Dear Parents, Caregivers and Community Members,

 

This Sunday our Year Four students will celebrate their First Holy Communion – a very special day for children, their families and our whole school and parish community. As parents, our ongoing challenge is to help and support our children to ‘live out’ the Eucharist in their daily lives –experiencing being ‘bread’ for one another, through our kindness, our care, our love and forgiveness.

Congratulations to our Year Four students and families – we hope Mums and Dads will organise a day that is filled with much love and gratitude for all the good things your children have to enjoy – faith, family, friends, a healthy body, a safe home and so much more.

The Eucharist is the most powerful prayer in which a Christian can participate. Firstly: Union with Christ in the Eucharist enables a Christian to offer the day to day life to the Father in the most intimate way possible. Secondly: We are bonded more deeply in Christ and empowered to love one another as he loved us. Thirdly: “. . . Only say the word and I shall be healed,” allows the power of Jesus’ healing to flow into our hearts.

This threefold effort of revitalisation offers the Christian the opportunity to return to their community – home, neighbourhood, workplace – strengthened to rise above human failings and live joyfully, honestly and non-judgementally. It takes courage to maintain our day to day lives and the opportunity to share Jesus’ love can give us the strength and purpose to not simply exist, but to celebrate our lives.

The apostles at the Last Supper must have been startled when Jesus stood up to do his duty as host and say that blessing over the cup and the bread. Here, where new words spoken: “This is My Body which is given to you”, “This cup is God’s new covenant which is poured out for you.”

Here, was Jesus offering Himself and  telling his Apostles to “Do this in memory of me”. The Apostles might have been bewildered at the Last Supper, but they were full of purpose after Pentecost and took Jesus’ request to various parts of the world. The Eucharist is the centre of Christian heritage and should be cherished by Christians as the principle means to union with Christ.

Parents have the responsibility and privilege to hand on this heritage to their children. What better way to achieve this than to share the Eucharist with their children in union with other members of their Christian Community. As we watch our children receive Communion for the first time, we are thrilled by the beauty and simplicity of their belief in who it is they are receiving.

Lord
You give us your body and blood in the
Eucharist as a sign that even now
We share your life.
May we cherish the sacraments as the life
Source of our Christian heritage and
Ensure that it may become the life source
For our children.
Amen

All I Really Need to know about life, I learned from Noah’s Ark:

1. Don’t miss the boat
2. Don’t forget we’re all in the same boat
3. Plan ahead – it wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark
4. Stay fit – when you’re 600 years old someone might ask you to do something really big
5. Don’t listen to critics, just get on with what has to be done
6. For safety’s sake travel in pairs
7. Two heads are better than one
8. Build your future on high ground
9. Speed isn’t always an advantage, after all, the snails were on the same ark with the cheetahs
10. When you are stressed, float a while
11. Remember, the ark was built by amateurs: the Titanic was built by professionals
12. Remember that the woodpeckers inside are a larger threat than the storm outside

 

Congratulations to our Year 6 students and some of our Year 5 students who represented our school in the Modcrosse and LeagueTag Interschool Carnival last Friday. The Modcrosse and LeagueTag teams finished the day undefeated, winning both shields. A huge thank you to the coaches, Miss Kezic, Mrs McLinden and Mr Geaney for training and supporting the teams.

 

Did you Know?
• During his or her lifetime the average human will grow 949km of hair.
• Your foot and your forearm are the same length.
• Your smell is unique: your body odour is unique to you unless you have an identical twin.

There are ‘great things’ happening in our school due to the efforts of so many people; seek to be one of those people in the coming week!

 

 

Andrew Kelly
Principal