Inspired by God’s love, we empower every member of our community to ‘let their light shine’
Inspired by Matthew 5:16
In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount tells the people a phenomenally powerful message. That they are like ‘salt for the whole human race’ (Matthew 5:13) and that they are ‘like light for the whole world’ (Matthew 5: 14) calling they to ‘let your light shine’ (Matthew 5:16). At sunny St. Joseph’s we truly believe that every member of our community including our students, our clergy, our parents, our parishioners and wider community, our support staff, teaching staff and senior leaders have been called to our wonderful community of love by God. In this calling, our school community is truly blessed with their amazing unique God-given gifts and talents. Each member of our community enriches our school with their unique gifts and we encourage all of our students, staff and wider-community to use these gifts to be beacons of Jesus’ light and love in all that they do. Our Mission statement was recently changed in 2025 following consultation with governors, staff and students.
Every student and staff member at St. Joseph’s are immersed in our school anthem, which is also inspired by our mission statement linking to the theme of light, called ‘My Lighthouse’ by the Rend Collective. This anthem encourages us to remember that in all our spiritual journeys through life, Jesus is our spiritual lighthouse guiding us; we can always turn to Him for support, guidance and love and we encourage all our students and staff to do exactly this.
Our school motto is Caritas Christi urget nos meaning ‘the love of Christ spurs us on’. At St. Joseph’s we believe that every student and every staff member should feel that Christian love everywhere within our community. We urge our students, staff and community to be the love of Christ that they want to see in the world through our prayers, our outreach social action, our curriculum and our worship. We encourage all our students to live out the love of Christ through our FLAME values. Students are given FLAME credits and receive praise in our weekly Excellence Fridays initiative for achieving FLAME actions. FLAME stands for: Faith, Learning, Attitude, Mutual Respect and Enrichment. When we created our FLAME mission, this was directly inspired by Matthew 5:16 because we felt that FLAME will help our students and staff ‘let their light shine’. Part of the rationale behind FLAME is also that Faith comes first in that mission. We believe at St. Joseph’s that Faith is at the beating heart of everything that goes on here and as such, must be the Alpha and Omega of everything we do.
Our school prayer is a formulaic prayer has been written by our wonderful students, in addition to the beautiful house prayers that students have also written. Our school prayer is said often during Collective Worship assemblies and at the end of everyday for our daily 2:58 prayer. Our school prayer is:
Lord,
Help us to become the people you want us to be.
In our school may there be prayer, learning and humour,
hard work, faith and friendship.
May we respect everyone we meet.
Use our gifts and encourage each other. Send your angels to guide us.
And let your peace be with us and our families always.
We ask all these things through Christ our Lord.
Amen.