Catholic Identity
Caritas
Fundraising for Caritas continues through Project Compassion. Our classroom boxes are being collected weekly. We thank students and families for their donations.
Water droplets can still be purchased ($2 or $5), please decorate it with your family name and send it back to school.
Our water droplets are creating a lovely display of mission in our school which shows how small actions can create BIG changes this Lent.
Big Water Walk - Thursday April 2
This year, our school fundraiser will be to participate in a whole school walk for water.
The BIG Water Walk is an exciting and meaningful way to engage students in learning and action this Lent.
By joining the challenge, your students will:- Act in solidarity with students and families across the world who lack access to clean water, learn about social justice and live out the principles of Catholic Social Teaching as well as raising vital funds to support communities across the world who dream of a better future.
“Our BIG Water Walk helped students see solidarity in action. They felt connected to children their own age around the world.”
Sisilia, aged 13, lives with her mother and siblings in a remote village in northern Tanzania. Life has been difficult since her father passed away when she was a baby. She walked up to 30 minutes, three times a day, to fetch water from a dirty canal. The water was unsafe, causing frequent illness, and the long walks left Sisilia exhausted, fearful of wild animals and struggling to focus on her studies.
GOSPEL
A reading from the holy Gospel according to John
I am the resurrection and the life.
The sisters Martha and Mary sent this message to Jesus, ‘Lord, the man you love is ill.’ On receiving the message, Jesus said, ‘This sickness will end not in death but in God’s glory, and through it the Son of God will be glorified.’ Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, yet when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed where he was for two more days before saying to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judaea.’
On arriving, Jesus found that Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days already. When Martha heard that Jesus had come, she went to meet him. Mary remained sitting in the house. Martha said to Jesus, ‘If you had been here, my brother would not have died, but I know that even now, whatever you ask of God, he will grant you.’ ‘Your brother’ said Jesus to her ‘will rise again.’ Martha said, ‘I know he will rise again at the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said:
‘I am the resurrection and the life.
If anyone believes in me, even though he dies he will live,
and whoever lives and believes in me
will never die.
Do you believe this?’
‘Yes, Lord,’ she said ‘I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who was to come into this world.’ Jesus said in great distress, with a sigh that came straight from the heart, ‘Where have you put him?’ They said, ‘See how much he loved him!’ But there were some who remarked, ‘He opened the eyes of the blind man, could he not have prevented this man’s death?’ Still sighing, Jesus reached the tomb: it was a cave with a stone to close the opening. Jesus said, ‘Take the stone away.’ Martha said to him, ‘Lord, by now he will smell; this is the fourth day.’ Jesus replied, ‘Have I not told you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?’ So, they took away the stone. Then Jesus lifted up his eyes and said:
‘Father, I thank you for hearing my prayer.
I knew indeed that you always hear me,
but I speak for the sake of all these who stand round me,
so that they may believe it was you who sent me.’
When he had said this, he cried in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, here! Come out!’ The dead man came out, his feet and hands bound with bands of stuff and a cloth round his face. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, let him go free.’
Many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary and had seen what he did believed in him.
CHILDREN'S DISCUSSION STARTERS
A beginning point for discussion of this week's Gospel with children:
- Can you remember a time when you went away from home for a few days or more?
- What was it like when you returned home?
- What did your family do?
- In today’s gospel Jesus brought Lazarus back to life after he had been buried in a tomb. How would Lazarus’ sisters Mary and Martha have felt?
- The Spirit of Jesus gives us life. How can we give life and hope to others?
Elise Nally, Catholic Identity Leader.