Liturgy

Community Mass

Thank you once again to students from Pilgrimage Program who once again showed great leadership in their preparation of our Community Liturgy this morning.

Next Friday, 27 May, the liturgy will be prepared by students in Year 10. We look forward to welcoming Year 10 families especially.

However, all families across the College are once again able to attend. Friday Community liturgy is always a joyful celebration for students, families and staff. Families are welcome to join us in the Chapel at 8:00, and then in the Circle of Friends café immediately after Mass.

Community Mass details:

College Chapel
Fridays in term time
Starts: 8:00am and concludes 8:30am

SACRAMENT PROGRAM

‘Family-focused, parish-based, Catholic school supported’

Parents of students in Years 3, 4 and 6

Students will be preparing for the sacrament of Reconciliation (Year 3), Holy Communion (Year 4) and Confirmation (Year 6). This time of preparation is joyfully shared by families, parishes and schools.

Sacraments are celebrated in parishes – usually the parish you consider your ‘home’ parish. It is important to ‘enrol’ in the parish program, even for families in Catholic schools, as parishes need to plan ahead for these events.

Enrolment details for parishes of Cottesloe/Mosman Park, City Beach, Doubleview and Subiaco may be found here.

Our Lady of the Rosary Parish in Doubleview advises that Fr Vincent Glynn will be talking to candidates enrolled in that parish next Friday, 20 May, at 10:00am.

To make arrangements for your child to celebrate the sacraments this year, contact the Parish Priest or Sacrament Coordinator in your own home parish.

If you would like further information about the Sacrament Program:

If your nearest parish is not listed, search the Archdiocesan website;
Contact Mary-Anne Lumley mary-anne.lumley@cewa.edu.au 08 9383 0513.

GOOD NEWS for the 6th Sunday of Easter

Have you noticed how many books, films, television and radio programs harken back to yesteryear? ‘Retrospectives’ are huge in the art world …Nostalgia is big business and we cannot get enough of it.

Nostalgia literarily means ‘a yearning for home’. And if our artistic tastes reveal anything about who we are at present, maybe the home we yearn for is where things are clearer, roles are more defined, accepted harmony is developed and discord and dissonance is avoided – at least in public.

In today's Gospel, Jesus says that as a result of our love for him and fidelity to his word, the Father will come and make a home with us. The image of God as homemaker is, sadly, not very developed in Christian spirituality, maybe because too many undomesticated men have had too much of the say for far too long! But this is an image that holds a lot for how and where we meet God.

The best homes are places where we relax because we are ourselves, we are known and we know the others with whom we live. (It's a common experience, for example, that when we have been out from our homes, as soon as we enter our front door we want to go to the loo.) There is something intimate and familiar about our home that enables us to relax on many levels as we turn the key. Home is an earthy place where we don't get away with much and our vulnerability can be on display. Christian homes are particularly hospitable places, where Christ dwells in them to the degree that dignity, love and forgiveness are present.

A home, however, is more than a house in which people live. Homes need work and attention. A friend of mine says memories rarely just happen, they need to be created. That's the sort of attention to a family's life that turns a house into a home.

And this is the world in which God enters our lives. God wants us to be relaxed and vulnerable in God’s presence. We don't need to put on a show or say what we think God wants to hear, that's a theatre where we preform, not a home where we know each other. Easter faith is about being comfortable and intimate, about being who we are, rather than the persona we would prefer God to see.

As with most of our homes, being at home with God has its ups and downs, days when we think we cannot bear to stay one more moment, other days where we could never imagine being anywhere else and then most days where we are neither up nor down and we just get on with the routine of our lives. God the homemaker remains faithful through it all, offering the gift of Easter peace, sending us out to proclaim Christ's Kingdom, welcoming us home eager to learn how everything went and reassuring us always that while God is at home with us our hearts should never be troubled and we are not to be afraid.

For Christians, nostalgia is not about living in the past, it is about yearning for the sort of home where our heart truly is.

The reflection for this Sunday’s Gospel is by Jesuit priest, Fr Richard Leonard. Fr Richard 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.