James McDevitt
Many years ago, I was at Mass with my school on the Feast of the Ascension. During his homily, the priest told the children that he asked one question to adults when they came to him looking to get married in the Catholic Church. The question was: “Name the four great Feast Days of the Church”.
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Teaching online last term was something that I was absolutely dreading, a feeling that I know many of my colleagues shared. A common concern was the sense of personal connection, the building of a community within the classroom, that allows for the venture of dialogue, conversation, and learning. When it comes to Catholic education, which always has a pastoral dimension, incorporating this element in a virtual environment poses serious challenges. To me this seemed impossible to carry out online. What, in fact, I was actually confronted with was a completely different reality, one in which a ‘light shines in the darkness’.
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Last week the St Andrew’s Foundation held its annual Advent Retreat, which this year was led by the wonderful Fr Ed Hone CSsR, Dean of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. Fr Ed invited us to reflect on Advent as a time of ‘Watching, Waiting and Hoping – together in Faith’ in which we await the coming of Our Lord. Though Advent is often seen as a time to prepare for Christmas, Fr Ed reminded us that Advent is also a time to look towards the future; indeed, the very word ‘Advent’ is derived from the Lord’s Prayer in which we proclaim ‘Adveniat regnum tuum’, ‘Thy Kingdom Come’. It is a time in which we prepare ourselves for the coming of God’s Kingdom, and trust in the promises that God has made to us that all will be restored to Him.
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The Cloisters 