St. Patrick's, Keady - Year 9

Last week we welcomed our first four groups of eight Year 9 classes who are travelling all the way from Keady in Co. Armagh to the Centre for their day of Retreat. We've had a lovely week with them. We were focussing on our attitudes to various things, including people from different faiths, ethnicities or cultures.

To help us to think about the attitudes we should try to live out, we looked at the Scriptures to see what Jesus did and said in various circumstances.

Some of the words we found in the Scriptures were; Bless, Pray, Love, Rejoice!

On our retreat days here we try to experience all of those things in one day and then we think about how we can make every day one where we Bless, Pray, Love and Rejoice!

One of the classes chose the story of Bartimaeus begging to be healed for their prayer service. He understood who Jesus was, and despite people telling him to keep quiet, he raised his own voice up. The class chose this story because of how Jesus cares for all people, and shows kindness to all.

Some groups chose the story of the Good Samaritan for their Prayer Service. Jesus told this story to people to challenge their prejudice.

Some beautiful prayers were written and prayed during the liturgies last week.

The groups prayed prayers for people who have been through difficulties in the last while:

Dear Lord,

Help all the people that have lost their homes in the Haiti and Chile earthquake disasters.

Amen.

They also prayed a prayer of thanks for us! Very kind - we're also and always grateful for every group that comes to us at the Pastoral Centre.

Dear God,

We would like to thank Caren, Brother Fintan and Margaret for having us here.

Amen.

One of the days the Focus had a real similarity with other aspects of the prayer service - we were talking about being light and love to each other - look at the pictures below to see the similarities.

We thought about ways to show Respect to one another and to ourselves. A group wrote this great acrostic reflection:

We enjoy being light and fun with each other.

This poster summed many things up - love, faith, truth, peace, respect and prayer, all in the middle of springtime images of flowers and sunshine!

There are many more prayers, photos and reflections to be added from the groups last week, and of course we have next week's groups to look forward to. This is just a flavour of what the St. Patrick's pupils brought to their days! Watch this space for the rest!!