Assistant Principal - Mission

The Importance of Prayer

Our belief in Jesus Christ is so central to who we are, without that belief in our school, St Joseph’s Regional College does not need to exist. It is expected that we all participate in prayer as a sign of respect and reverence for God, for all those who have gone before us, and for those who have helped to shape our College.

In Australia today, it has become an expectation that we acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we live, our First Nations people. Which is awesome and a beautiful way to come together. It would be considered disrespectful to deny or opt out of that acknowledgement. In a similar way, we need to acknowledge that our school only exists because of our Catholic Faith Tradition, so participating in prayer is one way that demonstrates our appreciation and acknowledgement of who we are as a College community.

We are a faith community for education so that our students can grow in faith, and achieve fullness of life.Prayer is not a performance or a passive event where the audience just watches. It is important that we join in with responses because we all pray together as one community.

We pray for God’s blessing over our St Joseph’s Regional College Community as we journey through 2023. May our parents, students and staff work in harmony in the pursuit of learning and as we work for justice for all.
Amen

Justice 2023 

Of all the themes in our six-year cycle, Justice is possibly our greatest call to action. Justice is very much about others - we cannot be just when we are self-centred or focused on ourselves.

Justice is often a term used when discussing legal matters but Justice in a Christian sense is much more. Justice is about love. It is about loving your neighbour as yourself. And as the Parable of the Good Samaritan demonstrates, your neighbour is everyone, even those you may not normally connect or agree with.

Justice is about the sacred dignity of every human being, as we are all made in the image and likeness of God. We are all unique people with a special purpose.

Justice is about giving support to those who need it most. Who are the people in our lives and in our world that are often forgotten? These are the people who need God’s justice.

Justice is for all, no matter what.

House Justice Patron

This year, each house will have a Justice Patron; someone who has lived a life working for justice. These patrons modelled what Jesus taught and sacrificed much in the pursuit of justice. Our house patrons are drawn from our Catholic heritage both from the Australian Church and the Global Church. One of our patrons is still living and resides less than an hour away from our College!

For Flinders:
Uncle Richard Campbell is a Gumbaynggirr-Dunghutti man, and he is a survivor of the Stolen Generations. Uncle Richard was taken to Kinchela Boys Home, where hundreds of Aboriginal boys were raised from the 1920s to the 1970s. He earned a degree in Fine Arts and is now an internationally recognised artist who mentors young Aboriginal artists. Uncle Richard’s Christ-centred spirituality has been a source of restoration too; he grew up Catholic before being stolen from his parents, and now gains great strength from the stories of the Bible. He has found healing through brotherhood with his childhood mates, through the Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation and was featured in Caritas’ Project Compassion stories in 2017 for this work. Today he lives in Kempsey and his current focus is on helping future generations to learn what really happened to Aboriginal people. He continues his art today and is working on re-telling Gospel stories through Aboriginal art. Uncle Richard is our only living Justice patron and we hope to have him visit us this year.

For Hastings:
St Mary of the Cross MacKillop. Mary MacKillop was an educator, a pioneer and a leader, someone who had compassion for others regardless of their situation or race. She founded the Sisters of St Joseph, who in turn established Catholic Schools around the country, including in Port Macquarie.

Galvanised by her belief in the value of education as the foundation for a fulfilling life, Mary's motto was: “Never see a need without doing something about it”.

She demonstrated great faith, even after being excommunicated from the Church she kept up her good work and after an audience with the Pope, she was restored to the Church. Mary MacKillop’s attitude was always of forgiveness and respect. Her many letters are evidence of her vision, courage and leadership.

She was canonised as a Saint on 17 October 2010.

For Innes:
St Vincent de Paul is primarily recognized for his charity and compassion for the poor, though he is also known for his reform of the priesthood. We know of St Vincent de Paul through the many outreaches and charities established under the Society of St Vincent de Paul.

Vincent urged his followers to bring God’s justice and love to people who were unable to live a full human life. He said: “Deal with the most urgent needs. Organise charity so that it is more efficient…teach reading and writing, educate with the aim of giving each the means of self-support”.

He was canonised on 16 June 1737.

For Macquarie:
Saint John Paul II was among the longest-serving Popes and is remembered for his successful efforts to end communism, as well as for building bridges with people of other faiths and issuing the Catholic Church's first apology for its actions during World War II. St. John Paul II used his influence among Catholics and throughout the world to advance the recognition of human dignity and to deter the use of violence. He also was one of the first religious figures to honour Aboriginal Spirituality in his sermon to our First Nations people in Alice Springs in 1986.
He was Pope from 1978 to 2005
He was canonised as a Saint on 27 April 2014.

For Oxley:
Irene McCormack was a Sister of St Joseph (Mary MacKillop’s order of sisters) from Western Australia. McCormack felt called to serve Latin America's poor. She became a missionary worker in Peru, in 1987. McCormack and her companion, Sister Dorothy Stevenson RSJ, were eventually asked to supervise the distribution of emergency goods by Caritas Peru. When warned of impending danger from the Shining Path terrorist group, many missionaries left the village. Irene chose to not abandon the poor community and so stayed, risking her life to help those in need.
On the 21st of May 1991, Irene's fears were realised when she and five others were dragged to the village square by the rebels, told to lie face down and executed with a shot to the back of the head. Irene's 'crime' in the eyes of her murderers was caring for, working with and handing out Caritas food parcels to the impoverished villagers.

For Wilson:
St Teresa of Calcutta. During her time on earth, she was known as Mother Teresa and devoted her life to serving the poor and destitute around the world. She spent many years in Calcutta, India where she founded the Missionaries of Charity, a religious congregation devoted to helping those in great need. In 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and became a symbol of charitable, selfless work. Her life’s work was centred around the dignity of the human person.
She was canonised on 4 September 2016.

Impact Uganda Raffle

One of the first ways that we would like to DO JUSTICE is to sponsor children to go to school.

Education is a key issue in alleviating poverty, so child sponsorship that provides the simple opportunity for education that we take for granted is a high priority. Lives can be changed for as little as $1 a day.

At the Ignite Conference last year, we learned that the Emmanuel Worship community had partnered with the Holy Trinity community in Masaka, Uganda because families were unable to afford to send their children to school. Through their Impact Uganda project, we can make it possible for children living in poverty to receive an education.

Raffle for Uganda

Thanks to a generous donation from Hastings Co-Op IGA Sovereign Place IGA, we have five two-kilogram blocks of Cadbury Chocolate to give away. Beginning next week we will be selling raffle tickets to raise money to sponsor a child from Uganda to go to school. It only costs $360 to send a child to primary school so we hope to send one or even two children to school. If everyone in our College spent only $1 in this raffle, we could easily sponsor 3 children!

We hope to see you all over the next week, as we will be selling tickets near the Canteen.

Tickets will be $1 each or 3 for $2.