Station 10 – Cultural Diversity Artwork

St Mary’s College has always been a community of diverse cultural groups. Different waves of migrants and refugees have found welcome and a sense of identity in this community. Their unique cultures and traditions have enriched the College community and provided an opportunity for us to practise hospitality and compassion.

This art installation was created in 2024 by St Mary’s students from Prep through to Year 12 with many different cultures and nationalities represented. Its text “All Are Welcome” seeks to provide a clear message of inclusion for all who visit, or become a part of, our College as we strive to be more like Nano Nagle: A Woman of Welcoming Heart.

Student artists whose work is featured in the Cultural Diversity Station Artwork.

Reflection

“Women of Welcoming Heart”

They know her in the crowded lonely ways, woman of welcoming heart, whose lantern sheds, kind beams for eyes waste-misted by the weary miles, for them her hands are open, for her their doors.

Room is made by dim and smoking fire, some small crust shared and she, receiving, knows still more to give, and, welcomed, grows in art of welcoming.

Apart, in shadowed hours of night and dawn, leaning heart to heart on the One who pulses life, into the lowliest and least of all that lives, she learns to unclasp the last-kept store and lay it down in welcome: ‘Take and share.’

Until, the last loaf broken, the last wine poured, she can dare the outer darkness, the fine-piercing sword, and bear to the bereft… heart-certain that beyond this last black mile, light streams from beckoning windows and from wide-flung door, where she will hear the voice grown dear in silent listening years: ‘Woman of welcoming heart, here is your home’.

Sr Raphael Consedine pbvm