Mission Report – September 21, 2018

O my God,

Give me your grace to live in your love always.

Keep my eyes, my ears, my heart

from clinging to the things that stop me loving.

Raise my heart in joyful praise for your gifts and

let my love of you grow more and more every day.

Amen.

We offer this prayer at every assembly of the whole College. We prayed these words again at our Student Leadership Assembly this week. Prayer, like love, is -‘a many-splendoured thing’, with an infinite capacity to make meaning for us. Prayer can express the goals we strive for; prayer can help us enter the reality of our lives and face the challenges that lie within our choices and actions; prayer recognises that we need God to satisfy the deepest desires of our heart. Prayer places us in the presence of God.- –

Our Assembly prayer is a formative experience for our student leaders. At a Catholic school in the Edmund Rice tradition, it is always Jesus who is our leader and guide, and his leadership is an invitation into his friendship. This is essential to our foundation: -Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.- (Pope Benedict XVI, -‘Deus Caritas Est: Of Christian Love’ 6) That person is of course Jesus.

O my God,

(we begin our prayer by acknowledging that God has called each of by name into his love -“ He is my God. With St Thomas, we confess Jesus as -My Lord and my God-. Jn 20:28)-

Give me your grace to live in your love always.

(All that we have is a gift from God. We ask that, through our friendship with Jesus, the gift of love may be constant in our lives)-

Keep my eyes, my ears, my heart

(All that I have I offer to God in love and friendship -“ I hold nothing for myself. Jesus in his humanity offered everything to the Father, and we seek to do the same)-

from clinging to the things that stop me loving.

(The full and proper response to a gift is gratitude. If everything we have received is from God, we should be grateful to the Giver, who is present in our lives through Jesus. Jesus even offered his life in love -“ a love that conquered death through his Resurrection)-

Raise my heart in joyful praise for your gifts and

(May our gratitude for all God’s gifts bring life to everything we do, so that we shine with God’s light to world. Jesus prayed constantly, so we follow his example)-

let my love of you grow more and more every day.

(Love has no limit -“ may everyday deepen our friendship with Jesus, our leader and our guide)-

Amen.

May we all be leaders in the way of love. May our friendship with Jesus deepen through prayer and good works. May these holidays be a time of grace and friendship for our families.