Family and Faith

Welcome to Term 3!

A big welcome back to OLF Caringbah for another fun filled term full of opportunities to connect with your faith, the school and the Parish! I hope everyone had an enjoyable break from routine.

Even though Naidoc activities occurred during the school holidays it’s always a good time to celebrate Australia’s Indigenous culture. From the Naidoc website, we learn that the theme for 2023 is “For Our Elders”.

Across every generation, our Elders have played, and continue to play, an important role and hold a prominent place in our communities and families.  They are cultural knowledge holders, trailblazers, nurturers, advocates, teachers, survivors, leaders, hard workers and our loved ones. Our loved ones who pick us up in our low moments and celebrate us in our high ones. Who cook us a feed to comfort us and pull us into line, when we need them too.

They guide our generations and pave the way for us to take the paths we can take today. Guidance, not only through generations of advocacy and activism, but in everyday life and how to place ourselves in the world. 

We draw strength from their knowledge and experience, in everything from land management, cultural knowledge to justice and human rights. We pay our respects to the Elders we’ve lost and to those who continue fighting for us across all our Nations and we pay homage to them.

And speaking of elders…

We celebrate the Feast of St Joachim and St Anne at our Grandparent Mass this week. parents to Mary and grandparents to Jesus, they are considered to be role models for happy marriages and parenthood.

With such amazing offspring, Joachim and Anne must share an extraordinary love. They have long been held up as exemplars for married couples, and in fact, they are one of the few married couple saints canonised in the Catholic Church. 

We know very few facts about Sts. Anne and Joachim, the only recorded stories of them are from an apocryphal gospel dating from the 4th Century AD called the Protoevangelium of James.

The legend told in this document says that after years of childlessness, an angel appeared to tell Anne and Joachim that they would have a child. Whatever their names or the facts of their lives, we can assume that Mary was raised in a Jewish family home faithful to God and to the religious traditions of her day such that she was led to respond wholeheartedly to God’s request with faith, “Let it be done to me as you will.”

Grandparents Day

We hope everyone enjoyed the Grandparent’s Mass and Morning Tea, especially the grandparents!

Thank you to the many grandparents who support our school community. 

Prayer for Grandparents and the elderly

I thank You, Lord, for the comfort of Your presence: even in times of loneliness, 

You are my hope and my confidence, 

You have been my rock and my fortress since my youth! 

I thank You for having given me a family and for having blessed me with a long life.

I thank You for moments of joy and difficulty, for the dreams that have already come true in my life and for those that are still ahead of me. 

I thank You for this time of renewed fruitfulness to which You call me. 

Increase, O Lord, my faith, make me a channel of your peace, teach me to embrace those who suffer more than me, to never stop dreaming and to tell of your wonders to new generations. 

Protect and guide Pope Francis and the Church, that the light of the Gospel might reach the ends of the earth

Send Your Spirit, O Lord, to renew the world, that the storm of the pandemic might be calmed, the poor consoled and wars ended. 

Sustain me in weakness and help me to live life to the full in each moment that You give me, in the certainty that you are with me every day, even until the end of the age.  

Amen. 

Year 12 - De La Salle, Cronulla - HSC Students  

OLF families are invited to write a prayer of support and encouragement for a Year  12 student at De La Salle College Cronulla. Each Year 12 student will receive a special prayer pack organised by Family Educators and their communities. The prayer packs will include a prayer card written by a family, a before exam prayer and an after prayer card and a 2023 keyring featuring a cross.

Please contact me asap if you would like to be involved. See the Compass invitation sent out last week for more details. 

From the Cancer Council, we have some more yummy healthy recipes for Winter.  

For even more recipes, information and health tips please visit:

Fatima Friends

In Week 10 of last term, we visited Kindergarten White and Mrs Suttor and celebrated Naidoc Week early. We prayed by singing the Aboriginal Our Father with tapping sticks and egg shakers. We talked about dot painting techniques and Indigenous art which tell stories about the land, its animals and people and the Dreamtime.

Last week Fatima Friends celebrated friendship with creative praying and playing.

Pre-schoolers, toddlers and babies with their parents or carers are all welcome to Friday Fatima Friends at 9.10am after Prayer Assembly!

Gingerbread House Kits

Are you interested in attending a Gingerbread House Making Night in late November or early December in Keller Hall? (adults only, date to be decided but from 6pm - 8pm.) Or a Gingerbread House kit to make at home?

Please email me your interest for either attending an adults only night at the Hall or a take home kit as I have ordered 50 kits so it will be first in first served! Each kit costs $40 and includes the house kit, board, icing bag, ribbon, cellophane and a prayer card. An order form will be issued later on this term but secure your early bird order with an email to me ASAP. 

A big thank you to all our grandparents for all the amazing things you do for your family, our school and for others. I hope you feel the love and gratitude that you deserve. 

Tracey Bowler | Family Educator

tracey.bowler@syd.catholic.edu.au