Liturgy

Community Mass

Today our community gathered joyfully to celebrate the Eucharist. We are grateful to the Redemptorists of North Perth who are continuing to support the College this year.

The next Community Mass will be Friday 17 February, and will be prepared by Year 11s. It was lovely to see a number of Year 11s at Mass this morning. Family and friends are also very welcome and our community celebration continues in the café (where there is always good coffee and lively conversation) for those able to stay

Please note that due to the Swimming Carnival, there will not be a Community Mass next Friday.

Community Mass details:

College Chapel
Fridays in term time
Starts: 8:00am and concludes 8:30am.
Exception: Friday 10 February – no Mass

Do you have a child in Year 3, 4 or 6?

It is a special year for these students as they look forward to celebrating the sacraments in their parish with their family. Parents are encouraged to enrol their child in their ‘home’ parish as soon as possible, if they have not already done so.

Please see the College website for enrolment information received from City Beach, Claremont, Doubleview and Subiaco parishes.

Parents often have questions about the Sacrament program, so don’t be afraid to ask. The program is family-focused, parish-based, Catholic school-supported. This means that parents are respected as first educators in the faith of their children. The family is supported by the College Religious Education program. In Year 3, students are taught the content for First Reconciliation; in year 4, the content for First Holy Communion and in Year 6, the content for Confirmation.

Students celebrate these sacraments in their parish. It is the parent’s right and responsibility to enrol their child in a parish sacrament program, and it is worth noting that even children preparing for sacraments in a Catholic school still need to be enrolled in the parish if they intend to participate. Parish sacrament programs may vary, but usually include a workshop and commitment Mass as well as attending the rehearsal.

If you would like further information about the Sacrament Program please contact:

Your parish priest or Sacrament Coordinator
The Archdiocesan website;
Mary-Anne Lumley mary-anne.lumley@cew.edu.au 08 9383 0513

Good News for 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Here are two extraordinary descriptions of you as a community: ‘You’ is in the plural.

‘You are the salt of the earth.’ ‘You are the light of the cosmos.’

Our Lord describes who we are, who we are by virtue of our being graced to be his disciples, trying to live out the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.

Salt of the Earth

Salt in the ancient world was used not just for flavouring but, most importantly, as a preservative for food, preventing deterioration or decay, keeping it life-giving.

So, when Jesus says: ‘You are the salt of the earth’, he is saying: ‘You are the ones who are to preserve the earth, to prevent its deterioration or decay, to keep it life-giving, to ensure it provides a place of habitation, hospitable to billions of living beings, including human beings.’

This is the basis for a Christian charter for ecological sensitivity of the highest order. Gross pollution in a crime against the earth and a sin against the Creator of the earth. That is fairly obvious. But we can reflect a little more. In a hundred different ways, not just ecological, every time we do something which makes the earth more habitable, more life-giving, we retain our tang – we are the salt of the earth.

But Our Lord warns us that we can lose our saltiness, we can lose our tang, we can become useless. How do we do what salt should do? Salt has to penetrate food to have an effect. We have to penetrate the world with our Sermon on the Mount values. Staying self-contained as a perfect little band of Christians is about as useful as salt remaining in the saltshaker. In Our Lord’s scary opinion we would quite rightly be trampled underfoot.

We retain our saltiness by becoming the greatest humanitarians the world has ever seen.

Light of the Cosmos

The cosmos is the whole of the created reality ranging from the smallest fraction of your body to the swirling gases of the farthest constellation of stars.

You, we, as a Christian community trying to live according to the Gospel are ‘the light’ of this cosmos. The only question is the degree of the brilliance of our light. What radiance do we bring to the cosmos? How do we do this? Our Lord says, ‘Your light must shine in the sight of human beings so that, seeing your good works, they may give the praise to your father in Heaven.’

‘Good works.’ That sounds narrowly moralistic. Isn’t there a slightly pejorative tone to the expression ‘he is a do gooder’? You won’t be surprised to learn it is not what Our Lord meant. The words Jesus uses for good words are ‘kala erga’. In Greek, the language of the Gospels, these words mean ‘beautiful works’. These are those things we do which have grace, elegance and proportion and are therefore pleasing to observe: beautifully-good-works.

Acting in a grotesque, ugly way dims our light, darkens our humanity. When we act in a truly light-hearted way, we are more fully human and our humanity has a radiant effect on others. On others – certainly other human beings, but Our Lord remarkably says: on the whole cosmos. St Paul says in Romans that the whole cosmos is yearning to be transfigured into the same divine glory which we share, participating in the life of the Risen Lord, the cosmic Christ. When we do beautifully good works there is a transforming impact on the whole of creation! There is a moral ecology to the universe!

Of course, the real cause of the transformation of the cosmos into divine glory is the rising of the Son on the third day. But, we can refract some of that resurrection light through the prism of our own personalities. In fact, the cosmos is yearning for that.

So, stay salty and tangy. Do good beautifully and elegantly. The earth will become more habitable. The cosmos will become more translucent with Divine Glory.

‘You are the Salt of the Earth. You are the Light of the Cosmos.’

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 currently Vicar-General in the Archdiocese of Hobart and is an Honorary Professor of Law at the University of Tasmania where he lectures in International Humanitarian Law. The reflection for this Sunday’s Gospel is used with permission.