An evening to remember.
The school year is filled with some wonderful highlights. One of these is certainly the Upper VI Leavers’ Mass which this year took place on 8th May. We welcomed Fr David Reilly, whom many of you will remember celebrated our Feast Day Mass for us last term, to celebrate the Leavers’ Mass and all Upper VI, together with families and staff gathered in the Chapel.
The Leavers’ Mass is an opportunity for the Upper VI to choose hymns and readings which hold significance for them and their time at St Augustine’s Priory and the girls chose well. This year we enjoyed singing ‘Here I am , Lord’, ‘Jubilate’, ‘Shine, Jesus shine’ and ‘You shall go out with joy’. Girls read, brought up the offertory gifts and led the Prayers of the Faithful and at the end of Mass Katya Beniatian, our outgoing Head Girl, read The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost. After this Sophia Bakht sang Slipping Through My Fingers – the ABBA song where a mother bemoans the passing of time. Several tears were shed at this point.
Afterwards, everyone gathered in the Nuns’ Refectory to enjoy refreshments and a buffet supper. Following this it was down to the temporary hall for Upper VI to enjoy a bouncy castle, some dodgems and karaoke.
We wish all the best for their A Levels to our Upper VI leavers – we look forward to seeing them enjoy their next steps and to remember, as Blessed John Henry Newman wrote,
‘God has created me to do Him some definite service,
He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another.
I have my mission.
I may never know what it is in this life but I shall be told it in the next.
I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.
He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work.
I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place,
while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.
Therefore I will trust Him, whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away.
If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him,
in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him.
If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.
He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about.
He may take away my friends.
He may throw me among strangers.
He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me.
Still, He knows what He is about.’
