From the Principal

Dear families, 

The recent Graduation of the Year 12 class of 2022 enabled us to celebrate liturgically with our community. The following reflection was delivered as part of the celebration and I offer you the excerpt below on the readings that were beautifully interpreted by our Year 12 students. 

 A reminder to parents this week that staff will not be actively supervising the College corridors prior to 8:40am.

As of next year, the College Newsletter will take a new and improved format; it will become more immediate as a live 'Latest News' tab on the College Website.

We ask your continued prayers and blessings for our students undertaking their Unit 3/4 exams and for those in VCAL completing their very important competencies. 

Our very dear friends and colleagues at St Joseph's Echuca have had an incredibly difficult time with flooding in the past few weeks; I ask also that you keep the school and surrounding community in your prayers.

Best wishes, 

Sally Buick

Principal

Our first reading today, at our graduation liturgy for the class of 2022, was from the book of Jeremiah; where we hear of the plans God has for us; a future of peace, hope, communication with, and being in right relationship with God; then our Gospel from Matthew talks of the lighting of a flame, ensuring it shines for all. In the context of graduation we should therefore look at how the symbolism of what these two beautiful and appropriate readings are saying to us. The word graduate comes from the Latin gradus; in ancient times it was used to describe taking a step; moving forward. The word has now has morphed into what we consider graduation today, but if we look back at the ancient latin we are indeed here tonight celebrating and encouraging you to step; to step forward into the future your God, indeed all of us here tonight, pray that you have; a future like the one in Jeremiah; full of peace, hope and in right relationship. That when you take this step you do so as Matthew exhaults; by making sure that the light, the light that is you, shines brightly. And so we are asking you to step, into a future bright with anticipation, and to carry your light with you

How then do we make sure there is purpose in the stepping? I would like to refer to a couple of additional Gospel readings to help explore this next part of the process. In John we read of the death of Jesus, his placement in a tomb and then his rising on the third day; Matthew equally provides us with this series of events. These Gospel's will be very familiar to all you as you have traversed 6 years of Catholic schooling, one of the elements of this that I have reflected on a great deal as an adult, is that in each of these Gospels Jesus appeared first to a woman. In John he showed himself to Mary Magdalene; a women with whom he had a special friendship and who refused to leave Jesus as he suffered his tortured death on the cross; in Matthew, the risen Christ appears first to 3 women; Mary the mother of James, Salom and Joanna. When I was hearing these Gospels as a young person these elements of the Gospel were never explored; indeed the overwhelming image I have in my mind as a much younger school aged child, is the image of the scared disciples waiting in a room until Jesus came, showed himself to them and they were ultimately filled with the Holy spirit.

However, as you graduate, as you step with your light out into the world, where we pray you find peace, hope and right relationship, it is appropriate to draw your attention to the fact that Jesus himself, upon his resurrection from the dead, showed himself first to women. He asked them to go and spread the word of his resurrection, he trusted their faith, their hope, their belief in right relationship, he trusted they would take their light and shine it into the world. 2,000 years after the death of Jesus, gathered as a community committed to the Catholic education of young women, it is pertinent to point out the oft ignored act of extraordinary faith that Jesus, Jesus the human, showed the women of his time; they were the ones first called to discipleship; the ones first charged with the call to tell everyone that Jesus had risen from the dead. 

You are equipped now as graduates of Killester with the call to take these steps yourself; to do so in the knowledge that you carry your light, and the light of all those who have gone before you, into the world to strive for the peace, hope and right relationship your God desires for you. Your gift from the College this evening is a candle, a tangible representation of the light you carry within, the light we ask you to carry out into the world, the light that we pray illuminates the steps as you take them forward. To graduate is to step forward, to answer your call to discipleship as Jesus himself called those extraordinary women many years ago. On behalf of all of the people you have encountered on your journey at Killester, your fellow students, all of your teachers, staff in the office, library, maintenance, IT, subject specialist helpers and LSOs we wish you blessings as you step; trust in your light and in your God who walks with you. 

Sally Buick

Principal