Putting
Christ
at the
Centre
Three Hopes for Today
• Affirm and Encourage
• Value in having a Catholic Ethos
• To be Inspired and Challenged
Lesson Plan
1.To be Catholic or not to be Catholic that
is the Question
2.What Challenges?
3.Christocentric?
What makes a Catholic School
Catholic?
1.Positive Anthropology
2.Rationality as an Informer of Faith
3.Tradition
4.Sacramental Consciousness
5.Community
An integrated education of the human
person through a clear educational
project of which Christ is the foundation
and a systematic catechesis of Catholic
teaching.
The first key reason why Catholic schools
are established is to be part of the
Church’s mission, to place Christ and the
teaching of the Catholic Church at the
centre of people lives
“A child’s journey into
adulthood should
also be a journey of
faith”
Through you, as through a clear
window on a sunny day, students
must come to see the richness and
joy of a live lived in accordance
with Christ’s teaching.
Saint John Paul II
The light of faith should
illumine everything so that the
students will gradually come to
learn about the world, about
life and about the importance
of the human person.
Christ alone is that
light.
What
Challenges?
“On the threshold of the third
millennium education faces
new challenges. We have a
crisis of values which, in highly
developed societies in
particular, assumes the form of
subjectivism, relativism and
nihilism”
As a community we must honestly acknowledge that at times
Christians themselves conceal rather than reveal the
‘authentic face of God and religion’ by not living according to
the Gospel, by failing to hold the true teachings of the Church,
and by serious deficiencies in religious, moral or social life
Bishop Patrick O’Donoghue
Today Catholic schools are
increasingly popular, not only
for the good academic results
they achieve, but also because
many parents sense that a
catholic school might help their
children to develop the selfdiscipline, moral resilience and
spiritual maturity necessary in
surviving the winds of
secularism and materialism in
our society.
Cardinal Basil Hume
To lead a life based on Gospel
values we must love as Jesus
loved… completely and
unconditionally.
Putting
Christ
at the
Centre
The disciple of Christ
must not only keep the
faith and live it, but also
profess it, confidently
bear witness to it and
spread it. (CCC1816)
“Worship the Lord in the
beauty of Holiness”
Psalm 96
We can only find intimacy with God in prayer if we
approach him through the ‘door’ of humility and
discover the vast universe within the soul.
Elizabeth Wang
Like an ocean
filling a drop of
drew
So Prayer fills
us with the
love of God
In the sacramental journey we are
refreshed by the living Lord of life
When we meet the Lord
in the Sacraments we
are never left
unchanged… the only
thing He asks is our
cooperation
“Witness to Christ”
“A city built on a hill
cannot be hidden”
Matthew 5: 14.
"The basic reality in this country is that most
Catholics have never been evangelized. This is a very
sad thing to say, but we have never engaged our
people in a process in which they themselves come to
discover the person of Jesus Christ, the power of the
gospel and the excitement of discipleship in following
the Lord. What has happened is we have been able
to give the sacraments, and we have been able to
catechize, but without the underpinning of
evangelization first. We must witness with our lives
and proclaim it with our lips”
Joseph M. Pavicic
“God reaches out towards us and in
faith we turn to him. He then runs to
meet us, because He hears us. He
embraces us and as if by an impulse of
paternal affection, falls upon our necks,
that He may raise up those who are cast
down, who loaded with sin and bent to
the earth.”
“We should
not be
miserable
saints but
people
joyful in the
Lord”
“The Christian Church is the community in
which Jesus Christ, in whom God reveals
himself unconditionally and definitively, is
proclaimed and celebrated”
Christ is our most precious inheritance.
He lives ever with us, not seen, often
forgotten, often a sign of contradiction
but always with us. He joins us as the
unknown pilgrim on our way, with us in
our uncertainty, our suffering and our
need. Use the power that only love can
give, go to everybody. God wherever
there are minds to be enlightened, will
to be strengthened, energies to be
channelled towards good. Wherever
there are tears to be dried, doubts to be
dispelled, fears to be conquered,
BE THERE.
In the beginning was God and
God is love.