one of Rudyard Kipling's works, perhaps his most famous poem, If. It offers sage advice for those who have had their names called today and for those you have not. It says, "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same." 

Rudyard Kipling was a British writer and poet of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, best known for works such as The Jungle Book and Kim. His writing often explored courage, duty, self-command, adventure, empire, loss and resilience. Though his legacy is complex because of the context that he lived in, Kipling remains one of the most widely remembered English-language writers of his age. If— is a beautiful poem. Kipling wrote it for his son, John, who would later die in the Great War of 1914 to 1918. In the poem, Kipling offers his son guidance for life: how to grow into a healthy manhood, how to meet success and failure with steadiness, and how to find peace in a world that will not always be fair nor easy. 

Fathers have this role in the lives of their sons. We seek to love and nurture our sons who carry the best of us, but who (we hope) don't reflect our worst. We desire for our sons both meaning and happiness. Our natural protective instincts for our sons must be consciously let go of as they grow into manhood. We let them go into the world, trusting in God that we have prepared them well for the inevitable triumphs and disasters of their lives. As we approach Father's Day, you might take an opportunity to ask your Dad or a father figure in your life about triumph and disaster in his life and what he learned from both experiences. 

I'll finish with Kipling's poem: 

If you can keep your head when all about you 

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, 

 If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, 

But make allowance for their doubting too; 

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, 

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,  

Or being hated, don't give way to hating, 

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise: 

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; 

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; 

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster 

And treat those two impostors just the same; 

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken 

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, 

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools: 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings 

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, 

And lose, and start again at your beginnings 

And never breathe a word about your loss; 

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew 

To serve your turn long after they are gone, 

And so hold on when there is nothing in you 

Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!' 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, 

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, 

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, 

If all men count with you, but none too much; 

If you can fill the unforgiving minute 

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, 

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, 

And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!