Every Catholic school has a member of staff who has been nominated as the school’s ‘Prayer and Liturgy co-ordinator.’ At Notre Dame that is part of my role. On Monday this week I hosted a meeting here at the school for the Prayer and Liturgy co-ordinators in local Catholic schools in our diocese of Arundel and Brighton; I was delighted that 14 different schools accepted the invitation and were represented at the meeting. It was great for us to be able to pray together and then to share ideas and experiences in a spirit of collaboration.
All prayer is valuable. All prayer opens the door to allow us to listen to God speaking into our heart. Prayer takes many different forms from the spontaneous and short to the events requiring detailed planning and preparation.
The events requiring detailed planning and preparation constitute formal liturgy, of which the Mass is the greatest example. Mass is celebrated in school on a number of occasions each year, and always to celebrate the school’s two feast days – the feast of St Jeanne de Lestonnac in May, and the feast of the Presentation of the Child Mary in the Temple in November. It is this feast day, the Presentation of the Child Mary in the Temple, that we will be celebrating next Thursday.
The Presentation of the Child Mary was chosen by St Jeanne all the way back in 1610 as the feast day for the children of the first school of the Company of Mary Our Lady. How wonderful that for more than 400 years all the schools of the Company of Mary Our Lady have continued to keep this day as a feast day. How fitting too, that just like on that very first feast day celebrated in 1610, the highlight of the feast day, wherever in the world it is being celebrated, will be Mass, the highest and greatest liturgy that there is.
Parents are warmly invited to join pupils, students, staff and Sisters for Mass next Thursday, at 10.45am.
