Liturgy

Community Mass

Thank you to Year 8 students for your lovely preparation of this morning’s Eucharist. 

Everyone is invited next Friday, 1 December, for the final Community Mass for 2023. After Mass there is coffee in the Circle of Friends Café.

Community Mass details:

• College Chapel
• Fridays in term time
• Starts: 8:00am and concludes 8:30am

Do you have a child in Year 2, 3 or 5?

Parishes have begun enrolling for their 2024 Sacrament Programs and parents are encouraged to enrol their child in their ‘home’ parish. 

The program is family-focused, parish-based, Catholic school-supported. This means that parents are respected as first educators in the faith of their children. 

The family is supported by the College Religious Education program. In Year 3, students are taught the content for First Reconciliation; in Year 4 ,the content for First Holy Communion and in Year 6, the content for Confirmation. Students celebrate these sacraments in their parish. 

Each Parish has their own unique Sacrament program. Parents often have questions about the Sacrament program, so don’t be afraid to ask:

• Your parish priest or Sacrament Coordinator
• The Archdiocesan website;
• Mary-Anne Lumley mary-anne.lumley@cew.edu.au   08 9383 0513.

Good news for the Feast of Christ the King

The Son of God, who we acclaim today as Christ our King, has certainly taught us that his kingdom is different from all that we might see in this world. Our long reading of Matthew’s Gospel has come to its conclusion. The scene set before us today has Christ our King seated in glory at the end of all time. And our King judges us on how well or not we have proclaimed his kingdom. And we proclaim his kingdom when we feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, when we welcome the stranger, when we clothe the naked, when we visit the sick and the imprisoned. 

To do all these things goes against everything of the so-called wisdom of this world. It is to proclaim that the smallest and the weakest have the best seats in the kingdom. It is to proclaim that power and wealth and being first are not the values on which this kingdom relies. It is to proclaim that ultimate strength lies in vulnerability. It is to proclaim our faith that the Wood of the Cross is, in fact, our Tree of Life.

And this is how we are judged … on how well we have become more like Christ, our Shepherd King, caring for the smallest and weakest in the Kingdom. And when we have done our best to do all this, when we have exhausted our efforts in proclaiming this kingdom in word and deed, then will we hear the words: ‘Come, you whom my Father has blessed, take for your heritage the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world.’

Coming as it does on this final Sunday of the Church’s liturgical year, this solemnity proclaims the fact that Christ presides over the whole of history. 

Christ, our King, who is…

Yesterday and today.

The beginning and the end.

Alpha and Omega.

All time belongs to him and all the ages.

To him be glory and power through every age forever and ever.

Amen.

The reflection is part of a longer homily by Father Anthony Doran: 

Doran, Anthony. "Christ the King - 26 November 2023." Pastoral Liturgy 53, no. 3 (2023): 1-5. Fr Anthony is a priest of the Archdiocese of Melbourne.