2. Special Character Term 4 Week 5 2015

This week the children who will be receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation on Sunday 29th November 2015 at St. Patrick's Basilica, have begun their preparation lessons. 
Each lesson has a theme.
Theme One/Belonging
Theme Two/Making Choices
Theme Three/Reconciliation
Theme Four/The Sacrament of Penance

The children will have brought home a booklet covering these themes. This will help you understand what we will be discussing during our lessons. The booklet gives you some suggestions to talk together, do together and pray together with your child. We are all in this together so if I can help you in any other way to support your child please come and see me or send me an email (adooley@stjoseph.school.nz).
Take Care and God Bless
Ann Dooley
CO/Director of Religious Studies

Our children are learning about the Communion of Saints in their RE lessons at the moment.  Here is what POPE FRANCIS says about

THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

“Anyone can be a saint,” Pope Francis said on Friday as the Catholic Church marked the Solemnity of All Saints.  “Saints aren’t supermen and they weren’t born perfect.  They are people who, before attaining glory in Heaven, lived a normal life, with joys and pains, struggles and hopes… but when they knew the love of God they felt it with all their hearts.”

“To be a saint is not a privilege for the few but a vocation for all,” the pontiff added. “We are all called to walk the path of holiness, and this pathway has a name and a face: it is Jesus Christ.”

Speaking during his weekly general audience at St. Peter’s Square, Francis said “The communion of saints is the deepest reality of the Church, because in Christ, through Baptism, we are made sharers in the communion of life and love which is the Blessed Trinity.”

“This is one of the most consoling truths of our faith, since it reminds us that we are not alone but that there is a communion of life among all those who belong to Christ,” 

A TRADITIONAL PRAYER TO PRAY FOR THE SOULS IN PURGATORY especially remembered during the month of November

Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon them, may they rest in peace. 
Amen.