Advent Liturgies

St Angela Merici, herself, was a star-gazer, a dreamer, a seeker and a Pilgrim Traveller.

On Friday 3 December, Year 7, 8 and 9 students attended Advent Liturgies focussing on this year's College theme Dare to Dream with its overarching symbol of the STAR. Historically, the stars were used as maps by peoples moving from place to place.

St Angela Merici, herself, was

  • a star-gazer,
  • a dreamer,
  • a seeker and
  • a Pilgrim Traveller.

Today St Angela Merici is our star, guiding us along our journey as students at Merici College.

In today’s special liturgy the student's encountered the Christmas Story from the Gospels, where the star of Bethlehem inspired the wise men from the East to travel to Jerusalem for the birth of Jesus. In the first reading, the students heard from the Book of Isaiah. Isaiah was a prophet or Messenger of God who lived before the time of Jesus, which is very significant. In this passage they heard about God’s servant who will be supported and loved by God, who will act through the Holy Spirit, who will not be boastful and who will bring justice to the entire world. God’s servant is in fact, Jesus Isaiah in the Old Testament is foretelling the birth and life of Jesus, which we celebrate at Christmas.

Just as the Wise Men were guided by the star of Bethlehem to Jesus, we have our own guiding stars to light our path, whether that be Jesus himself, St Angela Merici or anyone of faith that you look up to.

We know from our Christian Service Learning Program at Merici that we are all God’s servants, so to speak. We use Jesus’ life and ministry as our guiding star. We serve others as an act of love for God and love for our neighbour. At Christmas it is easy to be selfish, to think about how much food we can eat and what presents we want to see underneath the tree.

The students were challenged to be more mindful this Christmas season

1. Be grateful, thank those special people in your lives for all they do for you. Be grateful for a safe place to live, Be grateful for the amazing food that the Earth provided to us, be grateful to have made it to the end of a challenging year. Find something in your life to be grateful for

2. Aspire – aspire not to have but to be more. Choose to do good, take time over the holidays to develop new skills to share this with others, to volunteer in your local community.

Each student was invited to think about a esponse to the question "Who do you aspire to be?" They wrote their response on a star and placed it on their Year Group banner up the front of the sacred space.

We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate students who received Blue, Red and Gold Angel Wing Awards for their Christian Service hours. Achievement awards were also presented to students for their participation in co-curricular sport.

Full image gallery here.

 

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