Mission Report

by Assistant Principal -Mission and Identity, Mr Geoff Brodie

Life after remote learning incudes the chance for our community to once again participate in the full range of College opportunities. The challenge will be to recover our habits and patterns of active participation after so much disruption.

Active participation is in no small way a courageous choice. Participation in new and collaborative opportunities often means we must change in some way. For example, student fund-raising for our Walkathon requires the courage to ask for donations, and through those donations to create a better life for someone we may never meet. This is both courage and hope.

During our Mass for Edmund Rice Day students will be invited to gather as a Eucharistic community. In our Tradition, Mass includes moments of reverent silence, full-voiced responses, and respectful participation. Sometimes it requires courage for a student to lead by example. There is no more important moment in the life of our Catholic school.

It is essential to our life as a Catholic School in the Edmund Rice Tradition that we all create, offer and accept invitations into newness, because renewal, transformation, conversion, is at the very heart of our life as a sacramental community. Jesus transformed the bread and wine into his body and blood; he transformed a few fish and loaves into a bountiful meal for thousands; he transformed notion of strict justice into the conversion of love; and in his Cross and Resurrection he transformed death into life. Only in our personal transformation can we come to know and accept the gift that is our very self.

Every time a student takes up an opportunity offered at St Patrick’s College, he engages with and share the love and unity that is our deepest reality – our true self as a gift from God. This is the joy, power and promise of Easter.