Catholic Life

Collective Worship and Prayer

Collective Worship is a time during the day when children gather together, listen to and reflect on a Gospel reading. They are given the opportunity to lead and respond with their own choice of readings, hymns and prayers.

Staff, parents and children participate in the prayer life of our school.

At St. Mary’s children gather together to pray at regular intervals during the school day. We pray to God is as he commanded us to. We follow Jesus’ example and learn from him.

The Gospels are full of references of Jesus demonstrating the power of prayer, for example:

After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. – Matthew 14:23

Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, 'Sit here while I go over there and pray.' – Matthew 26:36

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. – Mark 1:35

But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. – Luke 5:16

One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. – Luke 6:12

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. – Luke 18:1

During the week children plan, facilitate and lead their class prayer services. All classrooms have prayer areas that include liturgical images, artefacts and prayers. Time and opportunities are given for personal prayer time, especially during Advent and lent.

All assemblies and gatherings in school have a religious and prayer focus for the whole community.

We also work hard to include families in the prayer life of our school. We do this by:

Encouraging parents and families to attend assemblies, prayer services and collective worship.

Prayers are accessible below, so that families can learn and use common prayers at home.

Prayers

At St. Mary's we learn and use a variety of prayers.

Some of the prayers we use are in our "Prayers at St Mary's" prayer book. It includes our four school day prayers, the Saint Nicholas Owen MAC prayer, plus The Angeuls, The Lord's Prayer, Hail Mary, Veni Sancte Spiritus, and many more.

You can read our school prayer book below:

Prayers at St Mary's

Mass

At St Mary’s we celebrate Whole School Mass at 9:15am on Friday, with our Parish Priest and Parishioners to share our faith. Class Masses are celebrated on alternative Fridays.