Names resounding

We welcome past editor of Madonna, Andrew Bullen, to join us as guest editor for this New Year issue. He has kindly allowed us to reproduce the speech he gave at the Valete Assembly at St Ignatius College, Riverview, in October 2005. May we all begin a new year rejoicing in our name, and in the name of God.

People's names: we will be hearing so many of them during this assembly. As the prizes are announced we will applaud, even cheer. Sometimes we will lean forward in expectation to hear the name of whoever has won a major prize. We will put a name, a face, a personality to this or that achievement. When the name is announced we will experience surprise, confirmation, delight.

The fact that people's names that matter was made powerfully clear to me recently. I was fortunate to go to New York for a special gathering and dinner to celebrate Riverview's 125th anniversary with the old boys who presently live in North America. Just before I left, I realised that I would arrive in New York two days before the eleventh of September, the fourth anniversary of that day when the terrorist attack brought the immense towers of the World Trade Centre crashing to the ground.

So, on the Sunday, after attending an early Mass in the Jesuit church on the upper East Side of Manhattan, I took the subway southwards to the Fulton Street station. Up the stairs and a left turn brought into view St Paul's, Manhattan's oldest church and the parish church for the area. Then at the end of the street, amid the high walls of the surviving skyscrapers, a vast emptiness reaching far into the sky, a sky as fresh and as blue as it was that day four years ago.

Ground Zero, 9/11 plus 4, is a huge space, certainly as large as the grounds of Riverview, or imagine the length of Martin Place squared. A large and loose crowd strung itself along the perimeter fence. People milled around or stood close looking through the fence downwards into the enormous pit: all the rubble and twisted steel has been taken away to leave the bare original rock where the foundations used to be. Some people had threaded flowers, usually roses, into the fence, or fixed a photo there. Some were clinging to it themselves, some were crying, and many were very still.

A ceremony of remembrance had been under way since dawn. By now the names of the dead were being read out, this year by the brothers and sisters of the victims. At mid-morning they had reached those names whose surnames began with 'H'. A voice would slowly read out four or five names, and finish with the name of their own loved one, adding maybe a special phrase—'Love you Tommy', 'Dad, who died this year, is with you now'; or 'Stacey, we know you're in God's hands'—for Americans are more open than ourselves about expressing their religion in public.

People were also walking around the full perimeter of the site, so I did so too. Going slowly, partly because of the crowd, and partly because taking it slowly was the right way to do it, this clockwise pilgrimage took about an hour.

From time to time we had to detour behind a nearby building, and so lost contact with the voice giving out the names, but that is what we turned back to, that is what told us we were part of what was happening. The simple voicing through the loudspeakers of the names of the dead filled up the huge space, high into the bright air. By the time I got back to the Fulton Street spot, they had reached the 'M's.

Sometimes voicing a person's name is all that can or should be done. When a name is spoken with love, especially grieving love, slow and restrained as was the case here, the person is made present, is honoured and celebrated. Sometimes the best way to counteract terrible acts like those of 9/11 is to name and honour the victims. Sometimes just commending a name to God is the best possible way of praying somebody into the love of God.

In our own modest and more buoyant way at Riverview, our Valete celebrations are rich in names. We honour and celebrate the names of many of the Year 12s in this assembly. Later, at the Blue and White Ball, each Year 12 student has his name announced for his own cheering moment in the spotlight, and that's how it should be.

A day later, we gather for a final Mass, when the names become blessings, and we call on our God by name. Names resonating everywhere, high in the bright air.