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Volume 9 - 27 March, 2012 Dear Parents and Students LENTEN REFLECTION: Those who suffer in silence – who have lost their voice, or had it taken from them – have their refuge and hope in God, who is faithful. Yet to speak out for the voiceless, for those who suffer, God needs our voices. We are called to speak on behalf of those who cannot, or will not; and to empower the powerless to speak for themselves: God requires us to do jus ce first of all. Yet too o en the hopes of those who suffer are met with silence. Chris ans and the churches do not always speak out when we should or work to empower the voiceless to find their own voice. Called to serve others, to do it to the least of these, we do not always respond. Yet what we say and do is set alongside what we believe: any difference is made plain! Confession leads to libera on. We are members one of another. Recognising that our silence makes us complicit in the suffering of others, we know that our courage in ac ng for jus ce empowers others to make a stand themselves.
Servant of Others John 13:16
You lovingly washed your disciples’ feet,
Dirty, smelly as they must have been.
And I, who want to be of service
So quickly turn away from the difficult,
Try to ease my way out of anything
That takes too much of my precious me
Or asks more than I am wan ng to give.
When will I come to accept the reality
That following your example of service
Requires more than seeking my own comfort?
The Loreto Girls’ School in South Sudan opened in 2008 with the first class of Form 1 secondary students. Four years later, eight of these girls graduated. “It is difficult for girls to complete high school here. Many families do not encourage their daughters to be educated; they are forced into early marriages, and there are unexpected pregnancies. During one of the gradua on speeches a student talked about the challenges of coming to Loreto where many students from various sub‐tribes lived and studied together. There was a lot of conflict and she talked about how in the first month of the school some of the students threatened to leave, rather than studying with “those” people. She said, ‘By staying at Loreto, we have learned about peace. We have learned how to be with people who are different than us.’”
JusƟce
Sincerity
FREEDOM
Verity
Felicity