Catholic Life

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.

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.

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

Although the Jubilee is being celebrated in 2025, the Holy Father Pope Francis has asked for two years of preparation before the Jubilee Year itself.  The first of these is coming to a close: 2023 has been a year dedicated to revisiting afresh the fruits of the Second Vatican Council, and the four great constitutions in particular.  Alongside resources provided by the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, Nottingham Deanery has taken a lead in organising speakers to present talks about Dei Verbum, Sacrosanctum Concilium, Gaudium et Spes, and Lumen Gentium.  These are all available on the diocesan website.

The coming three years will form a tripos of celebrations around the Jubilee, tying-in with the diocesan Spiritual Themes as well as the celebrations across the Universal Church.  Bishop Patrick asked the entire Diocese of Nottingham to consider the three Themes back in November 2018, and since then they have been well established in a pattern of Encounter in the Advent Term; Discipleship in the Lent Term; and Missionary Discipleship in the Pentecost Term.

From Advent 2023 the focus will be changed slightly to align with the Jubilee, so that there is a whole year of Encounter in 2024, to tie-in with the Year of Preparation focusing on Prayer in its many forms.  The Jubilee Year 2025 will be a whole year of Discipleship, looking at some of the themes of the Year including care for creation, food poverty, modern slavery, cancelling debt, forgiveness, and rest & worship.  The following year will look at Missionary Discipleship, as a thanksgiving for the Jubilee, and a response-in-action to the blessing and graces received during the Jubilee: we will be encouraged afresh to be those Missionary Disciples which is God’s gift to us at our baptism.

Since the ‘Years’ don’t quite align with the calendar years, the three Spiritual Themes will begin and end to coincide with the Jubilee, so that:

  • Year of Preparation & Prayer – Encounter – First Sunday of Advent (3rd December 2023) – Christmas Eve morning (24th December 2024);
  • Year of Jubilee 2025 – Discipleship – Christmas Eve evening (24th December 2024) – Epiphany (6th January 2026);
  • Year of Thanksgiving – Missionary Discipleship – Post-Epiphany (7th January 2026) – end of ordinary time (28th November 2026).

Alongside the resources already available for each of the Spiritual Themes, the diocese will be providing other resources as each Year unfolds.

Year Of Prayer Monthly Themes

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.

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

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.

Popping out with our poppies

Reception pupils painted some pretty poppies for Remembrance Day. They painted them onto plates and stones.

The pupils then went down to Sleaford memorial in the Market Square to place their painted poppy stones.

They took time with Mrs Frisby to think about the importance of their poppies as a token of remembrance.

Our Outdoor Sacred Space

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.

Sacred Spaces Around School

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.

Collective Worship

Here’s a great link for those who would like to explore the Sunday gospels whilst we cannot go to church. The Mark 10 mission provides age appropriate exploration into the gospel each Sunday and includes some discussion about the gospels and some upbeat songs.There is a also a “Little Liturgies” for our KS1.  Take a look!

Mark 10 mission

November – we pray for the souls of the departed

On the 1st November, we went to church to pray for ‘All Saint’s Day’ where we remember all the saints up in heaven. Throughout this month, we take time to reflect and pray for all souls that have left this earth and are now with Jesus, in heaven.  During the month of November, we saying the ‘Eternal Rest prayer, daily, in class. Here is a display in our school created by the Shining Stars, who have written some prayers of their own to remember loved ones we have lost.

If you would like to join us in saying this;

“Eternal Rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.”

Please feel free to take a look at the prayers we say during our school day.

Morning And Midday

End of day and sorry

Hail Mary and Our Father

Glory Be and God Who Speaks

Singing is a wonderful way of praying. Here is a link for some fun singing that children can join in with at home.

Singalong

Prayer and liturgy examples

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.

Opposite our universal sacred space in school, we have dedicated display board to the Year of Prayer. We are celebrating the Year of Prayer in school by encouraging spontaneous prayer and by reminded staff and pupils that prayer is simply communication with God; you can say anything to God and He will listen. On our display, we have added some different types of traditional prayers for anybody to take away with them in times when they are not sure themselves of what to say to God. We are also inviting people to write their own prayers on the templates provided and to then add them to our display or to the sacred space in their own classroom.

Stations of the Cross

KS2 have been leading in liturgical prayer weekly to explain the stations of the cross to us.

This is Y4 and captures the poignant moment of Jesus dying on the cross, which was retold and re-enacted beautifully.

Deacon Tony kindly came in to lead liturgical prayer with our pupils and crown Mary. 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.

The children in Year 5 held a Pentecost party to celebrate the birthday of the church. They started  with a whole class liturgy and some children used their knowledge of weights and measures to make beautiful cakes  to share with everyone.

Helping our neighbours in need

Fairtrade October 2022

Our value for Term 1 was respect. As part of learning about what this value meant, Y4 were taught about Fairtrade and how they work to give farmers around the world the respect they deserve and ensure they are paid fairly for their goods.

The pupils looked at how Fairtrade worked and created posters on respect and how we can show respect by buying Fairtrade products. They also baked cakes using Fairtrade ingredients.

Later in the afternoon, they welcomed parents in to enjoy a cuppa and cake and requested donations for this. They shared their learning to spread the message of respecting everyone around the world.    

They raised £42.20 which was sent to Fairtrade. As you can see they learnt a lot, had lots of fun and raised an a great amount by living out our value,

Rainbow Stars is a local charity who offer support to families in Lincoln who have family members with additional needs. One of our pupils requested that we did some fundraising to support them, as it is a group close to her heart.  Grace and her family have received support from the charity who rely on donations to keep offering their services and resources and they wanted to and so she wanted to give something back.

On Grace’s suggestion, we all came dressed in colours of the rainbow and gave a donation for this. Grace also sold some trolley tokens and gave out information about the hospice after school. We managed to raise £121!

The Shining Stars Liturgy Team wanted to help our local community and recognised that times are quite tough recently for us all. They decided to help families in our own school and set up a “Drop and Swap” event.

Firstly, they collected and sorted donated school uniform and childrens clothing and then invited everyone in to come and take items they could use. This was a great way to follow Pope Francis’s Laudato Si teaching because we showed care for our common home, both by recycling clothes which meant less waste and care for our school family.

We had some clothing left after the event, which we were able to give to our lovely office lady Mrs Hunt to keep as spares when needed in school.

Over the period of Lent in school, every child and adult has been working hard to support CAFOD and walk for hunger. Over the last few weeks the children have all walked a mile a day and have aimed to do over 15 miles each as part of a sponsored walk to raise money to help other people in less fortunate situations than ourselves. The children have thoroughly enjoyed the experience and have hopefully raised lots of funds which we will bring in and tally up after the Easter holidays. Thank you in advance for all your great support and sponsorship.

During Lent, the children and adults in school took part in the Big Lent walk to raise money for CAFOD.  The children walked twenty times around the playground everyday.