Dr Ho, Mr. Lee, Chairman of the PTA, Mr. Li, Alumni Manager of the IMC, honoured guests, Principal Ho, Principal Ng, teachers, parents, and graduates,
Welcome to Maryknoll Fathers’ School’s 2022 graduation ceremony.
It is a great honour and privilege to have Dr Ho Hui Fai as our officiating guest today. I am sure that you have had heard of Dr Ho’s remarkable work as Head of Queen Elizabeth Hospital’s Accident and Emergency Department in chaperoning medical specialists to handle the many calamities HK experienced over the years, the latest being the battle against the 5th COVID-19 wave, saving and minding lives under immense pressure and hardships.
Dr Ho has a distinguished career as a medical doctor, but as or even more important, is the compassion and dedication he demonstrated when practicing his vocation - balancing technical, ethical, regulatory, and humanistic issues when dealing with life and death in split seconds, a task that impacts patients and their families, and equally as consequential, the morale and solidarity needed of multi-disciplinary professionals to continue with their noble undertakings.
We are blessed to have Dr Ho with us today as an accomplished medical professional and most dearly, on the eve of our 65th anniversary, an alumnus of the school.
The school will be celebrating its 65th anniversary on September 26. When the school was founded in 1957, Hong Kong was amid a humanitarian crisis, when tens of thousands of refugees swamped into the territory looking for a safe and a better place to live a life they aspire to. The Maryknoll Fathers was commissioned by the diocese to care for the destitute populace in eastern Kowloon – an area stretching from Sham Shui Po to Kwun Tong, a long stretch of barren land at the time. This generation of students, who have not experienced war and its destructions, would not comprehend the poverty and anguish a refugee would experience. And understandably, they would not feel nor appreciate the immense efforts the Fathers put in to provide for the many welfares in the area in 1950’s and 60’s, when it was impoverished and crowded with delipidating sheds with no amenities. But their parents and grand-parents, especially those who lived and grew up in the area, would remember the remarkable work the Fathers did for them – supplying food, setting up work shelters and health care centres, founding churches and parishes, and building schools. The Fathers healed physical and spiritual distresses and gave hope in those times of deprivation and distress, much alike the work done by today’s healthcare workers in fighting the pandemic, working in collaboration, with diligence, and above all compassion.
Maryknoll Fathers’ School is the first of the 20+ schools founded by Maryknoll Fathers in Hong Kong and the city’s first government aided school. The school was established to give education to those living in wooden sheds or subdivided flats, to those who could not afford education, to give hope that they and their young will have a better future.
Dear graduates, you have spent 6 years at the school, 12 if you came from the primary section. I hope that in these formative years, we have through our classroom teaching and extra-curricular activities, instilled in you the school’s mission and vision that will lay the foundation in your life journey ahead. Let me reiterate them now:
Our Mission: To enhance students’ holistic growth and development in accordance with Christian values.
Our Vision: To pursue wisdom and honesty in our search for knowledge. To be loyal and faithful to our country, our society, our family, and our school.
Dr Ho is an outstanding example of the generations of our graduates who have lived up to the school’s mission and vision, who have excelled in life’s journey through working hard with tenacity and dedication. We dare not claim credit in contributing to their successes, but we are proud and gratified to be associated with their example of diligence, perseverance, motivation, continuous quest for knowledge and advancement; and most galvanizingly, their example of love and service to society.
I hope you too will make the school proud in the years to come as you pursue life with ongoing quest for self-enrichment and serve society with charity and integrity. You may not become a doctor like Dr Ho but there are many other ways for you to live up to the school’s motto of Truth and Loyalty.
I would like to give you an example of what it means to be a virtuous alumnus. In April, as the school was planning resumption of face-to-face classes, a 2014 graduate approached us to donate RAT test kits to students who may not be able to afford them. I am very enheartened by his kind act, not for the monetary donation but for the heart-warming meaning behind it. He isn’t from a well-off family. He has built his business with back breaking entrepreneurship, and yet he readily shares his hard-earned income with those who are more in need. He has truly lived up to the Maryknoll spirit of “To love is to serve”.
Dear graduates, congratulations! Graduation from high school marks your departure from a protected and ushered environment to enter the open field of dream chasing. Chase your dreams. Do so with finding a meaningful purpose and passion. Be prepared for hardships and hard work. Acquire new knowledge and skills at every opportunity. Don’t be complacent. Never stop trying. And above all, be guided by Truth and Loyalty, love and serve.
I wish you success, fulfilment, and happiness. May the Lord guide and protect you at all times!
Agnes G. Yeh
Supervisor
