Feast Day 2021
What an awesome day Feast Day was, in fact, what a terrific week, the whole of JJAMM Week was in total! Despite the difficulties of having yet another Lockdown (lockdown 6) imposed upon us only the night before, we still managed to put together a wonderful tribute in honour of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop and raise some funds for our Year Level Charities along the way. In enlivening Mary’s spirit, we were definitely not going to let a mere lockdown deter us and so we celebrated Feast Day virtually by live streaming to our community at home.
As always, we started with our St Mary of the Cross Feast Day Mass, and true to form, Fr Tony Cox, our College Chaplin, ensured that our Mass was a beautiful tribute to Saint Mary and one, which I am sure she would have been quite touched by. The focus for our Mass centred upon the Charism of Saint Mary, our College connection as a Josephite school and to our 2021 College theme, “Work on with Constancy and Courage.” Reflecting on St Mary’s words throughout the liturgy provided perfect encouragement to us all in one of the most difficult periods of our lifetimes. There could not have been a more special way to begin our Feast Day than to come together as a Catholic school community and share in the Eucharist together. Nor could there be a greater tribute to Saint Mary than to celebrate Mass together in her honour because she was so strong and passionate in her faith and love of God. It really was a beautiful start to our festivities.
We followed our feast Day Mass with a very special guest interview. The Faith and Mission Team thought it would be great to try and gain some perspective of St Mary’s life as a nun as it was back then and compare it with the life of an existing Sister of St Joseph in our contemporary world. Who better to help us with that than our very own, Sr Rita Malavisi (well, she is a past staff member and so we still rightly proclaim her as one of our own). She was more than happy to join us for the morning and share her thoughts with us. She probably wasn’t expecting to be sitting alongside Saint Mary herself and sharing experiences with her Order’s founder and with us, but that’s exactly what she did. Yes, that’s correct, St Mary of the Cross made a once only, special guest appearance, arriving in her very own Saint mobile and then joined us in St Joseph’s Chapel for a face-to-face chat. Not only was this an extremely insightful and engaging interview, it was also quite a lot of fun for all of us to be a part of and experience. Following the interview, our special guests joined in the frivolity of the St Mary of the Cross Feast Day Spinning Wheel. What an honour it was to have St Mary and Sr Rita to actually spin the wheel for us, resulting in several lucky students and a staff member winning a $50 Uber Eats voucher each. A perfect, pick me up prize when you are stuck in lockdown. Congratulations to all our winners!
As a Josephite School, we belong to AJASS (the Association of affiliated Josephite Secondary Schools). So to conclude our Feast Day Celebrations, it was only fitting that we viewed a short, “Feast Day Shout Out” from the other AJASS schools. Feast Day 2021, although virtual due to lockdown, proved to be a truly fantastic celebration of the Feast of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop.
The Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mass
With the lockdown being extended and our local parishes closed to attendees at Mass, the Faith and Mission Team recorded a Mass in celebration of the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, Mary, and made it available for the College community to view and participate in. Fr Tony Cox, our College Chaplin, led us in our Eucharist and paid beautiful and appropriate homage to Mary, the mother of our Lord, Jesus. It was wonderful that many members of our community did take the opportunity to access the link and view the Mass with family. It was also fantastic to hear that a number of people shared the link with other relatives and friends who also felt the void of missing attending Mass and so wanted to view it. It was definitely worth their while because it was a beautiful liturgy.
