Catholic Identity & Mission News
In Catholic Education Week in May this year, we started the process of updating our St Peter’s College prayer. Taking feedback, suggestions and inspiration from all our students, staff, focus groups on Mission and Identity, Liturgy, our School Advisory Committee and our Parish Priests on board, we set to drafting some new options for a College prayer. These were put to the vote with our focus groups, and I am pleased to announce that the following prayer was selected with the most amount of first round votes, and the most votes overall:
St Peter’s College Prayer
Dear Lord,
We give thanks that we belong to the community of St Peter’s College.
Bless all who work here and guide us so that we can be people of courage,
compassion and hope.
May we embody St Peter and ‘Be not afraid’ to live with integrity, seeing the good
in one another and caring for those in need.
Be with us as we learn each day and help us to make good choices for ourselves
and our world.
St Peter, pray for us.
Amen.
This is a prayer that reflects our gratitude for our College and all who are members of it. It asks for God’s blessing on our works of education so that they may bear fruits for our society when we live and act for the common good. Our patron Peter’s humanity and courage are acknowledged as is his optimism in humanity. We ask for God to be with us but recognise the gift of our agency – the ability to exercise our free will for ourselves and our wider world. It is a prayer that we hope will become a staple of petition, thanks and praise in the life of our College community and further, that it will inspire our lives of faith for many years to come.
On Friday night, August 7, the College hosted the return of the ‘annual’ Winter Sleepout - an awareness and fund-raising activity for St Vincent de Paul. We had great interest from nearly 50 students but only 13 ended up braving the cold weather and sleeping outdoors at school for the night. I suppose this shows that the thought of sleeping ‘rough’ is enough to put people off, so imagine if it was your reality! Nearly outnumbered by 12 amazing staff volunteers, the night was an incredible success for those who attended. We learned more about homelessness through a quiz and participated in a few activities including building a cardboard shelter with complications like bad weather, ‘theft’, being moved on by police etc. thrown in as real issues experienced by people experiencing homelessness. After reflection time and writing a note of support to a ‘streetie’ we’ll meet with on our Rosie’s evenings in the city, we settled down to watch a movie together before heading outside into the courtyard to sleep for the night. It was COLD but no-one complained. Instead, people did their best to get some rest despite traffic noise, sirens, snoring, wet sleeping bags and pillows and the chilly air. We all survived (!) and shared a lovely breakfast of muesli and toast before students were picked up by 8am. My thanks to the staff and students who participated. All said they’d come back again in 2027 as we’ll work to generate more conversations and participation across our two campuses around this issue and put into practice, our aspiration to be people of ‘courage, compassion and hope’.
Fiona McKenna
Deputy Principal - Catholic Identity & Mission Leader