Faith and Mission

Last term some Year 11 and Year 12 students and leaders attended the JDF Seminar with our fellow KEM Colleges. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, this seminar was attended remotely but it was still quite engaging and enabled students to work with fellow students from other KEM schools in online workshops. Over the next few weeks we will hear from these students about their learnings from the JDF Seminar.

Compassion has a range of definitions. (Religious, dictionary, Caritas, student definitions etc)

The major focus of the seminar was Compassion. 

Compassion comes from the Latin and Greek to mean ‘to suffer with’. Compassion can mean different things for everyone which was evident throughout the seminar. Students from different schools had different definitions and ideas on what compassion is but mainly compassion was seen as helping one another and having sympathy.  

By the dictionary definition, compassion is defined as having ‘sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others’, which can also be described as empathy. 

In religious terms, compassion has a deeper meaning than just material or physical things. Compassion is concerned with the human spirit and soul and alleviating the suffering of others. This act of compassion can be seen within the acts of Jesus Christ and the passion narrative. 

Compassion is an act we can practice in everyday life, whether it be giving up your seat for a pregnant woman to helping your friend with a task. It can take many forms and we are encouraged through the Catholic Christian tradition to ‘be kind and compassionate to another’’ (Ephesians 4:32).  Shayal Nair

Examples of acts of compassion in our school, local community and the world.

At Marian, the students are often engaging in acts of compassion to better the environment around them. From larger scale acts such as the events and activities held by LEOs and JDF, mainly focusing on social justice awareness as a collective, to smaller acts between individual students/teachers like simple greetings and helping one another with any issues. 

Within the local community, our clubs like LEOs extends to the Brimbank LEOs and Sunshine Lions, further acting upon the Clubs’ mission of improving the welfare of the disadvantaged, promoting good morals and principles etc. In addition, our community in Brimbank is also showing compassion towards the earth by spreading awareness about our impact on the environment and educating the community about ways to improve our lifestyles to better the world around us. 

Our world at present is particularly in need of compassionate acts. People worldwide have been supporting each other through the past couple of years, through the pandemic, through the Black Lives Matter movement, and most recently through the dispute between Russia and Ukraine. People have banded together to protest, donate and to support one another in times of need, reinforcing the importance of being kind and understanding to help us all get through difficulties. Avelynn Chng