Catholic Identity and Mission

Please find below my Christmas reflection from our Advent Liturgy.

I would like to wish all of our Marist-Sion community a safe and happy Christmas and New Year period.

I have been thinking about why a God would bother coming to earth?

Ms Harkin often talks about the vision she has for this school – for all of you people.

She is a big believer that you can’t be what you can’t see.

So there are more opportunities for you to succeed than ever before; because we want you to be successful, and we recognize that success looks really different for different people.

For some of you, success might be that you have an opportunity to overcome your nerves and sing in front of your peers, for others it might be that you have the opportunity to play sport against other students and other schools. For some students success is staying overnight at camp or retreat without calling home, for some students it is simply turning up to schools.

We try to give you every opportunity to SEE what is really important to us as a community. What we stand for. We have lots of different opportunities for you to see the right model of behaviour and you have teachers who are there to guide you.

I think that is why Jesus came to earth – because as people we can’t be what we can’t see.

Even though God was known to the Jewish people, God was not known to everyone so they didn’t know what it meant to be loved by a loving God, they still had multiple Gods who punished them. They didn’t have an example of how God actually wanted them to live.

Why else would a God become a human?

It just doesn’t really make sense that even though you have infinite power and you are the Ultimate Reality – that you become flesh and bones – and one of the poorest amongst all people.

This is what was so confusing to the Romans in Palestine – they were expecting a King – they were expecting someone to fight and overthrow evil and the only way that humans knew how to do this was through war and taxing people and treating groups of people on the margins, like women and leppers as though they were worthless.

You can’t be what you can’t see – so that is all that they knew. The only form of success that was understood was power and control because that had been their example forever.

So here comes God on earth – a vulnerable baby – flesh and bones and the first people who recognized him were the shepherds. Shepherds are often described as being the lowest on the social chain they were always the youngest brother who had the least rights to the families wealth.

But you can’t be what you can’t see.

Jesus’ was born so that we had a human example of how to live. So that we could see what is right and we could behave with love towards each other.

His birth was humble, his mother was unwed and would have been a social outcaste if it wasn’t for the faithfulness, the kindness and the love of Joseph. So we see that a loving family is something that we should be.

When there was no room for Joseph and Mary they didn’t make a fuss, they took the humble path. They had their baby in a manger – which was a feed trough. Their first visitor is a shepherd.

So what does the birth of Jesus model to us? What are we meant to see? How are we meant to be?

Society has replaced these beautiful messages with a very commercial message – that gifts should be extravagant. I was speaking to one of my cousins yesterday and she told me that even though she had just bought her teenage daughter her first iPhone which she will get on Christmas Day and cost $550, that she already knows that her daughter will be disappointed with the gift. Apparently iPhone that have a home button are just not cool.

Her daughter thinks that getting a new phone means that she will be getting an iPhone 15 – which are $1249 for the cheapest model to buy outright. This girl is one of five children – if this was her only present and my cousin spent the same amount on all of her children, she would spend $6,245 on gifts before anyone ate and without buying presents for anyone else in her family, let alone going on a holiday.

Considering that a person under the age of 16 who works in the fast food industry, according to Fair Work Australia gets paid $12.43 per hour – a $550 phone would take that young person 44 and a quarter hours to earn for themselves; a $1249 iphone 15 would take 100 and a half hours to earn. For anyone who is not on social media – which from November 28 2025 will be all Australian youth under the age of 16, what difference will it make as to what phone you have? Who has she seen and who is she trying to be?

Why does it matter what phone you have? That is not the reason that God came into the world as a little baby. Little babies require love and care and families who back each other. When Jesus became a man he chose twelve guys to be his best mates, because friendship is essential for an amazing life. Not once in the Christmas message is there a claim that money is important, in fact everyone who is important in this story has no money.

This is who we are meant to see so that this person is who we should want to be.

I would like to wish all of you amazing people, students and staff alike a really beautiful, safe and happy Christmas. I hope you see family and friends who you love. I hope you see great weather and time outside in nature. I hope you get to see more of your pets who love you and love it when you are home just to pat and walk them. I hope that when you see whatever it is you receive you see the actual gift that is being given to you – the hours that your families worked to purchase it and act with gratitude – even if it is not the particular make and model that you were really hoping for. Expressing gratitude for a gift is the gift that you give back – that is where the joy lies, because some of you will have parents like my cousin and they deserve to feel good about what they can afford to give their children.

Thankyou for all of the gifts that you have put under the Marist-Sion Christmas Giving Tree. When they are given to local families in need, they will see that there is a community who cares for them. For little people who may not otherwise receive a gift, they will receive some of the magic and the love of Christmas that they deserve.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Mrs Jacinta Johnston

Deputy Principal: Catholic Identity and Mission