Mission and Identity

• 1 Peter 4:10 St Pius X 2025 Christmas Appeal
• The Seasons of the soul
• Scripture Reflection

1 Peter 4:10 St Pius X 2025 Christmas Appeal

“Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace.” 1 PETER 4:10

As Christmas draws near, we are invited to put our faith into hard-working love. 

The 1 Peter 4:10 Christmas Appeal is how our College community shares God’s grace with others - through simple, generous acts that bring hope and dignity to those in need.

Every student is asked to bring one complete hamper or gift to support this appeal. Together, our small efforts create a big impact.

The appeal will take place Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays - Weeks 3 to 7 this term. Students are asked to bring their donations to homeroom where student volunteers will assist in bringing the collections to the collection points in the College foyer.

Below is the Year Group distribution and focus lists for the appeal this year:

Years 5 & 6 — St Vincent de Paul Woy Woy:

Supporting Vinnies Van and Central Coast families who are struggling this Christmas.

Donations Required:

• Vinnies Snack Packs: Non-perishable snack food items (chips, popper juice, tuna etc).

• Christmas treats (biscuits, chocolates, pudding, lollies)

• Toiletries (soap, deodorant, toothpaste, shampoo)

• Please ensure the above is packed in a zip-lock bag

Year 7 - St Mary’s Bowraville:

Donations Required: 

• Toys, clothing, sport equipment

• Items suitable for primary-school aged children:

  • Toys, Clothing

  • Sports Equipment

  • Books

  • Items will be wrapped by our Year 10 Bowraville Immersion Pilgrims and distributed while on immersion

Year 8 and Year 9 - Jesuit Refugee Services (Standing with refugees and people seeking asylum who are rebuilding their lives in Sydney):

Donations Required: 

• Nonperishable food items: Staple food items (rice, lentils, cooking oil, pasta, long-life milk, canned meals)

• All donations go toward the JRS Refugee Pantry

Year 10 - Personalised Present for A Centacare Employee:

• A handwritten Christmas Card

• Hampers with items personalised to the employee’s interests.

• These presents will be presented to the employees personally by Year 10 Greater Sydney Immersion Pilgrims

Year 12 - Family Hamper for St Michael’s Meals, Darlington (Providing food and toiletries to those facing food insecurity this festive season)

• Non-perishable meals (tins, soups, stews, beans, pasta, rice)

• Snack foods (biscuits, crackers, muesli bars, chips)

• Toiletries (toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant, shaving cream)

• Reusable grocery or enviro-bags for packing

The Seasons of the soul

In our Catholic tradition, we appreciate that we as human beings are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience. In such a frantic world, we don’t often spend enough time considering the seasons of the soul - the core of our being.

Below is a beautiful reflection on the Seasons of the Soul titled the “Upside Down Way of Ecclesiastes” by Br Frederick James 

The Preacher speaks with the quiet assurance of someone who has stopped fighting time. There is a season for everything. Life unfolds not as a straight line, but as a sacred rhythm,

a breathing in and a breathing out,

a rising and a falling,

a holding and a letting go.

We prefer the seasons of growth: of clarity, harvest, and light. But the Upside-Down Way tells us that every season is holy, even the hidden ones. The soil of the soul needs winter as much as spring. Dormancy is not death; it is preparation.

The world tells us to stay productive, to always be blooming. But God works in cycles, not schedules. Grace ripens in its own time. What feels like stillness or loss is often the unseen work of renewal.

Christ lived within these seasons, too. He retreated and returned, wept and rejoiced, died and rose again. His life is not a break from the pattern, it reveals it. To follow Him is to learn how to rest when the field lies bare, to trust when nothing grows, to know that resurrection only comes after burial.

When we begin to live in rhythm with God’s seasons, we discover that every ending is also an opening, and every silence is already humming with new life. The soul that surrenders to time does not wither. 

It flowers in the dark.

Scripture Reflection

“There is a time to be born and a time to die… a time to weep and a time to laugh… a time to tear down and a time to build.” ~ (See Ecclesiastes 3:1–8)

The Preacher’s list reads like a song of surrender, an acknowledgment that we are not the masters of the seasons, only participants in them. Each pair of opposites holds a tension that defines human life. To embrace one and resist the other is to live half a life.

The Hebrew word for season here, zeman, carries the sense of appointed time, a moment filled with divine intention. Nothing is wasted; nothing is random. God’s wisdom weaves purpose through every shift and change, even when we cannot see it.

Christ echoes this in His own life: “My time has not yet come,” He says in John’s Gospel. Even the Son of God lives attuned to the divine rhythm. He waits. He listens. He moves in season.

The Upside-Down Way calls us to this same attentiveness. To stop forcing perpetual summer and to begin honouring winter as sacred. The spiritual life is not about manipulating seasons but about being faithful within them. Each one has its grace. Each one reveals God in a different light.

To live wisely is not to control time, but to consent to it.

Reflection Questions:

1. Which “season” are you in right now? Growth, loss, rest, waiting, renewal, or something else?

2. What part of you resists the season you’re in? What might it mean to bless it instead of fight it?

3. Think of a past winter of the soul. How did God’s quiet work in that season prepare you for what came next?

4. How might you practice patience and trust in the slow unfolding of grace?

Mr Daniel Petrie - Assistant Principal, Mission and Identity