Mission & Identity

You are merciful to all, O Lord,

and despise nothing that you have made.

You overlook people’s sins, to bring them to repentance,

and you spare them, for you are the Lord our God. (Wisdom 11:24,25,27)

This week we celebrated Ash Wednesday, and so once again we enter the Season of Lent. Lent is our 40-day period of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving from Ash Wednesday through to Holy Thursday. It is the time of preparation for the great joy of the Easter Season.

Over the course of Ash Wednesday each Year Level gathered in our Old Collegians’ Chapel to listen to the Scriptures and to participate in the Ritual of the Ashes. In our Catholic heritage we place ashes, in the form of the Cross of Jesus, on the forehead to remind our hearts, minds and hands to always be seeking a better way of living.  When we are honest, we know there is always room for improvement. 

Over many centuries ashes have been worn as an outward symbol of our desire to love God and neighbour more fully. As an aside, many Catholics know the strange looks they receive when, forgetting the ashes have been received, they go about the rest of their daily business. However, when the ashes are applied, the priest usually says one of two phrases. The first is “Remember you are but dust and unto dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19). The other phrase is, “Repent and believe in the Gospel.” (Mark 1:15) These are solemn words. They call us back to the life of love that defines our Christian faith. We place our trust in God.  

As mentioned earlier, Lent is our 40-day period of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. College Chaplain, Fr Eladio Lizada OSJ, explained it to the students this way. In and through our prayer we are nurturing our relationship with God. When we fast, we are paying attention to self-control and so increase the health of our relationship with our self: we seek liberation from the habits that stop us from loving. Finally, when we are generous in our almsgiving, we are in a righteous relationship with our neighbour, and especially with those in need. God, neighbour, and self in one perfect unity.  

Bishop Robert Barron says to be a person is to “be” a relationship. That is, I am not properly understood as a distinct individual in relationship with other distinct individuals. Rather, my very existence as a human person is constituted in and through my relationships. I cannot be me – intelligent, responsible, loving – apart from my relationships with God and my neighbour, and with the gift of myself. When I understand and accept this, I come to affirm my creation and existence as participation in the love of God from which all creation flows, and to which all creation seeks fulfilment. Lent is about stepping away from all that stops me from loving, and so come to the knowledge of who I truly am. The life, teaching, death, and Resurrection of Jesus are the great events that has revealed this to us. They are the events that underpin our Touchstones as a Catholic school in the Edmund Rice Tradition.  

For our students, that may seem too abstract and confusing. So, the College once again commits to Project Compassion to make this concrete. This is the perfect opportunity to experience fasting and almsgiving; of going without that delicious dim sim to donate to the care and love of those in need. Learn more about about Project Compassion and how you can contribute to this very worthy cause on the Quick Bites page of today's newsletter.