Bishop Patrick shared his vision for our diocese and has encouraged all of us in Catholic schools and parishes to consider three themes:
- Encounter
- Discipleship
- Missionary Discipleship
- Jubilee 2025
From 1st Sunday in Advent 2023 we are preparing for the Jubilee 2025. So our focus will change in preparation for this as follows:
Year of Preparation & Prayer – Encounter – First Sunday of Advent (3rd December 2023) – Christmas Eve morning (24th December 2024);
• Year of Jubilee 2025 – Discipleship – Christmas Eve evening (24th December 2024) – Epiphany (6th January 2026);
• Year of Thanksgiving – Missionary Discipleship – Post-Epiphany (7th January 2026) – end of ordinary time (28th November 2026).
Year of Prayer
During this Year of Prayer, we are encouraged to explore, extend and excite our own prayer lives by focusing on prayer in new or varied ways; and to consider more deeply a prayer with which we are really familiar, The Lord’s Prayer, by hearing and praying this through all the languages available to us.
So at Holy Trinity, we have created a very special Our Father film spoken in some of the languages represented at our school; created a Prayer Newsletter and the children have annotated and decorated their own artwork in response to the Our Father, which can be seen at the Main Entrance; and the Chaplaincy Team have created some beautiful
Prayer Stations too.
Click here to view the special Our Father film that our
school community have created:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGzvn2Wf0KU
Encounter
ENCOUNTER: Bishop Patrick would like to ensure that people of all ages in our parishes, schools and chaplaincies are helped to discover, or discover more deeply, the importance of a personal ENCOUNTER with Christ; so that they can become convinced that they are each loved by God and are invited to grow in their relationship with him. In particular Bishop Patrick would like to see the development of times of Eucharistic Adoration in our parishes, schools and chaplaincies.
During the Advent Term, and for the Year of Prayer in preparation for the Jubilee Year 2025, our liturgical prayer and Word of the Week themes centre around the theme of ‘Encounter’. We encourage all of the children to consider ways in which they encounter Jesus in their lives, so that they all know that God loves them and that they can all have a relationship with Him in their lives.
We ‘encounter’ Jesus in the bits and pieces of our daily lives…
Discipleship
DISCIPLESHIP: In line with the Year of Jubilee, from 24th December 2024, we will focus on Discipleship. With the personal encounter with Christ, Bishop Patrick encourages each of us to hear and respond to his invitation to be his DISCIPLES, to follow him more closely, and to seek to serve him generously in our daily lives.
We will focus on the theme of ‘discipleship’ and help the children to understand what it means to be a disciple of Jesus…
Missionary Discipleship
MISSIONARY DISCIPLESHIP: As part of the Year of Thanksgiving, from January 7th 2026, we will focus on having a greater recognition of, and openness to, the help, guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, in the knowledge that we can all become MISSIONARY DISCIPLES; faith-filled, joyful and outward-looking Christians who are growing in confidence to speak humbly of the difference that knowing Christ makes to our lives, and who bear witness to His love in our service of our brothers and sisters, especially those most in need. The service to which Christ calls us is always the action of the Holy Spirit working in us.
We will focus on the theme of ‘Missionary Discipleship’ and help the children understand how they can actively ‘do God’s work here on Earth’…
