Catholic Character
Ideally, our greatest treasure will be our faith in God and our relationship with the person of Jesus Christ.
Equally, though, the scripture caused us to reflect on God’s greatest treasure. It is very reassuring to know that God treasures us above all else. The birth, life, death and resurrection show God’s great love for humanity, entering into our human experience to share in all that we experience and to bring us into his own divine life. Surely, our faith and the ‘source and summit’ of the Christian experience, which is the Eucharist, are essential to peace and true joy.
Youth Group
Ignite youth group looked at this idea of the treasure and shared deeply about the place of God in our lives as well as the people and things that we treasure. Families will be pleased to know that for many of our students, family was deeply treasured far beyond other considerations.
Yesterday we considered the Transfiguration, which is this coming Sunday’s gospel. We had Fr Matthew and Fr Tang present who shared about their own ‘mountain top’ experiences of faith as they discerned the course for their lives in the seminary. We also played a game related to people of faith from the bible and their stories as you can see from the photos.
The Parish Mid-Winter Cultural Evening
The Ignite Youth Group sang two songs at this lovely, parish event at which many of our families were present and some of our students were also involved in dances with other groups. Aleesa was very impressive in the Indian cultural dance and it was lovely to see Nicole and Harriet supporting younger students with their dance.
Parish Ministries
It is wonderful to see some of our students taking up ministries in the parish as this encourages their participation and leadership in the mass. We encourage all families who attend mass to encourage the students in their families to take on ministries at the parish in order to help them to establish a strong connection with parish life and a deeper understanding of the mass.
Assumption Feast Day Mass
We continue to prepare for the Feast of the Assumption Mass which is our Patronal Feast here in Aotearoa as Bishop Pompallier dedicated our country to Mary under this title when he first arrived on our shores.
Staff Professional Development
We have developed a strong programme of staff professional development within our meeting cycle and this includes two Mondays during which staff delve more deeply into what it means to teach in a Catholic school and, in particular, in a Catholic school with Marist and Mercy charisms.
On Monday, as a staff we looked at the four dimensions of Catholic education and discussed what we are already doing here in relation to each of them and what we could do to strengthen these dimensions in our school. It was a great, informative and interesting discussion and really showed that all of our staff, whether Catholic or not, are invested in supporting the special character of the school.
The four dimensions are:
Encounter with Christ
Growth in Knowledge
Christian Witness
Safeguarding the faith
It was great to see that for each of these dimensions there were lots of things we are already doing and many ideas offered for other things we could also do.
We continue to pray for all members of our community. God bless you all and keep you in his care.