Liturgy

Community Liturgy

Today is the Feast of All Saints. Thanks to the incoming Student Representative Council who thoughtfully prepared this morning’s community liturgy.

Next Friday’s liturgy is communal in many respects. November is the month where our church calls us to especially remember family and friends who have died. It is a time when our College community remembers the connections we have, individually and collectively, with those who sleep in the peace of Christ. As we gather to celebrate the Eucharist Friday 8 November, we will particularly remember former members of our College community who have died. The College warmly welcomes all Alumni to attend this special liturgy.

Community Liturgy summary

Where: College Chapel
Time: 8:00am – 8:30am
When: every Friday in term time

SACRAMENT PROGRAM

Congratulations to students and their families in Year 3 who, last week, celebrated their First Reconciliation in the parish of St Thomas the Apostle, Claremont.

Henry Bahen

Bella Gauci

Maya Johnson

Alexa Kailis

Gus Lennon

Sophie Marchant

Felix McGinty

Charlie O’Toole

Abigail Prosser

Isabel Prosser

Amelia Rear

Dahra Rogers

Ruby Scott

Abigail Stephenson

Sophia Sy Suan

Christopher Tan

Georgie Walsh

Amelia Wibrow

The archdiocesan Sacrament Policy is ‘family-focused, parish-based, Catholic school supported’ and it has been a joy, over the year, to watch group of children report their having celebrated the sacrament. A special congratulations to parents for supporting their children in the parish programs!

GOOD NEWS for the Feast of All Saints

Matthew 5:1-12

The reflection for the is part of a longer homily by Jesuit priest, Fr Richard Leonard. Fr Richard Leonard SJ 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.

… For the first 400 years of the Church's history, Christian women and men were dead at lunch for taking the waters of baptism at dawn. It is on the basis of their fidelity and sacrifice that we gather to celebrate the Eucharist in freedom and peace.

Many of us are wimps when it comes to pain, so all we can hope and pray for is that, given a similar context, we may have the grace to witness to our faith in whatever way is demanded of us. It remains true that when most of us hear about the faith of modern-day martyrs we are still deeply affected, our own faith is challenged and our values are shaken up. Mothers and fathers are still dying for the faith which we so often take for granted.

All Saints Day has its roots in the early Church's ‘Martyrs Day’, attested to by a hymn written in 359 by St Ephraim. It was called All Saints Day in the seventh century.

A Saint is someone who the Church believes is in heaven with God. Wrongly, we often think Saints are perfect, but in fact their greatest witness is how they coped with the ordinary difficulties of life and how they reflected in a variety of ways the love of God.

For most of us sanctity and martyrdom will not come in dramatic ways. The daily routine of looking after a sick child, spouse or parent, of living with a mental, physical, emotional or spiritual illness, the scourge of being unemployed, homeless or addicted and the feeling that we are unlovable brings with it the reality of sharing in the lot of the martyrs and saints.

All Saints Day is the feast which commemorates all those we know who may never be publicly proclaimed in the list of saints, but who nonetheless are in heaven. Some of them may only be known to God. Others are people whose love, sacrifice and fidelity we have seen for ourselves and who have inspired us. Sometimes they can be our own mothers and fathers.

These, too, we believe belong to the great multitude of witnesses who went through their own persecutions and found the blessings within their daily lives. They saw God in this world and are now fully alive to him in the next.

In our celebration of Mass, we have the grace to live a holy life that, in ordinary ways, demonstrates the extraordinary power of God working in us. In doing so, in our sacrifices, forgiveness and love may we remain faithful to the women and men who are our saintly heroes and pray that we remain faithful to the Gospel of Christ as they did.