To the families and friends of our St Edmund’s College community,
Welcome to Term 2 – certainly a very different start to what we are used to.
I hope that despite the coronavirus situation and restrictions, all of our families and students had a good holiday break, and that our boys are able to enter their online program for Term 2 being refreshed and revitalised.
The College Leadership Team had its regular meeting this morning, with the main item of discussion being the eventual transition for students returning to school for face to face teaching. Some discussion was had regarding the nature of a sequenced, structured transition and the procedures and processes needed for this to occur. We will continue this discussion at next week’s leadership meeting and communicate with you the plans for transition once we have considered all issues. In the meantime we continue with our online teaching and learning program. Thank you so much for giving this online teaching and learning program your strong support and co-operation, and I wish to thank our teachers for their great efforts and energy in giving our online program strength and substance, so our boys still have quality learning experiences.
As I wrote to you last week, we will have every second Monday as a day away from our regular online teaching and learning program, where students are able to focus on their assessment tasks, catch up on missed work, organise their folders and so on. This also allows all of us to have some time away from our screens and have some breathing space in the program.
Most of you would have viewed our very special Anzac Day service on Facebook. This has received a great deal of engagement from our community. My sincere thanks to Mrs Donella Walker for planning this very special event and to Mr Sam Sergi for the technical skill behind the event. We will celebrate Founder’s Day in a similar fashion. I feel it is very important to continue to celebrate our significant events even though we do not have our community physically with us as this will continue to engage and motivate our community.
This week we welcomed our new Defence Transition Mentor Danielle Ridgway. Danielle will take the time over the next few weeks to introduce herself to our Defence families and check in on our Defence students. Please do not hesitate to contact Danielle if you are a defence family and wish to discuss matters and issues with her. We also welcome back Mr Joel Richardson after a few weeks’ leave following the birth of Charlotte, and we send our best wishes to Joel and his wife Jess at this special time.
We congratulate Mr Mike Brennan from our Science staff and his wife Helen on the birth of their daughter Abigail Rose, and we congratulate Ms Kristyl de Leon from our Diverse Learning faculty and her husband Ross on the birth of their son Cadan Jamie. We hope that babyhood is filled with lots of joy and makes for lots of wonderful memories for all of them.
Last week’s Gospel was the story of the road to Emmaus, where two disciples of Jesus were walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus, after the resurrection, encountering Jesus along the way but not recognising him. They are depressed and disillusioned with the events of the death of their friend and upset that he was not the leader they thought he was going to be. They also believed that the women’s story of Jesus’ Resurrection was simply idle chat. Upon arriving at Emmaus the disciples welcome the stranger, who has now become the companion on the journey, to stay and prepare to spend the night with them. Jesus remains and takes bread, gives thanks, breaks it and gives it to them. It is at this moment, as the scriptures have been explained to them that their hearts burn, they are transformed and they realise their companion is the Risen Jesus.
It is the message of faith nourished by Jesus, the living bread, that many believers take from this narrative. Believers are sustained by faith in Jesus that burns within their hearts. During this time of restrictions, we need to ask ourselves where is Jesus on our journey? Are we or have we been transformed and changed by the circumstances surrounding us and can we see some good in this situation? Are we wallowing in disillusionment without seeing the opportunities that these challenges present us with? So the story of the disciples meeting Jesus on the road to Emmaus isn’t just a story about Jesus’s resurrection with a spiritual body. It is also a story of how we should be living our lives; how we recognise Jesus; how we listen to him and how we walk with him. It is a very important story during this time.
Loving God,
We ask for Your help as we begin this new school term.
Allow us to experience Your presence in the many blessings You put before us. Bless us all and bless this day of new beginnings.
Smile upon this staff and student body, and surround us, Loving God, with the soft mantle of your love.
Open our eyes to the new challenges and exciting opportunities that this new term brings.
Open our hearts and minds to fresh starts and new experiences.
Give us a generous spirit to be enthusiastic with our teaching and our own learnings and the courage to accept new opportunities.
Give us insight to see realistically “what is”; but make us dreamers and give us vision of all the possibilities for “what can be”.
Use us as your instruments to form, inform, reform, and transform those who come to us.
Help us to be attentive to one another and let us experience Your presence in this place – where your son Jesus Christ is our light.
Teach this community to follow in your footsteps, and to live life in the ways of gospel spirituality, inclusive community, justice and solidarity and liberating education.
We ask this in the name of your Son Jesus Christ.
Amen
Blessed Edmund Rice, pray for us
Live Jesus in our Hearts, forever.
My best wishes to all of you for a good term ahead. Hopefully we can start looking forward to seeing at least some of our students in the near future.
Joe Zavone
College Principal
Christus Lux Mea