Liturgy

Community Liturgy

We are thrilled to advise that next Friday we are able to resume our community celebration of the Eucharist in our College Chapel. Our Year 12 students will be preparing that Liturgy for the College community. The College celebration of the Eucharist will align with Archdiocesan guidelines, prepared in accordance with the State Government Phase-3 Roadmap.

Thank you to the students in Year 11, as well as those in the choir, who arrived at school very early this morning to prepare a Liturgy of the Word for the feast of Corpus Christi. The short Liturgy of the Word is available below.

SACRAMENT PROGRAM

Phase-3 – Important update for students in Years 3 and 4

Good news! The Archbishop has advised that “the celebration of First Reconciliation (school-aged children) and First Holy Communion (school-aged children) may recommence.”

What does this mean for my child in Year 3 or 4?

The students have completed the required units of work in the Religion curriculum, and will be receiving a certificate from the College. Parents need to enroll their children in their parish Sacrament Program, as soon as possible.

I thought the parish program was only for students in non-Catholic schools?

All parishes require parents to enroll their children to celebrate the sacraments of First Reconciliation or First communion.

So I need to enroll in the parish even if my child is not attending classes?

Yes, that is correct.

What will I need when I enoll?

You will need the Baptism certificate of your child. You will also need the certification from the College that your child has completed the required unit of work in the Religion curriculum.

I have a child in Year 6: will there be Confirmation this year?

The Archbishop has advised “Confirmation (school-aged children) remains temporarily suspended.” We will advise parents as updates become available. In the meantime, you are advised to enroll in your parish.

I need more information; where can I get it?

See below for updates provided by some of our ‘local’ parishes;
If your nearest parish is not listed, search the Archdiocesan website;
Check the information available on the College website link for the sacrament info.
Contact Mary-Anne Lumley mary-anne.lumley@cew.edu.au 08 9383 0513

Updates from local parishes

STAR OF THE SEA, COTTESLOE

Reconciliation 20 June 11:00am

First Communion 2 August 10:00am

Contact: cottesloe@perthcatholic.org.au

SAINT THOMAS APOSTLE, CLAREMONT

Reconciliation 28-29 October 3:30-5pm

Contact: silvia.kinder@cewa.edu.au

OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY, DOUBLEVIEW

Reconciliation 24 October

First Communion 19 September

Contact: Kaye Shervington, doubleview@perthcatholic.org.au

OUR LADY OF GRACE, NORTH BEACH

Reconciliation 27 October

Contact: Sheralee Allen, north.beach@perthcatholic.org.au

IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY, SCARBOROUGH

Reconciliation To be advised

First Communion 23 August

Contact: Fr Grant Goddard, scarborough@perthcatholic.org.au 08 9341 1124

SAINT CECILIA, FLOREAT

Contact: Rita Morgan, floreat@perthcatholic.org.au

ST JOSEPH, SUBIACO

Contact: sacraments@stjosephssubiaco.org.au

HOLY SPIRIT, CITY BEACH

Contact: delattrecn@yahoo.fr or phone Parish Priest, Fr Emmanual-tv Dimobi, 08 93413131.

GOOD NEWS for the feast of Corpus Christi

The reflection for this Sunday’s Gospel is a homily by Jesuit priest, Fr Richard Leonard. Fr Richard Leonard SJ is the Director of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting, is a member of the Australian Catholic Media Council and is author of Preaching to the Converted, Paulist Press, New York, 2006.

Some years ago, Pope John Paul II went to Lima, Peru. There he was met by a massive crowd of two million people. Instead of the usual greetings from the President and the Cardinal, two people from a shantytown stepped forward to the microphone. Their names were Irene and Viktor Charo. As the huge crowd went quiet, they begin to speak to the Pope.

‘Holy Father, we are hungry, we are sick, we lack work, our children die before their time. Yet we believe, Holy Father, we believe in the God of life. And we hunger for bread.’ Before a hushed crowd, the Pope replied in his best Spanish. ‘You tell me you hunger for bread.’

‘Yes, yes’, the millions yelled in reply.

‘You tell me you hunger for God’, said the Pope and again the crowd swelled with an emphatic

‘Yes! Yes!’

‘I want this hunger for God to remain; I want your hunger for bread to be satisfied.’

The Pope then turned to the generals and the wealthy politicians gathered there – many of them devout Catholics – and said very starkly, ‘I won't simply say share what you have. I will say give it back. Give it back – it belongs to the poor.’

As extraordinary as the Pope's words were that day, Jesus' words about the Eucharist in today's Gospel are even more so. In the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel many people were so horrified by the claims Jesus makes for the reality of his presence in the Eucharist, they stopped following him. John clearly links Jesus giving himself for the sake of God's kingdom and our redemption, with the communion we share with Him in every Mass.

When we receive the Risen Christ in communion it's not a symbol of his presence or a sign of his life to which we say ‘Amen’. It is Christ who hosts us, who gives us himself so that we might be transformed into His image and likeness. In modern language Christ says to us at every Mass, ‘Here I am, broken and poured out in love for you. Take me. I'm here for you.’

The danger with all gifts, and most especially with this gift, is that we can think it’s just for us, an intimate moment between each of us and Christ. It is that, but it's also much more. St Augustine in a sermon on the Eucharist on 9th August 413 wrote that the Mass was about three things: goodness, unity and charity. Augustine taught that if we were not better people, working for unity and loving each other away from the Eucharist, it fails to achieve its purpose.

Hence, like the Pope in Peru, many people have linked the reception of the Bread of Life here with the giving of bread which sustains life away from here. On average in our world 26,000 die every day of starvation. John F Kennedy observed in 1961, ‘The only thing standing between us and the elimination of hunger is our desire to see it.’ We could feed all the world’s poor. We choose not to.

In a talk on the Eucharist, the then Jesuit General, Fr Pedro Arrupe said, ‘while there is hunger in the world then our Eucharists are incomplete’. By this he didn't mean that when we gather for Mass anything is wrong. Rather he meant that when we gather around this holy table for this sacred meal while people still starve in the world, then something vital is lacking. There's an emptiness.

Yet it’s an emptiness that invites us in. The God who comes to us at every Eucharist as real food is the same God that asks, ‘When I was hungry, did you feed me?’ This question says that just as God feeds us, so we too should and can feed each other.

May this feast of the Body and Blood of Christ give us the strength of our convictions. May the real food and drink we provide away from our sacred table prove to the world the power of the Eucharist to change us into a people that are good, unifying and loving. And may we not just share with the poor from our excesses, but give them back the food that is rightly theirs.