Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the earth, yours are the feet by which He is to go about doing good and yours are the hands by which He is to bless us now.’
(St Teresa of Avila)

While on earth,Jesus healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, proclaimed freedom for prisoners and preached good news to the poor. St Bartholomew’s, as a Christian community, is called to continue the ministry of Christ. The world is full of real problems and the pain of human experience is impossible to avoid. However, rather than hiding such things from our pupils, St Bartholomew’s sensitively seeks to open the children’s eyes to the often difficult and unpleasant realities of life and to provide the boys and girls with practical opportunities to help those less fortunate than themselves. These regular works of charity allow the children to discover how simple acts of kindness and love can bring enormous hope and healing to even the darkest of human experiences.

Many of our ‘faith in action’ projects are co-ordinated and run by the school’s Prayer Group.  In recent months, these have included raising money for SCIAF, collecting tins of food for a local soup kitchen, co-ordinating donations of baby items for a local charity working with young mothers, fund-raising to support the work of Father Ben, a priest in Uganda, and Primary 7 pupils working with day patients at St Andrew’s Hospice. In all of these ways, the ministry of Jesus is continued.

Of course (and perhaps most importantly), the pupils and staff of St Bartholomew’s strive to live-out their faith not only in specific projects but through their everyday words, actions and mind-sets.