Living with Strength and Kindliness

What will guide our decision making and actions in 2023? 

Kildare Ministries Value - Courage 

 In 2023 we will be given the opportunity to revisit the Kildare Ministry Value of Courage. The Living Justice Living Peace Charter invites us to work for justice, acknowledging that it is often difficult and complex to do so. It is obvious in the world around us that society protects the privileged. In 2023 we are invited to move against this tide to place our focus on those who need our attention the most.  

Being courageous will mean that we will need to be discerning and resilient. We will need to speak and act with integrity. We must ask ourselves constantly how our actions might be able to disrupt patterns of injustice, how we can work to bring about change, how we can be a force of change for the environment and what ways we can seek out and listen to the marginalised? 

St Joseph’s College Theme for 2023 

Our Senior School Student Captains have prepared our theme for us. It is:   

Be  Brave! Let the little things be stepping stones for growth. 

One of our senior student leaders explains what the theme means below:

….it’s the process to get to where you want to be. The idea  "little things" makes me think about how it’s not always the heroic and big actions that make the difference,  it’s the little actions that we do repeatedly that contribute to the outcome. I believe the "stepping stones" are a visual representation of the journey and process to achieve your goals and taking one step at a time to benefit the future. I believe growth relates to courage as growth comes from courage. To grow you must be courageous. For example, I portrayed courage when I delivered my speech in front of the year levels for my leadership role, and because I showed courage then it meant I grew as a person, as I stepped out of my comfort zone, I was courageous. I invite all of our school community to do the same….. 

Our new theme banner will be ready by the commencement of the 2023 school year and will be designed by Zoe Hickey in Year 11. 

A new theme for the Diocese of Sandhurst too! 

Across the whole of the Diocese of Sandhurst, through the 2023 theme, you are invited to 'let the words you speak always be full of grace' which continues to draw on the 2022 theme of 'Tell the Good News' in which we have been challenged to go out and share the good news of the Gospel. The theme comes from Colossians 4:6 and is drawn from a longer piece of scripture that encourages us to walk with wisdom and courage for the common good. Here we find an overarching concept for this theme which is Dialogue.  

To let your speech be full of grace and seasoned with salt is to speak the truth in love, by being mindful that words have the power to break or connect communities. 

"If there is one word that we should never tire of repeating, it is this: dialogue. We are called to promote a culture of dialogue by every possible means and thus to rebuild the fabric of society.”  Pope Francis - address upon receiving the Charlemagne Prize, May 6, 2016. 

Kirrilee Westblade 

Catholic Identity Leader