To the Children of St. Joseph’s, virtue is the first word in our being. Knowledge was not a collection of facts but a path towards justice and righteousness. We were taught to believe in justice as being the right thing to do by our aggrieved fellow humans whom we associated. The knowledge we gathered was a catharsis of truth and compassion.

by Dr. Ruwantissa Abeyratne

( July 7, 2016, Montreal, Sri Lanka Guardian) July is a special month for St. Joseph in Sri Lanka. It is a well-known fact that there are two major catholic schools in Sri Lanka, both in Colombo – St. Joseph’s College and St. Peter’s College. St. Joseph’s was established much earlier than its sister school, which was born as a result of the vision of Father Maurice le Goc, Rector of St. Joseph’s who, in 1921 decided to establish a branch of St. Joseph’s elsewhere in Colombo, mainly to accommodate the number of students who could not all be accommodated then at St. Joseph’s. Thus was born St. Joseph’s Colombo South, as it then was called, which is now called St. Peter’s College. Work started on 7 th of July 1921 carried under the supervision of Mr. J. R. J. Jayasuriya, an old boy of St. Joseph ‘s College. In December that year Fr. Le Goc had confidently announced at the Josephian prize giving, that St. Joseph ‘s College South will be open in January, 1922. The rest is history. St. Peters College bloomed and became a leading light in education which it remains to this day.

The month of July is very significant to both Josephians and Peterites as it was during that month that an inextricable bond was formed between the two great schools. We became brothers in Christian values and aspired for the highest standards of moral turpitude. However, we are all children of St. Joseph, irrespective of whether we attended St. Joseph’s College or not, and irrespective of our religious beliefs, nationality, race or colour, because of who St. Joseph was. He was initially the patron saint of Mexico, Canada and Belgium, until in 1870, he was declared patron of the universal church by Pope Pius IX, and in 1955 Pope Pius XII established May 1 as the “Feast of St. Joseph the Worker” to counter the Communists’ May Day.

St. Joseph is also the patron saint of the family and the afflicted. Perhaps more importantly, he is the patron saint of the new world. He was a compassionate and caring man, a man of virtue, but not of material wealth. When he took Jesus to the Temple to be circumcised and Mary to be purified he offered the sacrifice of two turtledoves or a pair of pigeons, allowed only for those who could not afford a lamb (Luke 2:24). We are all workers, members of our families and prone to affliction and mortality. We are responsible for the wellbeing of the new world and the Anthropocene. To emulate St. Joseph we must be more: we must be humble and compassionate as he was.

We attended school under the inspiring umbrella of learning St. Joseph’s offered us so that we could become virtuous and productive citizens. We attended school, to savour the fruits of virtue and of knowledge so that we could be the champions of peace and power which would eventually give prosperity to all. A handpicked faculty and staff went through our curriculum with diligence worthy of a crucible of tradition which taught us that the most important purpose of education was not to attain heights of glory, but to face difficult situations with fortitude. We were taught that the challenges we faced were fearsome, but so were our strengths. The voice of St. Joseph resonated not the misery caused by the events of 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina but by the little voice in our head which said we must go on after these tragedies, do the right thing, and help those in need. We realized that depth of the heart could not be taught intellectually. It could not be emailed or tweeted.

To the Children of St. Joseph’s, virtue is the first word in our being. Knowledge was not a collection of facts but a path towards justice and righteousness. We were taught to believe in justice as being the right thing to do by our aggrieved fellow humans whom we associated. The knowledge we gathered was a catharsis of truth and compassion. They resonated the fundamental truth of social justice: that without truth, justice cannot prevail, and without respect and compassion, morality cannot prevail. Our learning at St. Joseph’s reflected that social justice is about respect for human rights and dignity and that a government’s authority came from the will of the people.

The most important pearl of wisdom bestowed on us was that we must act according to a conscience that makes us comport with an autonomous code of conduct and ethics we give ourselves, interpret or declare. We must interpret the law according to our conscience and not make it or initiate it. We were made to believe in the liberty of the individual, in equal rights for all citizens regardless of race, colour, religion, creed or political belief, and in their inalienable right to participate by means of free and democratic political processes in framing the society in which they live.

At a time when our school was threatened with an arbitrary and capricious takeover by the government of the day, we resisted and won, on the fundamental premise of our school that the guarantees for personal freedom under the law is the common heritage of every Sri Lankan. We believed steadfastly in the liberty of the individual, and in the individual’s inalienable right to participate by means of free and democratic political processes in framing the society in which we lived. Our lives were shaped to become a harmonious blend of empathy and compassion flavoured with the inevitable elements of law and justice; equity and compassion.

We were taught the inexorable values of St. Joseph: that we must have a clear understanding of what is moral and the right thing to do. We were directed to act categorically and not consequentially in not treating the individual as a means but an end, and that the overall public interest in good governance is now a common feature in the modern state, and is not restricted to the academics and practitioners who bore the burden of evaluating governance in the past.

St. Joseph stood for four things, according to the scriptures: Humility – the moral virtue that keeps a person from reaching beyond himself; Chastity – the essence of virtue which we, the children of St. Joseph now stand for; Prudence – to take decisions under advisement and to judge correctly and abide by one’s moral dicta in accordance with the purpose of the act rather than its consequence; and Love for family – which is entrenched in the enduring value of always being there for our spouses and children. This should be the gospel of al of us – the children of St. Joseph.

The author is a former senior official at the United Nations and is currently an aviation consultant and visiting professor of air law and policy at McGill Universit