I love Assemblies at St Catherine’s. The steady stream of students moving as one from all parts of the campus; the bottle neck that invariably occurs at the entrance; the call to attention by the School Captains; the formal procession of the platform party to their seats and the silence that descends upon the space as hundreds of young people settle into their chairs and into the moment.

There’s always a musical item; an address by School leaders and the singing of the Australian National Anthem. Sometimes we watch a video put to music by the rowers or listen to a speech given by a guest speaker. Week in, week out, it’s all over in around 40 minutes, but there’s no doubting the importance of nurturing the ties that bind us in community; the esprit de corp that helps each member make sense of their place within the larger whole. And this was especially true of our Anzac Day Assembly on Monday which was rightly imbued with a sense of gravitas and solemnity, against a backdrop of impending silence…

Truth is, we are rarely silent anymore. For anything or anyone. Emails, snaps, posts, stories, reels and phone calls are announced in a cacophony of reoccurring notifications whilst Spotify invariably provides the carefully curated soundtrack to our daily lives as we walk, study, drive and exercise. And I think that’s a great pity because the power of silence can cause the hairs on your arms to stand on end; a lump of emotion to form in your throat and tears to well in your eyes (as anyone who’s been to an Anzac Day football match at the MCG will attest). Standing in silence invites reflection on the things that matter, as opposed to the notifications about things that largely, do not.  The Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton put it perfectly when he wrote, “merely living in the midst of others, does not guarantee that we live in communion with them or even in communication with them; to live in the midst of others sharing nothing but the common noise and the general distraction isolates a man in the worst way…”

Service matters. Loss matters. War matters. Peace matters. Nationhood matters. Ritual matters.

The origins of this Anzac Day ritual belong to Edward George Honey, a Melbourne journalist and World War I veteran, who was living in London in 1919. Honey wrote a rather beautiful letter that was published in the London Evening News that suggested commemorating Armistice Day through a brief but solemn ceremony which included a pause of silence for 5 minutes to honour the service and sacrifice of those who had died during World War I:

And this is what he asked for: “Five little minutes only. Five silent minutes of national remembrance. A very sacred intercession. Communion with the Glorious Dead who won us peace, and, from the communion, new strength, hope and faith in the morrow. Church services, too, if you will, but in the street, the home, the theatre, anywhere, indeed, where [we] might chance to be. Surely in these five minutes of bitter-sweet silence there will be service enough…”

At St Catherine’s we take our contribution to a good society seriously, and we have had many opportunities to reflect on service this week, not least through the contribution made by Third Officer Margaret Darling AM WRANS (Anderson ’39), a Nil Magnum recipient who cracked codes for the Allied forces during the war and in doing so, changed the trajectory of WWII. The Principal’s Study runs adjacent to the Nil Magnum wall where the photographs of exceptional Old Girls form a Wall of Honor and it is a salient reminder that being part of a community demands conscious participation, a shared sense of purpose and a deep desire to contribute to something bigger than oneself.

And with a mere twenty-four hours before the sun rises on a new year, I’d like to take this opportunity to wish Lady Southy AC, the embodiment of grace, humility, hard work and service, a very happy 97^th birthday!

Nil Magnum Nisi Bonum