RE FOCUS: The different Types of Prayer.....

All prayer, no matter it’s form, as written in an earlier focus, is seen as ‘expressing a relationship with God.’ But it is important to remember that when we pray, we pray for a specific purpose or reason. There are many different reasons we can pray such as:

Prayers of Praise – These are prayers that express the goodness and wonder of God. Often, we see these added into many common prayers we share such as in the Our Father where we say “Hallowed be Thy name….”

Prayers of Thanksgiving – These are prayers where we give thanks to God for all the wonderous things He has done for us to show our gratitude. Our school afternoon prayer is great example of this when we say “Thank you God for a lovely day…..”

Prayers of Blessing – These are prayers where we ask for God’s blessing for people, events or places. Often, we will ask God to watch over such things or to be with us during such a time.

Prayers of Petition – These are prayers where we ask for God for something, for ourselves or for others.

Prayers of Sorrow and Forgiveness – These are prayers where we are saying sorry to God when we have turned away from God and are asking to be forgiven.

With young children (and even sometimes older ones…), it is often common for prayer to always take the form of petition – asking for material things or for other intentions – but at school we always aim to pray for a variety of reasons and in a variety of ways. It is really rewarding, in my role as REC, when I see our students come together to pray for other less obvious reasons, to share in prayers of praise when we sing a hymn to God, or a prayer of thanks when we share together when someone has made Jesus real for us in the classroom that day.

Whatever the intentions, prayer is an important part of our Catholic identity and school life here at St Joseph’s Wingham.

RE Focus:  Andrew Chinn Concert

Andrew Chinn, a renowned musician and performer, visited our school on Friday 28^th March to perform for our students as a form of formation for our students. Andrew’s music is used in schools across Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada and Ireland and he has visited nearly 1200 different schools around those countries.

As you can see from these photos, our students had a great time with Andrew, singing and dancing along with him and his support crew of Year 6 students. A big thank you to Father Kevin for his support in organising this visit.