The theme for this year’s Catholic Education Week is designed to help us reflect upon how our schools are communities of faith and learning, characterised by our celebration and worship.
We can list many things that make Turnbull High School a distinctively Catholic place of learning, but they are summed up in three phrases that you can see around our school:
- We are a Community of Faith Engaged in Learning. Our Catholic faith is woven into all that we do from starting the school day with prayer to seeking to discover truth, beauty and goodness, the finger prints of God, in every subject that we study.
- We are Centred on Christ. This is not just a phrase that is mounted above the main entrance, but reflects our desire to witness to our faith in the Lord Jesus by living the sacramental life, by sharing a life of prayer and by reaching out to others in and beyond our community. Our Oratory is on the middle floor of the school and so Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is close to us in all we do and living our consecration to the Immaculate Heart leads us to follow the Lord more faithfully.
- Our motto is Respice Finem– Look to the Goal. At Turnbull we have the opportunity to receive a spiritual and academic formation which prepares us for our short term aims- our exams, further education, careers and vocations but also for our ultimate goal which is to know love and serve God in this life and be forever happy with him in the next. We are a centre of the New Evangelisation which seeks to proclaim and witness to the Good News and walk in the path of discipleship.
The circumstances of the last two years have posed real challenges for so many in our schools, parish and wider communities. We saw the closure of our schools and parishes, and worked through the tentative attempts to reopen or to reimagine how we could function safely in an ever-changing landscape. Celebrating our Faith and Worshipping God have taken on new forms at Turnbull High School. We have responded to the difficulties around assisting at Holy Mass by exploring the richness and variety that is to be found in our Catholic devotional heritage. Online and in person we have rediscovered the power of the Holy Rosary and Novenas, the stillness of Eucharistic Adoration and the richness of Letio Divina.
In the preface to the weekday Mass we find these beautiful words:
Father all-powerful and ever-living God,
we do well always and everywhere to give thanks.
You have no need of our praise,
yet our desire to thank You is itself Your gift.
Our prayer of thanksgiving adds nothing to Your greatness,
but makes us grow in Your grace,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
We see here that there is never a wrong time to turn to God in prayer and worship. There is never a wrong time to celebrate his unending love for us. Those words from the preface remind us that the purpose of celebrating and worshipping is to Adore God and to be Reconciled to him. ‘Ad Ora’ means to mouth and so to Adore God is to turn to him and be filled with the breath of life as was Adam in the garden. Giving thanks and praise is not only right and just but is the realisation of our destiny as beings made in His Image.
The Latin root of ‘Reconcile’ comes from the word for eyelash, meaning that by turning away from sin and towards the face of God through the sacraments, we are drawn into the most intimate of relationships with our creator. Indeed, in so doing, we strengthen our relationship with God, our loving Father, and with our brothers and sisters in Christ with whom we celebrate- ‘and to you, my brothers and sisters to pray for me to the Lord Our God’ We are made to know, to love and to serve Him; it is here that we find our purpose, and we can do that through joining together in celebration and worship.
This is why the prayer and sacramental life of our school is absolutely central to who we are and to how we grow as a community. It is also why the links we have with our parishes are so important to us.
Today, on behalf of all the pupils of Turnbull High School we would like to thank you, our family, friends and follow parishioners, for your support and prayers as we continue to encounter Jesus and discern God’s dream for our lives. We also offer our prayers for you who are united with us in Celebrating the Good News and Worshipping God on our pilgrimage through this life towards our ultimate goal.
