Faith and Mission

As we journey through the season of Advent, both our Primary and Secondary students are embracing the rich traditions that help us prepare ourselves for Christmas.

Across the College, the Advent wreath is central to our reflection. Each week’s candle - symbolising hope, peace, joy, and love - guides us to notice the light of Christ in our community. Classrooms and assemblies are also making use of Advent calendars, encouraging simple daily moments of gratitude, reflection, and kindness.

The Jesse Tree offers a meaningful way to explore the story leading to Jesus’ birth, helping students connect scripture with the season’s message of promise and hope. Throughout the College, moments of prayer and scripture invite us to pause, listen, and recognise God’s presence in the busyness of school life.

Advent also calls us to express our faith in action. Acts of service and generosity—whether through class initiatives or small personal gestures—remind us that preparing for Christmas means caring for others. We would like to extend our thanks to the entire College community for the very generous support given to the Primary St Vincent de Paul collection and the Secondary Shopfront collection. Your kindness and willingness to help those in need exemplifies the spirit of giving and community that Advent inspires.

This Advent, families who wish to further engage in acts of charity are encouraged to consider the Archbishop’s Christmas Appeal. Supporting this initiative is a wonderful way to extend compassion and hope to those most in need across our wider community. More information about the appeal and ways to contribute can be found at LifeLink | 2025 Christmas Appeal.

As our Nativity scenes take shape across the school, these traditions together draw us deeper into the true spirit of Advent: preparing with hope, living with compassion, and waiting with joyful expectation for the coming of Christ.

Janeen Murphy

Deputy Principal Faith and Mission

Community Mass

Thank you to students of Japanese who prepared this morning’s Community Mass; a special feature was singing the psalm response in Japanese! 

Thank you to Fr Heri for his helpful words, directing our focus to the words, ‘make the path straight’, from the Gospel of the Second Sunday of Advent. 

A special thank you to all altar ministers, acolytes, all extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, all members of Chapel Choir and all students, families, staff and alumni who gather for Eucharist each Friday. 

Community Mass resumes in February 2026. If you have any questions about Community Mass, please contact Mary-Anne Lumley: 

mary-anne.lumley@johnxxiii.edu.au

Community Mass details

• College Chapel
• Fridays in term time
• Starts at 8:00am concludes at 8:30am.

Sacraments

Do you have a child in Years 2, 3 or 5?

In 2026, students in these classes will be respectively preparing for the sacraments of Reconciliation, First Holy Communion and Confirmation. 

Parents need to enrol their child in a parish Sacrament program. This is in addition to the teaching on the sacrament that children will receive in the Religion classes. 

Preparing for the sacraments is now a three-way collaboration among family, parish, and school. 

Many parishes have begun enrolling for 2026, and parents are encouraged to arrange for this at the earliest opportunity. 

Parish information will be uploaded to the College website as it becomes available. 

Parents often have questions about the Sacrament program, so please don’t hesitate to ask. Below are some useful points of contact: 

• The priest or sacrament coordinator in your local parish
• John XXIII College website
• The Archdiocesan website: Parishes & Mass Times

• Mary-Anne Lumley: mary-anne.lumley@johnxxiii.edu.au  or via phone on 

  08 9383 0513

Around the Parishes

During Advent and Christmas many families choose to include parish-based liturgies and reflections in their seasonal festivities. 

On Sunday the parish of St Thomas the Apostle in Claremont is hosting the annual ‘Road to Bethlehem’ a celebration of Scripture, choral music and reflection. Please see the attached poster for additional details. 

Follow these links for Christmas Masses in some of our other local parishes:

Good News for the Second Sunday of Advent

… Those who flocked to see John the Baptist were asking: ‘Is a new future possible?’ They went to the River Jordan to see a possible answer to their question. And what, or whom, did they see?

A strange figure, dressed with a nomad’s coat of camel hair, and subsisting on the diet of the poorest desert dwellers, locusts and the honey from wild bees. Was he the one who would usher in this new era of transformed humanity? After all, he was proclaiming that the reign of God was ‘at hand’. And he was immersing and plunging followers into the waters of the Jordan River, hence his nickname: John the Immerser, John the Baptiser (in Greek), John the Baptist to us.

But John was only the precursor. He used the flowing water to symbolise the washing away of the repentant so that they could be totally focused on the future, as they turned their lives around.

But, he fell far short of actually empowering this new humanity. John was humble enough to realise this. 

He was not God’s agent inaugurating the kingdom, but he was aware that the agent was imminent, even though he did not identify who it would be!

‘Someone follows me … I am not worthy to carry his sandals. 

He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.’

Who will appear on the stage of history and immerse and plunge, baptise human beings with the Holy Spirit and fire? That is the question.

At this stage of Advent we should be like John’s disciples, filled with a spirit of anticipation. Like John's disciples we need to admit that we are part of the human species which has got the world out of kilter.

Like them, we should repent for our part in all that and ask for God's mercy.

Then let us look forward to the coming, the advent of ‘the One’ who is imminent, ‘the One’ who is at hand.

‘the One’ who can flood our minds and bodies with the Holy Spirit

‘the One’ who can immerse us in the new consciousness which can transform the human race

‘the One’ who can kindle and enflame our hearts with Divine fire

‘the One’ of whom John said:

‘… the One who follows me is more powerful than I am … he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire.’

© Michael Tate

From a homily for Second Sunday in Advent. Rev. Prof. Michael Tate was a Senator for Tasmania from 1978-93 and Ambassador to The Hague and the Holy See from 1993-96. He is a priest in the Archdiocese  of Hobart and is an Honorary Professor of Law at the University of Tasmania where he lectures in International Humanitarian Law.