The Liturgical Year

All through the year, the Church family celebrates the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We also celebrate feasts and saints. St Scholastica’s pupils, parents, and staff enjoy a school journey through the Church’s year. Our entrance, hall, corridor, and classroom displays reflect the time of year in the Church’s calendar.

Ordinary Times

In Ordinary times we use green to represent life and growth. We continue to live each day in the presence of our Lord and follow St Scholastica’s model to worship God and do our best.

Each child took home their own rosary beads to pray the rosary with their families. Each class prays the joyful, sorrowful, glorious and luminous mysteries of the rosary throughout October. Mrs. Brierley hosts a lunch time rosary club for KS2 for the month of October. We remember we can ask Mary to pray for us.

All students attend mass at our parish Church for All Souls Day and we remember those who sacrificed their lives during the war by taking a moment of silence on Remembrance Day. We remember that Jesus also sacrificed his life for us and that through him we have eternal life. Each class creates some arts and crafts linked to Remembrance Day. We all gather in the hall for a whole school collective worship.

Let us pray for all who suffer as a result of conflict, and ask that God may give us peace:
for the service men and women
who have died in the violence of war,
each one remembered by and known to God;
may God give peace.
God give peace.

Amen

The Season of Advent

Begins four Sundays before Christmas and ends on December 24. Advent has a twofold character. It is the season to prepare for Christmas when Christ’s first coming is remembered, and it is the season when that remembrance directs the mind and heart to await Christ’s Second Coming at the end of time. For these two reasons, the season of Advent is a period for devout and joyful expectation. We use purple to symbolize waiting and importance.

Every year to mark the beginning of Advent we have Advent day. The children come to school dressed in purple clothes, the Liturgical color of Advent and waiting. We make Advent wreaths for our prayer tables in the prayer garden. Fr Kingsley comes to school and preforms a blessing of the wreaths. Then each class creates an Advent Kindness calendar to help us prepare for the birth of baby Jesus.

In the afternoon each class has the opportunity to create an Advent craft to take home to help themselves and their families prepare for the birth of baby Jesus.

The Season of Christmas

Begins on Christmas day and ends on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord Christmas is a season, not a day. This is difficult to realize since the world wants to ‘get back to normal’ long before we have arrived at the last day of Christmas: the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. It is a season of true joy when we celebrate that ‘God-is-with-us’ – Emmanuel! The colour and vibrancy of our Christmas celebrations should inform a very deep part of ourselves that something has happened, that Christ is born, and the world will never be the same again. The Word was made flesh and lived among us. (John 1:14) We use white and gold to symbolize true joy and triumph.

The year four children preformed a wonderful Christmas Crib Liturgy. We gathered around the cribs in our classrooms, to pray, to reflect, and to get ready to celebrate the birth of baby Jesus.
the birth of Jesus.

Each Year the KS1 children preform a wonderful Nativity play. This year due to COVID we decided to do an online Nativity and all the children in school took part.

Lent

Begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Holy Thursday in the evening – approximately 6 weeks. In the Christian Year, Lent precedes and prepares for Easter. It is a penitential season and a time of spiritual growth and a time for discerning and doing good. Traditionally we give more time to prayer, fasting and almsgiving. This helps us to say ‘Yes’ to God’s will and ‘No’ to our selfish ways in order to become better followers of Jesus. The season begins by recalling the 40 days Jesus fasted in the desert and prepared to proclaim the Good News.  In the Northern Hemisphere, Lent begins in winter.  But when the 40 days are over, we know that the warmth and new life of spring are surely coming. We use purple to symbolize penance.

Every year we celebrate St Patrick’s Feast day on the 17th of March. He is the Patron Saint of Ireland and Nigeria which represents the heritage  of some of our school population. The children enjoy dressing up in green clothes, taking part in various cultural activities, doing arts and crafts while also learning about a saint who spread Christianity to a whole country.

Dear St. Patrick,  In your humility, you called yourself a sinner, but you became a most successful missionary and prompted countless pagans to follow the Savior. They in turn spread the good news to many foreign lands. Help us to continue your work. Amen.