Stops along the Way of our Pilgrimages

It is that time of the Calendar year where we have events which ask us to re-examine how we will face the future and how we can celebrate the past. Next Thursday evening at the Annual Celebration evening we will have the members of our Year 12 cohort graduate from 13/14 years of formal education. Last Thursday we celebrated with a Thanksgiving Mass in our parish church. We prayed for and thanked all those who have made it possible for these students to get to this stage of their life, their families and the many teachers who had an influence on their lives.

Last week Tuesday there was a Liturgy in the Mercedes College Chapel with our Year 9 students to celebrate ‘A Stop along the Way’. The ‘way’ meaning the pilgrimage which is our schooling years and the stops where we reflect on what our future will look like and we celebrate the great things that happened to us over the past. The students made decisions about improving in those areas where they had made mistakes. We can choose to part with the mistakes in the same way that pilgrims leave behind a symbol on the way markers along the Camino routes in Spain. A typical way marker can be seen here.

Just as our students complete the pilgrimage from Subiaco to New Norcia and experience the highs and lows of the walk, we can equate these to the highs and lows we face in life. We are then also asked to compare these to the journey that Jesus made. Our students are asked to reflect on the same journeys made by all our College patrons. During our retreats at each year level we ask the students to look at the pilgrim journey of these patrons who model a life of sacrifice but also a life of accomplishments which in some cases far surpasses anything that we can imagine possible. In all these cases we are asked to compare our lives to the lives of these amazing people and use them as a model of how we can possibly live our own lives.

Over the next few weeks we will continue to see other year levels in the Junior school celebrating their ‘Stop along the Way’ as they move into a new adventure within the pilgrimage that is called Education. Please help us in praying for each of the students who will be pausing to celebrate these Stops, or Way Markers.

Harry Muller
Ministry Coordinator