Dear Parents and Caregivers,

This week we celebrated two significant days that are set aside for the spiritual heroes of our church.

The Feast days of All Saints Day and All Souls Day celebrate the communion of saints and remind us that we have access to a massive list of prayer partners who pray with us and pray for us. The list includes the official 'greats' of our church history, but it also includes family and friends whose holiness and love directly touched and enriched our lives.

We need both heavenly models of holiness, as well as, earthly models of holiness. Saints are all around us. They are the women and men whose generous spirit reflects the Gospel’s call to love and service. Some do it by making the ordinary holy through a spirit of simplicity and humility. Some do it by showing extraordinary courage in sickness and adversity. Some do it by railing against injustice and working to bring equality and dignity to all.

One of the messages from these feast days is a call to holiness. This sounds overly simplistic and obvious, but it is at the basis of all we do as a church and as the ‘People of God.’

Pope Francis told those gathered in St Peter's Square on 2 October 2014 to, "Do not be afraid of holiness, do not be afraid to aim high, to be loved and purified by God, do not be afraid to let yourself be guided by the Holy Spirit. Our God wants us to be part of a Church, that knows how to open their arms to welcome everyone, which is the home not of a few, but the home of all, where everyone can be renewed, transformed, sanctified by his love, including, the strongest and the weakest, the sinners, the indifferent, and those who feel discouraged and lost."

Of course, we all have different ideas of holiness. In the Beatitudes, the wonderful litany of "Blessed are" states, "holiness is equated with being poor in spirit, meek, mourning, hungering for righteousness, merciful, and clean of heart."

"Holiness does not consist in doing extraordinary things," Pope Francis said, but in leaving it to God, he stressed that "the meeting of our weakness with the strength of his grace, will give us the confidence to engage in active service to others."

Holiness can be seen all around us in the world and we are surrounded by future saints who are living among us in the messiness that comes from living life within a community.

Today more than ever we need strong and vibrant communities where we can pray and be formed, communities that send us forth, not keep us in. The saints these communities create are boys and girls, women and men whose lives flow seamlessly from prayer to action. We need to hear their stories and be inspired by their witness. The saints provide the Church with a sort of kaleidoscope through which we can see Christ’s splendor from a thousand different angles. The saints, in a thousand bursts of color, refract some part of Christ’s infinitely brilliant light in their own time and place. The saints help to make known the Christ who has been revealed and yet remains in part hidden.

The invitation for us, through our vocation, is to reflect a bit of Christ’s immeasurable light in our own unique hue.  What is it in us that can help to make something of Christ visible here and now?  Christ in His earthly life was not from Eagle Vale. He was not a schoolteacher or a banker. He wasn’t a mother or father. He wasn’t an artist or an engineer. He wasn’t elderly.  Although our own unique circumstances are different from the details of Jesus’ own earthly life, as his disciples we are challenged to ask ourselves how Christ’s light can shine through our own lives? We need our saints. They give us the courage to believe that we too can make Christ Our Way and Life.  

Tina Murray

PRINCIPAL 

 KINDER 2021 ORIENTATION

Tonight, we commence our Kinder 2021 Orientation. Our original plans have had to be significantly adjusted due to COVID restrictions, but we very much look forward to the first Parent Session via Zoom and the commencement of student sessions next week.