Liturgy

Community Mass

Thank you to the volunteers who prepared this morning’s Community Mass, the first for 2021. Next week the liturgy will be prepared by students in Year 12.

Community Mass is celebrated in the Chapel most Fridays during term time. It commences at 8:00am and finishes in time for Homeroom.

SACRAMENT PROGRAM

Do you have a child in Years 3, 4 or 6?

Do you have a child currently in Year 3, 4 or 6? In their Religious Education classes, students will be preparing for the sacraments of Reconciliation, Eucharist and Confirmation. While the students will learn the appropriate content at school, they celebrate the sacraments with their family in their parishes.

Have you enrolled your child in a parish sacrament program?

Parents are encouraged to enrol their child, as soon as possible, in their parish – usually, but not necessarily, the parish closest to home. Most parishes are beginning their programs at this time, and it is essential to enrol your child in advance.

How do I enrol?

Contact the parish: the parish secretary, the sacrament coordinator or the parish priest. Parish contact details are available here. The College provides information from some of our local parishes. It is the parents’ right and responsibility to follow up with enrolling their child in the parish.

Please check below for the enrolment dates and procedures for some of our local parishes.

Saint Thomas Apostle, Claremont

First Communion Friday 21 May

Confirmation Friday 27 August

Reconciliation October

Enrolment forms are available from silvia.kinder@iona.wa.edu.au

St Mary Star of the Sea, Cottesloe/Corpus Christi, Mosman Park

Reconciliation Saturday 27 March

First Holy Communion Sunday 1 August

Information Day: Thursday 29 April, 4-5pm

Parish Centre, 2 McNeil Street, Peppermint Grove.

Confirmation Sunday 7 November

Information Day: 5 August, 4-5pm

Parish Centre, 2 McNeil Street, Peppermint Grove.

Enrolment information and contact details for the Sacrament Coordinator may be found here.

Holy Spirit, City Beach

Enrolment information and contact details for the Sacrament Coordinator may be found here

If you would like further information about the Sacrament Program:

If your nearest parish is not listed, search the Archdiocesan website;
Check the information available on the College website here
Contact Mary-Anne Lumley mary-anne.lumley@cew.edu.au or by phone on (08) 9383 0408

GOOD NEWS for the season of Lent

Next Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent. In 2021, due to the continuing global impact of COVID-19, the ritual for Ash Wednesday will be slightly changed. Father Andrew Hamilton SJ gives us an insightful reflection on this adaptation of an ancient symbolic gesture. Father Andy is a Jesuit, a theologian, a writer and, among his many other roles, the Media Officer for Jesuit Social Services.

During the last year we have become used to see unchanging religious celebrations disrupted by Coronavirus. Masses celebrated virtually, funerals limited to family, social distancing and masks in church, no sharing of the cup nor peace greeting by shaking hands, for example. Ash Wednesday is also affected. The celebrant is instructed not to use ash to make a sign of the cross on our foreheads, but to sprinkle it on our heads.

Although that’s a small change, the gesture has quite a different feel. Making the sign of the cross on the forehead was like pinning a badge on us. It identified us as Catholics, gave us an identity as a follower of Jesus, and bound us to the community. When we were children we were encouraged to leave it on our foreheads and not to be ashamed of our faith. We noticed adults who also had ash on their forehead as we travelled by bus to school. On Ash Wednesday we strode together into Lent as we might into an army training camp that would make us spiritually fit to join Jesus on his path to death and rising.

Having ashes sprinkled on your head feels quite different. No one notices the ashes except ourselves. We may feel the grittiness in our hair and may uncomfortable with it. For most of us paying attention to our hair is a sign of self-respect, and we expect others to pay our hair respect. It matters to us that it our hair is cut, washed, shampooed and combed, and we are pleased if other people notice it. It is also a sign of our distinctive identity, whether we have it cut carefully or leave it long and untidy. Either way we are resentful if others pull it, pat it without permission, cut it or disrespect it. Our hair displays the person we believe we are, would like to be and want others to see.

For that reason, to have someone scatter ash and dust into our hair is humiliating. Actually, humiliation is the point of the ritual. The Latin root of humiliation means dirt. If we are humiliated we feel as if we have been thrown down into the dust, dirtied. We lose the protection of the public person we want to be and are thrown back on to our naked self. The traditional formula that is used in the giving of ashes on Ash Wednesday expresses this clearly: Remember that you are dust and that unto dust you will return.

The emphasis on Lent as a time for stripping off all the things that give us importance and status is chastening. Like other forms of humiliation it may also be crushing - unless we are confident that we are deeply loved. And of course God’s overwhelming love for us is the larger story behind the sprinkling of the ashes on Ash Wednesday. It introduces the story of God’s relationship with us, as story that is developed throughout Lent. It tells how God loves each of us deeply enough to join us, share our joys and sorrow, bear our hatreds to the lengths of enduring torture and execution, and then rising to overcome death and murderousness. It is the story of Jesus acceptance of humiliation out of love for us and rising to glory. It marks out the path we shall walk if we follow Jesus.