The idea of our Holy Family Prayer Bags came from our Prayer Council.  They are sent home with a different family each week. Each class has their own bag and the focus of the prayer bag changes throughout the year so if you have several children in the school your experiences should be different.

We hope you will find the Prayer Bags help you as a family to come together to pray because prayer is so much part of the life of our school.

Jesus said that wherever two or three people gather and remember him, he will be there with them. He knew from his own family life with Mary and Joseph how important it was to share his life with his family.

We hope and pray that the prayer bag will help you to come together for a few minutes each day over a week to share something very special in the presence of God.

Catholic schools offer our young people the chance to live, work and pray together. Every child’s home is also a school of prayer, a place where all the family can come together to reflect and share what you believe. Whatever your own faith we invite you to take this chance and share what is so important in our school.

Inside your prayer bag you will find a green cloth for ordinary time or a purple cloth during Advent & Lent, a holding cross, a figurine of The Holy Family, a bible and a prayer journal. There is a prayer focus for the month included in the bag, eg saints during November.

We ask the family to create a holy space within their home for the family to gather round. This might be on a floor or on a table. In the Prayer Bag are a number of items to place in the holy space. We use religious symbols as part of our prayer to remind us that when we pray we are truly in the presence of God. There is a prayer journal included in each bag for the family to record any prayer intentions or suggestions.

An important part of family prayer is listening to the Word of God. Through the words of scripture God speaks to you as a family. It is important that everyone listens carefully to the reading. There is a bible in your prayer bag to use as part of your prayer time.

Once you have listened to some scripture think, talk and share your thoughts about it. You might even like to have a short time of silence to think about what you have heard. You could make up your own prayers and to share some well-known prayers of the Church.

As the last part of your family prayer find ways in which your family could live out what you have prayed about through the love and care that you show one another.

Each family can add thoughts and prayers to the class prayer journal or add prayers and photos to the prayer padlet. A padlet is an online portal that you can access to upload your experiences of our prayer bags. A QR code is included in each Prayer Bag.