Above the sandstone heart of the College, a familiar figure has watched over generations of Joe-Boys. The statue of Mary, luminous against the night sky, is a symbol of constancy, faith and guidance. For some, it has even served as a literal beacon
Br Michael Green fms, Marist Brothers Community Leader
You may well be forgiven for dismissing it as an urban myth … but a conversation with a commercial pilot earlier this year seemed to verify the claim that the statue of Mary sitting atop the College’s Main Building – as it has done since 1904, well before any notion of aeroplanes or flight-paths – serves to this day as a navigational beacon for pilots on approach to Mascot. This is so especially at night when, amid the dazzling display of the Sydney skyline, the statue is steadily and strongly lit. A sure light among many diverting ones.
Nervous flyers would hope that other technology is involved. There is, nonetheless, some poetic punch in the idea of Mary providing guidance and assurance to the many thousands of travellers who cross the airspace above the College each day.
As she does for those of us on the ground below. Each day.
There are other contributions that the famous statue is supposed to have made that are well and truly within the realm of fantasy – such as the claim that in a 1981 game against The Scots College, with the First XV trailing on the scoreboard for most of the second half, the incessant chant of “never give up” resounding from the pavilion, the full-time siren sounding – it was at that moment the statue turned 180 degrees just as fly-half Peter Tonkin took a shot at drop goal, and got it, giving Joeys a memorable win and a premiership in the centenary year. All true except for the turning statue. I was there.
There need be nothing fantastical or fanciful about Mary’s role within the Joeys community. Indeed, there is nothing more real or grounded. In starting a movement they called “Marist” (a contraction of “Mary-ist”), Saint Marcellin and his co-founders took Mary as their model for how to be Christian disciples.
Their emphasis was not essentially devotional in the sense of honouring or revering Mary; rather it was imitational. They wanted, as they put it, to “live Mary’s spirit”; to “think, judge, feel and act as Mary”. To be Marist for them was to be, like Mary, people of humility before God, filled with God, joyful and ready to bring that joy to others. People who could say yes to life’s challenges with hope and resilience, be inclusive and hospitable to all, work for a humanity shaped by justice and peace, fairness and fidelity. That was the Marian way.
As a Marist school, St Joseph’s College aspires to graduate men who can be all of that.
My late mother was not alone among Catholics of her generation in wanting “Hail Queen of Heaven” as the recessional at her funeral Mass. We honoured her wish. In that liturgical hit of another time, Mary is called “Star of the Sea”, who is a “guide for wanderers here below” – for us who are “thrown on life’s surge”. A wonderful phrase, that, for life is so often such a long way from being calm and steady.
As we crest the Gladesville Bridge at night and glance across at the white-lit statue, or from wherever we see it, it is well for us to be reminded of what Mary guides us to be, what it means to be Marist. To stay on course, to come safe home.
Published in Joeys 2025.
