Prayer and Liturgy

Collective Worship helps children to recognise the presence of God in their lives, and to reflect on current affairs and social and moral issues in our world. As a school, we use The Mark 10 Mission resources and our own school developed resources to help structure our collective worship in line with the liturgical calendar of the church.

In a typical week, children will experience:

Whole School Liturgy
Whole-school liturgy often takes place on Monday and is usually based on Sunday’s Gospel, a theme of importance in the Church’s year (for example, CAFOD Harvest Fast Day) or our weekly Virtue to Live by.

Hymn Practice
On Wednesday, the school celebrates with hymns and worship, learning traditional and modern hymns. We recognise that music is a style of worship which our children enjoy – to sing is to praise God twice as much!

Mass and Non Eucharistic services
We celebrate Masses with the whole school, with individual classes and jointly with St Walburga's school, led by Father Kieron Walker. These Masses take place regularly throughout the year. Our younger children also take part in Non-Eucharistic services which Father Kieron often attends.

Class Worships
Classes have time to worship together each week in a variety of ways. These include liturgical prayers and guided mediation. We believe that it is important for children to experience a range of styles of prayer, as everyone is unique in their engagement with prayer.

Celebrating Achievement
Each Friday the school comes together for a Celebration Assembly, which is a time to celebrate the achievements of the children and the staff across the school. In the Bible, we are told that we are all one body and one spirit, with many parts – we feel it is important to encourage children to celebrate others because of this. At the end of the week, classes hold a short reflection on what they would like to thank God for this week.

By offering a range of worship styles, we hope that children will find a style of prayer that they find meaningful and be able to use this in their life after their time at St Anthony’s.