Year of Prayer

In preparation for the 2025 Jubilee Year ‘Pilgrims of Hope’, 2024 has been designated a Year of Prayer by Pope Francis.

There is a particular focus on the Our Father, which presents us with a great opportunity to go back to the very basics of prayer. This year, we are invited as Catholics to have a deeper, prayerful encounter with Jesus; to go deeper in our commitment to pray, and to consider how we might share this with others. 

We aim to explore prayer opportunities and develop children’s understanding and faith. Over the coming year, we have dedicated each month to a specific theme/prayer which can be used to develop opportunities for the children to pray using material which may be unfamiliar to them:

Month	Prayer Focus
Jan	Our Father
Feb	Grace Before Meals
Mar	Magnificat
Apr	The Creed
May	Hail Mary
Jun	Make Me a Channel of your Peace-St. Francis
Jul	Glory Be To The Father
Aug	Promote ‘Our Father’ during Holiday Period
Sept	The Examen
Oct	Imaginative Prayer/Meditation
Nov	Prayers for those who have died
Dec	Maranatha

‘Year of Prayer’ in St. Mary’s:

Jan 2024		As we start this new year, and the focus on the ‘Year of Prayer’ we are spending time this month focusing on our spirituality and becoming witnesses to God in renewing our commitment to prayer with a particular focus on the ‘Our Father’ as the very basics of prayer. The children are participating in prayer stations to break down the prayer and establish greater meaning from it.
Feb 2024		During February we are focusing on saying grace before meals as a way of offering thanksgiving.   The term “grace” comes from the Latin ‘gratiarum actio’, which means “act of thanks”.     Saying grace is a way of remembering that it was God who provided the meal and thanking Him for it. When we come to a meal hungry or appreciative of what it is, and that (often) it has been prepared by others for our benefit and that (ultimately) it is a blessing (a grace) from God-how proper it is that we should want to give thanks for the meal, for the giver and for those who have prepared it.   Pausing for a moment of prayer before we eat – whether this is something we do as individuals or as a community – alerts us to this and helps our eating and drinking to be a more fully human action.
Mar 2024		During March we celebrate the feast of the Annunciation, marking the visit of the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, during which he told her that she would be the mother of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is celebrated on 25 March each year.  More importantly, since it occurs 9 months before the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day, the Annunciation marks the actual incarnation of Jesus Christ – the moment that Jesus was conceived and that the Son of God became the son of the Virgin.  The festival has been celebrated since the 5th century AD.  The Magnificat is the song of Mary sung after the Annunciation, when she visited her cousin Elizabeth. The story is told in Luke’s Gospel.