Dear Parents and Guardians,
With the final week of term upon us, I would like to thank families for another very enjoyable term. We shared many events together celebrating our community and our students have made great contributions in so many areas.
Our Chaplain, Helen Creed, is sharing with us her reflection for Easter, this significant time in our Christian calendar.
I wish you all a very happy and safe holiday, and I look forward to welcoming everyone back for Term 2.
With best wishes,
Debbie Dunwoody
But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said.” (Matthew 28: 5-6)
As I write this, I am preparing for one of the most important aspects of my role as chaplain: the celebration of Easter. Before the end of this term, the Junior School will gather at St Mark’s, the Senior School in the School Hall (they don’t fit into St Mark’s!), and the four-year-olds will come to the School Chapel. I am very grateful to all the students and staff who support these services by story-telling, singing, praying, playing music, and operating A/V!
While there is an important focus on Easter Day (this year it lands on Sunday 31 March), next term I will also be explaining to our students, that Easter is not just celebrated for one day in the church. The seven weeks after Easter Day are the “season of Easter”. And there is a sense in which Easter is celebrated every single Sunday of the year: Sunday was chosen as the day of worship by the early Christians, as the day of Christ’s resurrection.
I was once speaking to someone who was puzzled about the weekly ritual of offering prayers of confession in Church. He said that he didn’t understand why we had to have these prayers, and words of absolution, every single week. Surely, we all know we are forgiven by now, why do we have to keep hearing the same words! I think he would say something similar about the Easter season.
So, why does the Church, in her wisdom, ask us to come to this story for seven weeks in a row, (and in a sense, every Sunday of the year)? I think it’s to do with forming our imaginations. Easter is about God’s loyalty to us; about the way God breaks through all that shackles our souls, inviting us to take up a life immersed in grace, forgiveness, kind-heartedness and mercy.
But it’s hard sometimes to really believe, and live, this news of freedom that has been passed down to us. Our imaginations are not always able to get past the fact of death, endings and disappointments, in all the ways they come to us.
And so we are invited to return to the Easter story, over and over, and actually, for a life-time. In this way, our imaginations are offered the opportunity to be formed and re-formed by the truth that Easter reveals: that our ultimate destiny is one of freedom and wholeness, of being held and embraced by Love.
What a difference this kind of imagination could make to our world! Because if our imaginations are so formed, then the next time we meet trial and tribulation, then we might be able to face our circumstances so much more hopefully. This would mean: not pretending that these trials are not hurting us, but trusting that under God’s blessing, we will emerge richer in spirit than we were before.
May I wish all those who are celebrating Easter, a most holy season. My prayerful wishes are also with those observing Ramadan at this time.
And may I wish all school families the best of these beautiful Autumn days.
Rev Helen Creed
