My lord bishop, Ven. Archdeacon, Fr. Chaplain, Eminent Members of the Board of Governors, Mr. Nahil Wijesuriya, Members of the College Executive Council, College Management Team, Staff, Members of the School Officers’ Guild and My Dear Trinitians.
I have spent a good part of my life finding words for other people’s occasions — for assemblies, for funerals, for prize-giving, for boys who needed a blessing before an exam or a rugby final. I always assumed that when my own turn came, the words would be waiting for me, patient, in some corner of the heart. They were not. I have rewritten this address more times than I care to admit, and I stand before you this morning still not entirely certain I have found them. So, I ask your patience. Let me simply speak, plainly and slowly, as a man ought to speak when he is handing something precious into other hands.
There is a line in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam that has come to my mind more often than I expected these past weeks: “Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight.” Every leader wakes, one morning, to find that his night is over, whether he is ready for it or not. Mine has come. So let me use what light remains to me this morning to share some personal musings.
On being given a singular grace
I came to this Hall first as a boy, in a tie too big for me, terrified of the Principal and in awe of the Chapel bell. I did not know, then, what it would mean to belong to Trinity. I certainly never imagined that the same boy, grown old, greying and vowed to God, would one day be entrusted with the mantle of leadership. To walk from student to custodian of your alma mater is a grace given to very few men in any generation, and I have never — not once, in five years and ten months — stopped being overwhelmed by it.
Our own College Song confesses, of those who have left this Hill, that “though long we’ve missed the sight of her, our hearts may not forget.” It is a tender line, and a true one, for most who wear the Red – Gold – Blue. But I must confess to something different this morning, and I hope you will forgive the immodesty of it: I have not missed the sight of Trinity, because I have never had to. I have always kept sight of Trinity — through every window in my office and bungalow, on every walk across these sacred grounds, in every face in this Hall — close enough to touch. That has been the particular mercy of this office. Most old boys must carry Trinity in memory alone. I have been permitted, for five years and ten months, to carry her in the flesh – embodied.
Every single morning, from the 1st of October 2020 to this day, I have woken up half in disbelief that Trinity was mine to serve. I say this not to speak of myself, but to speak of what this office is: TRUST, held briefly, on behalf of something far nobler and far more enduring than any one custodian. I was never the owner of this school. I was only her servant for a season. That is the truth every man who has stood where I now stand must eventually learn, and it is the truth I hand on to all of you, young Trinitians.
What we built, and what we mended
If you ask me what I will carry with me above everything else, it is the restoration of our Chapel. That building has heard more prayers, more supplications, more trembling voices asking God for courage, than any of us will ever fully know. To have had a hand in giving her back her dignity — her murals restored, stones cleaned, her windows mended, her silence made whole again — will always remain, for me, the singular grace of this tenure. A school may build many things in a generation, but few are as sacred as the house of her worship, and I thank God I was permitted to tend to ours.
We have traversed together on many fronts. We ventured into initiatives, so that a Trinitian’s formation would never again be confined to a mark on a report card, but would reach toward skills, aesthetics, crafts, service, and the quiet disciplines that make a boy into a man of substance and quality. Only weeks ago, we watched a rugby season that reminded this Hill, in the oldest language this Hill knows, what courage and collaboration on the field can still do for a school’s soul — the very thing our own song means when it asks, of the stars and sounding vanities that half the crowd bewitch, “what are they but inanities, to him that treads the pitch?”
But I will not stand here and pretend these were years of ease, because you were there, and you know they were not. We navigated a pandemic that emptied this Hall — that silenced the bell, and scattered the boys, and left us to wonder, in the dark, whether the Trinity we knew would survive being apart from herself. We lived through social unrest, political chaos, natural disasters and global conflict. There were nights I did not know how Trinity would open her gates the following morning.
But she always did. And I want to be very clear with you this morning: that is not to my credit. That is Trinity’s own doing — a school that has never once, in all her long life, let the times decide who she is. We are the custodians of that endurance and resilience, not the authors of it. She was here before us. God willing, she will be here long after every one of us has gone to dust.
And of whatever small achievements I have named this morning, I hold them the way the Rubaiyat teaches a wise man to hold his own works: “The worldly hope men set their hearts upon turns ashes — or it prospers; and anon, like snow upon the desert’s dusty face, lighting a little hour or two — is gone.” A chapel restored, a court built, a season won, a plan implemented — these matters, and I do not pretend otherwise. But they are not why Trinity College endures. She endures because of something no custodian built, and no custodian can take credit for.
On the people who taught me
I did not carry this school alone, and I will not stand before you today and pretend that I did. Above everyone else, I want to thank you, the students who accepted a stranger as your mentor and guide, and who let me earn your trust slowly, the way trust ought to be earned and never simply given. I have met, in you, remarkable young men who challenged me far more than I ever challenged anyone, who asked me questions in a corridor that I carried into my prayer that same night, and who taught me more theology in five minutes of honest conversation than I learned in years of quiet formation. If I leave Trinity wiser than I entered it, it is because of you.
I thank the College Executive Council and the College Management Team, who carried out the weight of decisions that no outsider will ever see or thank them for. I thank the staff, who deserve better – these men and women, who “tanned the hide of us, our daily foes and friends — they shall not lose their pride of us, however the journey ends.” They are the true, quiet architects of every boy who leaves here formed, and not merely educated. The Parents, who trusted us to nurture their precious children, I thank our Old Boys, scattered now across every continent, who never once let me forget what this school can produce when she is given the chance. How can I overlook the magnanimity of that one man, my fellow Trinitian and friend, Mr. Nahil Wijesuriya for his unparalleled generosity towards our beloved alma mater. Friends, he deserves a standing ovation. I thank Rt. Rev. Bishop Nishantha Fernando and Bishop Dushantha Rodrigo for their fraternal cooperation. How can I ever forget the inspiration and example of Bishop Dhiloraj Canagasabey and Bishop Keerthisiri Fernando. The Board of Governors, who took the improbable step of trusting a Benedictine monk with a school, and who bore with me patiently.
I thank my spiritual family of the Sylvestro-Benedictine Order, who held me in prayer on the nights I could not hold myself, and who reminded me, again and again, that obedience is its own kind of love. And I thank my own parents, and my brother and his family, who taught me that service and sacrifice are the very same word, with different wrappings.
Why Trinity remains what she is
Trinity College will always stand a little apart from her times and seasons — not because she resists the world out of pride, but because she has refused, generation after generation, to trade her values – Integrity – Service – Excellence – Resilience – for notice and show. These are not words we print on banners for Founder’s Day and forget by the morrow. They are the only real inheritance we must hand a boy, when he walks, for the last time, through west entrance of the Chapel. Respice Finem — look to the end. Not the end of a term, or a trophy, or a term of office, but the end that truly matters: the man each boy becomes, and the account each of us must one day render for the life we were lent.
I think often, too, of another line from the Rubaiyat: “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on.” Time does not wait for any custodian, however dearly he loves his post, however unwilling he is to lay it down. And I think of Kahlil Gibran, writing of his own farewell to a people he had come to love, who said that parting is only “a moment of rest upon the wind” before the wind carries us onward to serve again. That is exactly how this morning feels to me. Not an ending. A moment of rest, before I am carried on to serve elsewhere by the Triune God the Creator.
Why I am going
I am a Trinitian, and it grieves me — genuinely, and more than I can easily say — to cease serving my alma mater. But while I was always a Trinitian, at a moment in my life, I was called to serve God’s Kingdom, and that beaconing, now asks me to move on. The Rubaiyat says of time, what I have found true of every custodianship: “The Bird of Time has but a little way to flutter — and the Bird is on the Wing.” My little way has been flown. Saint Paul wrote to the Philippians that he pressed on, forgetting what lay behind and straining toward what lay ahead, toward the prize of the call of God. That, more than any farewell speech I could compose, is the truest thing I can say to you this morning. I am not leaving Trinity behind. I am carrying her with me, folded into whatever comes next, the way a man carries the place that first taught him to pray.
To you my friends, who will continue to directly serve – Trinity is yours to love as she was once mine. I wish you every blessing that God can give a man entrusted with the souls of boys, and every grace besides. I promise you what I found to be true from my very first day: that this School will teach you far more than you will ever teach her. Serve her gently, and she will hold you up on the days you do not think you can hold yourself.
The school we handed on
Few lines in our College Song that I have found myself singing quietly, alone, more often than I expected to, in these last months. It speaks of dust returning to dust — and yet, it says, something remains that no dust can touch: “For though the dust that’s a part of us, to dust again be gone, yet here shall beat the heart of us, the School we handed on.”
That line has become, for me, the whole of what a custodianship is for. We are not given Trinity to keep. We are given her to hand on — a little more whole than we found her. I received Trinity College from a long line of illustrious men who loved her before I did, men whose names are carved into the same stones I have walked past a hundred times without properly thanking them. And today, I hand her over to all of you, exactly as she was handed to me: not as a possession, but as a TRUST.
To every boy sitting in this Hall this morning: whatever else the years take away from you, do not let them take this. Justice Janak De Silva once put it better than I ever could: “You are a Trinitian by make, and not by name.” One day it will be given to you, in whatever small or large way God asks of you, to hand this school — or some part of what she taught you — on to someone else. When that day comes, I pray you will remember that it was once handed to you with love, and hand it on the same way.
Though I will no longer walk the corridors each morning or address you from this podium, I will always keep sight of Trinity, wherever I am sent, for as long as I live. The school we handed on will remain – long after every voice in this Hall this morning has fallen silent – the HEART of us. God bless Trinity College. God bless every one of you.
Respice Finem.
Rev. Fr. Araliya Jayasundara OSB
07th August 2026
