Liturgy
Holy Week Liturgies In Parishes
For many families, embracing the liturgies of Holy Week and Easter enhances their celebration of this most important feast in the Church year. Parishes will also be offering the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
Not sure of the times of liturgies in your parish?
Some off our local parishes have supplied schedules, which can be found on the College website here.
https://johnxxiii.springcms.com.au/view/parent-resources/parish
Further information for various parishes is available on the website of the Perth Archdiocese:
http://www.perthcatholic.org.au/Parishes_and_Mass_Times.htm?cms%2Erm=List
Sacrament Program
Do you have a child in Year 3, 4 or 6?
Students in these classes are excited about their Parish commitment liturgies and about preparing for the Sacrament this year. It is a great privilege for this task to be shared among parents, the parish and the College, in what is the ‘family-focused, parish-based and Catholic school supported’ sacrament program of our archdiocese.
If you have not already enrolled your child in a a parish program it is important to do that immediately.
If you need support in this, there are several people available to assist:
- Contact your Parish Priest or Sacrament Coordinator.
- Contact Mary-Anne Lumley, Parish Liaison lumley.mary-anne@johnxxiii.edu.au or 9383 0513.
- Information for all parishes may be found on the archdiocesan website:
http://www.perthcatholic.org.au/Parishes_and_Mass_Times.htm?cms%2Erm=List
- Information from parishes will be on the College website as it becomes available?
Parishes in the College catchment area may have supplied information about their programs. Check the College website here.
GOOD NEWS for Palm Sunday
The reflection for Palm Sunday is from Father Andrew Hamilton SJ, and is printed here with kind permission. Father Andy is a Jesuit, a theologian and, among his many other roles, the Media Officer for Jesuit Social Services.
Date palm branches are double edged. The fronds are soft and sift the air as they are waved in celebration. They are waved as a symbol of victory for a visiting king. Towards the junction with the trunk, though, the unfurled fronds are sharp, like swords. They can lacerate and are about deterrence. They are a symbol of cruelty.
In the story of Jesus’ last days, both ends of the palm are in play. On Palm Sunday Jesus enters Jerusalem in a pantomime of royalty. Rolling on a donkey, with people waving palm fronds, he is accepted as king for a day. But later he experiences the palm spikes. He is captured and beaten, has thorn spikes hammered into his head, and is made a bloody symbol of deterrence. The festivity of Palm Sunday is the prelude to the cruelty of the Passion. And the Passion, of course, is itself the prelude to the Resurrection in which the spikes of suffering and rejection expand, soften and flutter green and verdant.
It is appropriate that many Christian celebrations of Palm Sunday include meditations in the light of Jesus’ entrance to Jerusalem as king both on the nature of kingship and also on those made victims by the power of the State. It is a time for remembering the Christians and other persecuted groups in the Middle East and also the people who seek protection from war and persecution and who are treated brutally to deter others.
Marches that take place through Australia in solidarity with people who have claimed our protection and who now languish in cruel detention or have had their lives indefinitely suspended are particularly appropriate on Palm Sunday. Marches re-enact the short, comic journey of the first Palm Sunday, are similarly powerless in the face of power, have the same makeshift, amateur, enthusiastic feel to them, and take place against the same dark public threats to human dignity and to the respect due to each human being. They express the same
solidarity with the victims of power that Jesus showed in his life. They try to turn the sharp spikes with which refugees are tormented into the fronds of welcome.
CAPSA, the Catholic Alliance for People Seeking Asylum, supports the Palm Sunday gatherings and marches in solidarity with asylum seekers throughout Australia. They offer a rare opportunity for us to identify publicly with Jesus in the crucial events of his life and with people who suffer unjustly at the hands of our own government with public support. It is a privilege on Palm Sunday to go beyond our Catholic communities to share the company of others who are appalled by what is being done in our name.
Such gestures as the Palm Sunday marches for refugees are particularly important in a year when throughout the world the palm trees of celebration seem to be stripped and the spikes of fear, discrimination and exclusion are being sharpened. Jesus suffers with his brother sisters. They invite us to join them in solidarity.
©Andrew Hamilton SJ
Community Liturgy
The first Community Mass of Term Two, where we continue to celebrate the seven-week season of Easter, will be on Friday 28 April.
For parents who would like to plan ahead to attend the schedule for year groups and houses is below. However, our liturgies are open to all, and everyone is welcome whether or not you are one of the ‘regulars’.
28 April - Community
5 May – Year 7
12 May – Year 11
19 May – Loreto House
2 June – Year 10
9 June – Year 9
16 June – Year 11
23 June – Year 12
30 June – St Louis House
For any enquiries concerning the Community Mass, during Term Two, please contact Monica Smokrovic: Smokrovic.monica@johnxxiii.edu.au or 9383 0513.
When: Fridays in Term Time
Time: 8:00-8:30am
Where: College Chapel