As a Catholic learning community of hope, we invite all members of our school to engage in learning more about the Catholic faith and their own relationship with the Sacred. The learners and parents of the Year 2 Learning Community were invited to gather to explore what it means to keep the flame of faith burning in our lives.
During our family faith workshop Keeping the Flame Burning, we were learning to understand the purpose of a Catholic parish community. It was so great to have the Compostela gathering space full of excited children and adults.
The workshop allowed parents and children to talk about their experience of celebration and the symbols we use when we gather as a community to celebrate. We discovered that symbols don’t always have much meaning when they’re on their own, but become very special when they are used by a group of people for a special occasion. It’s just like these candles – they look nice as they are, but when they’re used as part of prayer, they mean something for people of faith.
Whether it was a birthday party, wedding, day at the footy, or a concert, we use special symbolos to show we belong to the gathered community. Even a delicious chocolate cake becomes a special symbol when it’s for someone’s birthday!
Every group of people who gather for a particular reason use these symbols to show they belong to the group. They are active members of that group of people.
We had a chance to explore what Catholic people use as symbols during our celebrations, and discovered that one of them is a candle.
While active footy members always go to their team’s games, and active family members attend special family celebrations, what does an active member of our Parish community do?
Families were invited to identify one thing they can do to become a more active member of our St James the Apostle parish community and create a symbol to represent it. This symbol was then attached to a candle as a way of reminding us that we are all responsible for bringing the light of Jesus to our local community.
Our workshop ended with a chance to reflect on how we can all bring the light of God’s love to those around us and prayed for God’s help in being people of light in the darkness.
