RE News
Dear Families,
We have started this Term 2 with a lot of enthusiasm and excitement. Last week we continued the Easter story with the Year 5/6 students presenting the events of Easter Sunday at a whole school assembly. The students learnt about how the death of Jesus and His resurrection fulfilled God’s promise to send a saviour to the world and how Jesus died to forgive all our sins and to grant us all eternal life with our Father in Heaven.
The veil of darkness transformed to the brightest light.
The most dreadful end became the most beautiful beginning.
The depths of despair faded to reveal hope everlasting.
The pain of death defeated by the promise of Eternal Life
Bless us Lord for the wonder of your Resurrection at Easter
Then on Friday we celebrated the feast of our school and parish. In the Catholic Church there are two feast days dedicated to Joseph who was Jesus’ earthly father. We celebrate Joseph for his dedication to Mary and Jesus on 19th March and we celebrate Joseph as the patron saint of all workers on 1st May. It might interest you to know that originally our school was to be named St Joseph’s but on reflection and in honour of the men and women who devoted their time and skills into building our school 41 years ago, it was decided to change the name of the parish and school to St Joseph the Worker, and we are certainly proud that this decision was made.
During the past week, we have all learnt about the sacrifices that Joseph made, in order to love and support both Mary and Jesus. We also learnt about the qualities that Joseph possessed. Joseph was a very humble, ordinary man who showed great patience and understanding during his life. It has been established that Joseph was a widower who had children from his first marriage. Jesus grew up in a family surrounded by faithfulness and love. Joseph passed on his skills of carpentry to Jesus and raised him to be a man of great faith and righteousness.
To celebrate our school feast day, we began the day with a whole school mass. It was so great to be able to celebrate once more in our beautiful church and to be together as a community. The students were a credit to everyone in the prayerful and respectful way they embraced this opportunity to celebrate their faith.
We then returned to our classrooms where the students were engaged in various activities. They learnt some facts about Joseph and then had fun with some Art and STEM activities using “wooden” items in honour of St Joseph. Each class was given a jigsaw puzzle piece of wood to decorate and we put these together to make a statue of St Joseph to display in our school. I had a great day working in the 5/6 classrooms and there was a definite buzz in the school on Friday.
Wishing you all many blessings of this Easter season
Pauline Turnbull REL
