Jubilee 2025
I N T H E D I O C E S E O F N O T T I N G H A M
Catholic Life
Here are some useful Jubilee 2025 links and resources:
In January 2025, we welcomed a group of pupils from Saint Hugh’s Catholic Primary School in Lincoln, along with their teacher Mrs Pallister, to our school to plan for a Jubilee themed retreat day together.
Mrs Wright, our Lay Chaplain, helped us to choose some of the principles of Catholic Social Teaching which most closely linked with the Papal Bull which was proclaimed by Pope Francis in advance of the beginning of the Holy Year. The title of the Papal Bull was “Spes non confundit” which is Latin for “Hope does not disappoint”.
The CST themes we settled on were Stewardship, The Common Good and Promoting Peace.
It was wonderful to share ideas and good practice with pupils from another school in our Academy Trust family. Our Shining Stars modelled how the retreat plans worked, having now worked with these confidently for some time and the pupils from Saint Hugh’s offered some new and creative ideas for the mini missions.
We delivered our retreat to the whole school shortly after this planning day and it was a wonderful, reflective day which allowed us all to learn more about and focus on the Jubilee.
Here are our plans for the day: Sleaford’s Retreat Day Lent Term 2025.
The Pope declared the year preceding the Jubilee a ‘Year of Prayer’. This helped us to prepare ourselves for the special Jubilee Year.
Prayer and liturgy at Our Lady of Good Counsel
Prayer is central to how we encounter Jesus and God and the theme of “Encounter” comes from Bishop Patrick’s teachings on how we can be closer to God through talking and listening to him.
Here is our current timetable for prayer and liturgy:
Monday: Gospel Themed Celebration of the Word
Tuesday: Value of the Week
Wednesday: Hymn Practice
Thursday: Class Celebration of the Word
Friday: Celebration Assembly
Spontaneous prayer is also encouraged through our various sacred spaces in and around school. Pupils enjoy the opportunity to bring their own ideas to life to enhance these and they are regularly linked in with the current time in the liturgical year. On other occasions, the sacred spaces are linked to our school virtues.
We are also lucky to be located within walking distance of our parish church. We attend Mass in church for special occasions and Holy Days. Our parish priest and deacon are very supportive too, often visiting our school to enhance our prayer life or support with the children’s Religious Education.
Please use the links below to see some examples of prayer and liturgy which have taken place at our school in recent years.
The prayer life of our school community is woven into the natural pattern of our school day. We have set prayers which are said at the beginning of the day, before lunch and at the end of the day.
Every Friday in school, we have a celebration assembly and invite parents in to celebrate their children’s success with us. Children are awarded Special Mentions, Star of the Week or Marvellous Missionary certificates for their academic and personal achievements.
We always have lots to celebrate and encourage pupils to bring in certificates from outside school too.
Year 4 retold and re-enacted the Stations of the Cross with great respect.
May is the month of Mary and Catholics devote the whole month of May to celebrating and honouring her, the mother of Jesus. Mary is even sometimes known as the ‘Queen of May’. Deacon Tony chose our youngest pupils to crown Mary with beautiful flowers.
Sacred Spaces
Our pupils learn about liturgical colours and special symbols in the church’s year. They enjoy creating their own sacred spaces and we encourage them to help prepare these special places around school. We have a universal sacred space in the centre of our school which is used by members of other faiths too. Catholic prayer groups are regularly held in this space during lunch time, especially at key times throughout the year of the church.
In the Spring of 2024, we successfully applied for some Sacred Space funding and began work on our new project – an outdoor sacred space on our school field. A group of Year 6’s helped Mrs Chawner and Mrs Wright choose what to spend the money on and together we decided that we wanted to buy some wooden planters which we would place in a semi-circle to create the new dedicated prayer area.
We added a statue of Mary, heart shaped wind chimes, a welcome sign and even a special angel wind chime. We hope that the angel wind chime will provide comfort for anybody who wishes to use our new outdoor sacred space as a place of remembrance of a loved one who has passed away.
As the weather begins to improve, our school community will be able to use the clipboards, pencils, colouring crayons and paper (which is stored inside our new plastic storage) to write their own prayers and post them into our ‘prayer post box’. Also within the plastic storage, there will be lengths of appropriately coloured ribbon (matching to the liturgical year) which the pupils can take and tie onto the wooden trellis as they pray for their own intentions. We also hope that in time the bulbs inside our planters will grow and that these will add colour and beauty to the area so that we can reflect on God’s wonderful creation.
Please check back in the future to see the development of this area through the seasons.
Helping our neighbours in need
At the beginning of each academic year, every class discusses which charity they would like to choose as their ‘class charity’ for the year ahead. During the year, each class will find out more about their chosen charity and will organise a fundraising event to raise money for and awareness of the charity.
This year’s chosen charities are detailed below:
Reception and Year 1: New Life Food Bank
Year 2: Nomad Trust
Year 3: Air ambulance
Year 4: Oakdene Care home
Year 5: Sophies Journey
Year 6: RNLI
Every year, we support our global neighbours by raising money for CAFOD. We do this primarily through the Big Lent Walk. Check back here for updates throughout the year.
On Friday 26th September, we are holding a Macmillan Coffee Afternoon for pupils and their families. All proceeds will go to Macmillan Cancer Support.
