Greetings from St Bede’s

This has been a short week, and for the Year 13s, one where we begin a number of events and activities we can still hold, beginning with the Leavers' Ball tonight. This is always a most pleasant evening for not only the boys, but also their parents and family.

We also farewelled the Old Boys' Events Organizer, Jacinta Gardner, after a decade of service to the College. In many ways St Bede's is part of Jacinta’s DNA. Her father attended the College in the 1940s and her son in the mid 2000s. Throughout a challenging decade, she was part of a team, who re-engaged many old boys with their alma mater, firstly at the centenary celebrations, held in 2012, and then at many other old boy reunions and events over the years. The Old Boys' Association presence at our Leavers' Day events, she also organized, the breakfast and tie ceremonies special to the departing Year 13s and their families. We wish Jacinta all the best in the future.

At staff briefings, staff take turns to reflect or pray. Mr Bryce shared this reflection about two events in the calendar year, which fall in the next week. Hope you find this of interest.

Excerpt from "The Catholic All Year Compendium - Liturgical Living For Real Life" by Kendra Tierney

"Halloween is All Hallows' Eve, the vigil of All Saints' Day, which was instituted as a feast by Pop Gregory III in the eighth century. Going door to door, collecting treats, and carving veggies into lanterns were all ancient Celtic traditions associated with the harvest, but the spookier side of Halloween was never occult or even pagan; it was all Catholic.
All Saints' and All Souls' Day commemorate the dead, in heaven and in purgatory respectively. When Catholics celebrating the feasts of All Saints and All Souls talked about ghosts, they didn't mean monsters; they meant the souls of persons who had died and gone to heaven, purgatory, or hell. The word "ghost" is of Germanic origin and comes from the Old English gast, meaning "soul", "life", "breath", "good or bad spirit", "angel" or "demon". Christian texts in Old English use gast to translate the Latin spiritus, which is why we used to refer to the third Person of the Holy Trinity as "the Holy Ghost", until the general usage of the word had shifted enough to make that confusing to people, and now we say "Holy Spirit" instead.
For medieval Catholics, skulls and skeletons were popular year-round motifs; they were called memento mori and were meant to remind us of our mortality and to inspire us to live our lives well. Some of the ideas at the heart of the best-known monster stories are rooted in Catholic beliefs. Vampires drink human blood to live forever. We drink the Precious Blood to have eternal life. Zombies' human bodies rise from the dead. We hope to rise again too, at the Second Coming. It's right there in the Apostles' Creed.
When Halloween celebrations were banned in Puritan New England, it wasn't because of concerns about witches; it was because of concerns about Catholics and their insistence on praying for the souls - or ghosts - of the dead."

Until next week,

J. G. Boyle