LENT
This week marks the beginning of Lent, a special time in the Church’s year, where we spend time contemplating on life’s blessings and preparing for Holy Week.

Most Rev Bishop Brian G Mascord DD, Diocese of Wollongong, describes Lent as:

 “A time of renewal in faith, hope and love so that we can enter more fully into the celebration of the Sacred Triduum of our Lord’s last supper, his suffering and death on the cross, and his glorious resurrection.”

Pope Francis tweeted this following quote about Lent in 2016.

Pope Francis encourages us to take time to reflect on our lives and think about how we can help others. He asks us to be mindful of how our actions can impact others.

LENTEN APPEAL- PROJECT COMPASSION

Today, students from the Year 6 Mission Team, Mrs Mitchell and I, travelled to St Benedict’s Catholic College, Oran Park, to the launch of Project Compassion.

Project Compassion is Caritas Australia's annual Lenten fundraising and awareness-raising appeal. Millions of Australians come together in solidarity with the world's poor to help end poverty, promote justice and uphold dignity. The Year 6 Mission Team will showcase the Project Compassion Lenten Appeal to our school, next week.

In today’s liturgy, St Benedict’s student Isabella, spoke to the congregation:

The ‘common good’ is one of the reasons why we gather today as one community to celebrate the launch of Caritas Australia’s Project Compassion appeal. Through Project Compassion, we are asked to acknowledge that we are all members of the one human family, all equally worthy of love, mercy and respect.

Project Compassion 2020 takes the theme of Global Community – GO FURTHER TOGETHER as we collectively aim to support the other to thrive in a union of love and compassion. And let’s do this together!

 As students in our Catholic schools of the Wollongong Diocese, we believe in the “two feet of justice”. Project Compassion provides us with the opportunity to support others, to meet their immediate and most basic needs. To have empathy for them and to GO FURTHER TOGETHER to support them.

ASH WEDNESDAY MESSAGE FROM BISHOP BRIAN MASCORD

In early January, I wrote to the faithful of the Diocese, at a time when many within our Diocesan communities were still fighting the bushfires or trying to come to terms with the feelings of loss and grief associated with the bushfires.

Since that time, I have had the opportunity to visit a number of communities through our Diocese in the Shoalhaven, Wingecarribee and Wollondilly regions, seeing the destruction firsthand.

Importantly, these trips gave me the chance to simply be with, pray with and listen to the many stories from shocked, impacted, overwhelmed and brave people. There have been incredible outpourings of support for the communities impacted by these fires. I continue to be heartened by the stories of unity and generosity that continue to bring people together in the aftermath of the fires, from within the impacted communities, from our diocesan agencies, our parishes and wider communities who have sought to generously donate money, time, goods and services to help those impacted and to help communities rebuild.

As a way of continuing to prayerfully show solidarity with each other, I have given each parish a package of ashes, collected from areas representing the regions ravaged by fire. I have blessed them and invite you to add them to the ashes of your own community, to be used in your Ash Wednesday celebrations. I trust that they will be as always, a powerful symbol of the start of our Lenten journey, but particularly this year, a powerful symbol of our journeying with others in our Diocese, especially those amongst us in the recovery phase.

These combined ashes are a significant and powerful symbol for us as a Diocese, as we begin our Lenten journey, in solidarity with those impacted by the bushfires.

ASH WEDNESDAY AT ST MICHAEL’S SCHOOL MITTAGONG
Tomorrow, we will be having an Ash Wednesday Liturgy for our students with Fr Sean. At this liturgy, the special combined Diocesan ashes will be given, to the students and staff as part of the liturgy. A special reminder that we are all part of Gods family.

A LENTEN PRAYER

We Pray
Jesus, you call us to a new way of being.
Clothe us with kindness and humility.
Help us to reach out to those who are in distress
and to pay special attention to those without a voice.
Soften our hearts so that we may love others,
and help us to turn our gaze towards you.
We ask this through the one
who brought us life through his sacrifice.
Amen.

Next week is Catholic Schools Week, a week where we celebrate the great things that are happening in our Catholic Schools across Australia and especially in our Diocese of Wollongong. The theme this year is "Embracing our Future Together". During the week we will be discussing with the students what does this message mean for us? Further details about Catholic Schools Week will be in our newsletter next week.   A great way to celebrate the start of Catholic Schools Week as a community, is our school Cross Country on Monday. Further details regarding the Cross Country can be found in our sport section of this newsletter. 

MEET AND GREET
Thank you to those parents and carers who attended our 2020 Meet and Greet meetings. This is a great opportunity for you to meet your child/children’s class teacher and learn about the various activities planned for their class. If you were unable to attend on the night, can you contact your child’s class teacher for their class information document.

SWIMMING CARNIVAL
Last Friday, we held the Swimming Carnival Presentation during our School Assembly. Congratulations to those who received ribbons for places in the 36 events.

Great sportsmanship and team work were very evident throughout our carnival and I wish to congratulate our participants, our helpers and our staff for a great carnival.

Ribbons for the first, second and third fastest times were given in each overall event.  The results are listed in this newsletter.

Thank you very much to:

Mrs Anderson for her organisation of the Swimming Carnival and organisation of students eligible to attend the Western Region Diocesan Carnival on Tuesday 3^rd March; Mrs Berrell for organising the medals and trophies and Mr Tuckwell who organised the presentation.

P&F MEETING
A reminder that there will be a P&F Meeting in the school library at 1:40pm this Friday to assist in organising the P&F fundraising events and activities for this year. Please come along and show your support of this wonderful organisation. Your children greatly benefit from the fundraising of the P&F as shown by the following items that the P&F were able to purchase for us last year.

THANK YOU 
You may have seen a new smiling face in our school during this term. This lovely man is Mr Don Spencer. From time to time, I need to attend Principal meetings either at the Catholic Education Office in Wollongong or at other schools and Mr Spencer kindly comes to our school to assist whilst I am away. Thank you to Don, for his great support this week.  

Thank you to our parents for your continued support of our school.

Best wishes,
Mrs Katrina West
Principal