From the Religious Education Coordinator Term 1 Week 2

“Christ is alive and He wants you to be alive”

There is no better way to open the first newsletter than with the words of our theme for 2020: “Christ is alive and He wants you to be alive”. It is a reminder that Jesus Christ is present within our lives and He wants us to experience the joy of His presence. Pope Francis chose to begin his apostolic exhortation titled ‘Christus Vivit’ with these words so that young people may be emboldened to become the next leaders of the Church. The decision to use these words as our theme was one made with the support of the students that attended the Australian Catholic Youth Festival in Perth last December. They heard these words and have since been inspired to lead the Catholic life of the College in 2020. It is my hope that the enthusiastic faith of these young members of the College will spread across our entire community.

Over the Christmas holidays I had the absolute honour of travelling to Israel as part of the Gandel Holocaust Studies Program for Australian Educators. I was lucky enough to be one of 35 teachers from around Australia selected to participate in an intensive three week study of the Holocaust. Such an experience is truly life changing for a number of reasons and throughout the year I intend on communicating much of what was learnt while studying at Yad Vashem with the Good Samaritan community. It was the experiences of travelling to the many Christian sites that is most relevant to this article. Visiting important sites such as the Holy Sepulchre, Garden of Gethsemane, and Bethlehem (just to name a few), helped me see that Christ is truly alive. Even though I was so far from the College, I couldn’t help but think of our community while travelling on a road from Jerusalem to Jericho. It was along this road that I noticed a relatively simple road sign indicating the direction of the Good Samaritan. Even though our school is named after a parable, and the existence of a “Good Samaritan Inn” has more to do with celebrating and remembering the parable rather than being the actual place in the story, it brought home the fact that our faith in Christ is real and is something that can be lived even two thousand years after the events that are written in the Bible.

This week we celebrated the start of the new school year with our traditional Opening School Mass. With our new theme forming the foundation for the celebration, it was great to welcome Fr Peter from the Parish of Smithfield. Reflecting on the Gospel of Matthew he discussed the important mission that Jesus entrusted to His disciples. Even though the despair they must have felt when they witnessed the crucifixion, it did not compare to the pure joy of His resurrection and the realisation that He is alive. The knowledge of His resurrection would most certainly have inspired the disciples to feel alive and to accept the challenge to spread the Good News to all the nations. Fr Peter also helped communicate the important message that we celebrate our Catholic faith in everything that we do at school. Whether it be in Religious Education, Art, Music, or even Mathematics, we are searching for Christ in every encounter at Good Samaritan. I pray that 2020 will be a year when our young people are inspired by Christ’s presence to become the leaders of the Church that our world so desperately needs.

Mr Matthew Bradbury

Acting Religious Education Coordinator