APRE News
By Mrs Carol Sharp, Assistant Principal Religious Education
Year Level Masses
Year level Masses for 2022 have commenced with our Year 10 students attending the 9am Mass at St Mary’s Church on Tuesday. The Year 12 Mass is scheduled to occur on Tuesday, 29 March 2022.. All other year levels will have their Masses for Semester 1 in Term 2.
Project Compassion
Second Week of Lent (Week beginning Monday 14th March).
This week, through Project Compassion, we learn about Biru who lives in a rural village in India’s east. He lost mobility in one of his legs after contracting polio as a child. Biru worked as a shepherd, looking after other people’s cattle, to support his wife and four daughters. Keeping up with the cattle was a challenge.
Biru taught himself how to repair bicycles by watching other people, but he never dreamt of using those skills to start his own business. With your generous support, Biru was able to access an entrepreneurship and livelihoods training program, run by Caritas Australia’s partner, Caritas India. He gained the support and skills he needed to start his own bicycle repair business. Now, Biru earns enough money to support his family.
Watch a short film about Biru’s story here.
Please support Project Compassion: lent.caritas.org.au
Last Friday, we gathered as a whole College community for our first Assembly of the year. It has been a challenging start to the year with public health restrictions, cancelled events, more rescheduling of activities and then the devastation of the floods in Queensland and New South Wales. Despite all of this, we are very fortunate as we have a community of people around us, ready to support one another through these difficult times.
This support needs to be extended beyond our community, however, to the people and places that are most in need.
At Assembly we used the words of St. Paul in his letter to the Colossians (3:12-17) to pray for peace in Ukraine.
Loving Father,
We ask that you help us to clothe ourselves with compassion and kindness so we can see that peace in the world begins with peace in our hearts. May we also treat one another as we would like to be treated.
We ask that you help those with hatred in their hearts be moved to forgive one another so that instead of seeing each other as enemies, they can see each other as fellow human beings.
We ask that we respond to the suffering of others with love. We pray for the Ukrainian people who are forced to fight in a conflict to protect their sovereignty, who are pleading for aid and who are attempting to flee from the devastation of this war. We pray for the Russian people who did not ask for this war, who have no democratic rights to vote against it and who now must suffer as a result of economic sanctions.
And finally, loving Father, we ask for the peace of Christ to rule in the hearts of all our world leaders so we can find diplomatic ways to resolve conflicts and protect the lives of the innocent.
We ask this prayer through Our Lady, Queen of Peace and through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen