Faith, Justice and Formation

Christmas Appeal Thanks 

Thank you to everybody who contributed to our Christmas Appeal, with the hope of brightening somebody else’s life. At the very least it shows others they are being thought of and shown dignity in their difficult times; a time when the rest of us are celebrating. 

It is overwhelming to see the generosity of the community at this time and one of my great privileges is watching the joy on the boys’ faces as they deliver the gifts and donations to the Chapel. Everybody should be very proud of their efforts. 

No more donations are being collected. If you did not bring it in by last Friday, you will need to deliver your donation to a charity near you. 

I also offer a massive thank you to the group of parents who spent Monday morning delivering our donations all over Sydney. We couldn’t do it without you! These volunteers through Parent SOL were coordinated by mums, Raja Touma and Louise Haddad - great servants of our community. Thank you one and all. 

May the joy you have brought others be gifted to you this coming Christmas season. God bless you.  

Expectations and a Request with SOL 

SOL Service is completed for this year and has commenced for 2026. All SOL Service documents will be emailed to all students, staff and parents before the end of this week. They will also be placed in the TASS Parent Lounge and the year cohort CANVAS pages. Please take the time these holidays to read them. If doing service these holidays, please use the Interim Recording Sheet to get service signed off by the relevant organisations/recipients.

Certificates for Extra Service Awards are being handed out and consequences for failure to complete enough of the program have been handed out. This will continue each year. It is great to see an increase in those achieving Extra Service Awards.

Our program is about who we are as an Edmund Rice school. It is not excessive or difficult to help others in need. We should all be doing these things without expecting anything in return. Nonetheless, as part of a structured program there is reward and consequence attached, in recognition and fairness.

The documents very clearly explain what is required for completion of this program, along with the deadline. These are sent to everyone, placed on the TASS Parent Lounge and CANVAS, and spoken about at every Parent Information Evening at the start of the year, as well as at Year Coordinator Meetings with each cohort. The Especean also contains information throughout the year and multiple warnings about expectations and due dates are given in Term 4. 

It is up to your son to take responsibility for his service. If your son has not followed the guidelines then he has received a consequence. Please do not step in and try to fix the issue of your son not fulfilling his commitments. This is a learning process for him and learning comes from taking responsibility. 

If his service was not handed in on the due date and done properly it was not accepted. If your son was away it will need to be scanned through to the SOL Service email address only.

There are times when mistakes are made by us and if this is the case, we will rectify it. 

I thank the vast majority of students and their parents for the way in which they engage in their service. And I request everyone to read the documents and support the decisions made.

A Reflection on Christmas 

With this as the final Especean for 2025 I take the opportunity to wish each of you a happy and holy Christmas, reminding ourselves of what is really important – time, service, rest, love and more. 

Below is a reflection from Fr Richard Rohr, a Franciscan, in 2017 that gives us some understanding of our practices today and gives us a theological understanding of the place of Christmas in our faith. Those who know me, know I love St Francis of Assisi… this is just part of the reason why. 😊 

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Celebrating Incarnation 

Richard Rohr describes why Christmas and celebrating the Incarnation of Jesus is foundational to Franciscan spirituality: 

In the first 1200 years of Christianity, the central feast or celebration was Easter, with the high holy days of Holy Week leading up to the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. But in the thirteenth century, Francis of Assisi entered the scene. He intuited that we didn’t need to wait for God to love us through the cross and resurrection. Francis believed the whole thing started with incarnate love. He popularized what we now take for granted as  Christmas, which for many became the major Christian feast. Christmas is the Feast of the Incarnation when we celebrate God taking human form in the birth of Jesus. 

Francis realized that since God had become flesh—taken on materiality, physicality, humanity—then we didn’t have to wait for Good Friday and Easter to “solve the problem” of human sin: the problem was solved from the beginning. It makes sense that Christmas became the great celebratory feast of Christians because it basically says that it’s good to be human, it’s good to be on this Earth, it’s good to have a body, it’s good to have emotions. We don’t need to be ashamed of any of it! God loves matter and physicality. 

With that insight, it’s no wonder Francis went wild over Christmas. (I do too—my little house is filled with candles at Christmas time.) Francis believed that trees should be decorated with lights to show their true status as God’s creations, and that’s exactly what we still do eight hundred years later. 

And there’s more: when we speak of Advent or preparing for Christmas, we’re not just talking about waiting for the little baby Jesus to be born. That already happened two thousand years ago. In fact, we’re welcoming the Universal Christ, the Cosmic Christ, the Christ that is forever being born (incarnating) in the human soul and into history. 

We do have to make room for such a mystery, because right now there is “no room in the inn.” We see things pretty much in their materiality, but we don’t see the light shining through. We don’t see the incarnate spirit that is hidden inside of everything material. 

The early Eastern Church, which too few people in the United States and Western Europe are familiar with, made it very clear that the Incarnation of Christ manifests a universal principle. Incarnation meant not just that God became Jesus, but that God said yes to the material universe and physicality itself. Eastern Christianity understands the mystery of incarnation in the universal sense. So it is always Advent because God is forever coming into the world (see John 1:9). 

We’re always waiting to see Spirit revealing itself through matter. We’re always waiting for matter to become a new form in which Spirit is revealed. Whenever that happens, we’re celebrating Christmas. The gifts of incarnation just keep coming! Perhaps this is enlightenment. 

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May God bless each of you with the enlightenment of His presence in your lives. 

Travel safe, rest well and let’s aim to be Christ for all whom we meet.  

Gillian Daley 

Director of Identity