Open My Eyes by Andrew Chinn (St Catherine of Siena, living our faith, recessional)
Inspired by the words of St Catherine of Siena, “open my mind’s eye”, this song was written with the staff and students of St Catherine’s College in Singleton, NSW, a large school with students from Kindergarten to Year 12 in 2011.
The song has long been a favourite of Peta Bryan, now the principal at St Rita's, South Johnstone, QLD, in the Cairns Diocese. Her students have sung the song in eisteddfods and so, when I visited in 2024, we had the chance to record this video.
In writing the song I worked with students as young as ten and as old as eighteen. We looked at our “opening” to God as a progression: verse one focuses on learning and faith development, verse two on faith inspiring us to be all we can be, and verse three on faith calling us to move beyond our borders to make a difference in and to our world.
The song has a rocky feel and was written with the idea in mind that a secondary band of some sort could lead the playing at a whole school Mass or gathering. Certainly a recessional, but also a song about Christian action. Our faith calls us to “do” as well as “be”.
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