Prayer and Liturgy

St Gerard’s Catholic Primary School

At the heart of Christian faith is the belief in God, who communicates with people. God calls every human person into a loving relationship and as with every relationship; our relationship with God can only grow through communication. Prayer is the way in which we engage in communication with God.

Our Prayer Life is central to everything do.
Our prayer life is evident through the wealth of shared prayer and liturgy.
It is present, though not as openly evident, in our private prayer, meditation and reflection.

Please help your child to learn these prayers which we regularly say in school. It would be wonderful if as a family you could pray some of these at home, particularly on a weekend and during school holidays.

We also incorporate traditional prayers into our reflections and collective worships, such as: The Our Father, The Hail Mary and The Glory Be.

These prayers are also said at key points in the liturgical year. For example, during the months of May and October, we encourage everyone to pray the Holy Rosary more often.

As a school we take part in a wealth of liturgies, covering aspects of the liturgical year and key events linked to RSE and PSHE

As part of our school Collective Worship- we use the Ten Ten Collective Worship scheme. Parents can log onto the Collective Worship Portal using the following details.

Username

Password

Parent Portal

https://www.tentenresources.co.uk/parent-portal/

All children and staff take part in daily collective worship, where they prayer together as either a whole school, key stage or class. This prayer and liturgy mainly takes place in school. However, as a school we make frequent visits to St Mary’s Cathedral , where we take part in parish prayer and liturgy.

Collective worship also takes place on a lunch time in the prayer room. Members of the Chaplaincy group organise, plan and deliver these. Children are invited to drop into these worships/liturgies whenever they want. This year the Chaplaincy group have also helped run the CAFOD club, they have linked this to some lunchtime collective worship.

Th Chaplaincy group invite other pupils to pray, some intentions/themes this year have been: the Holy Rosary in October and May, prayers for all those who have died in November, prayers around the crib in December and the Stations of the Cross in March/April.

The Year 5 and Year 6 pupils enjoyed taking part in the ‘Music for the Mind’ concert in St Mary’s Cathedral. They were a credit to the school. They sang beautifully and many parishioners commented on the respect and enthusiasm they showed.

All of KS2 celebrate feast of the Epiphany by taking part in the parish mass, led by Bishop Patrick, in St Mary’s Cathedral. Whilst they were there they also prayed for the repose of the soul of Pope Benedict.

Throughout the season of Lent, we are invited to journey with Jesus as we pray the Stations of the Cross. This is a time to reflect on Jesus’ love for us.