| Year Levels Focus: | Prayer and Christian life are inseparable. Effective prayer transforms us and leads to a deeper love for God and one another. (TCREK038) |
| Aims: | |
| Content Statement: |
Students will engage with texts and enter into experiences, both personal and communal, that invite and facilitate encounter with God. They will reflect upon Jesus as the model of prayer and will engage prayerfully with His own prayer, the Our Father. They will experience forms of personal prayer linked to the realities of their lives. Students will investigate approaches to prayer in differing historical, social and cultural contexts and identify the enduring characteristics of authentic Christian prayer. Through praying, through reflecting and through researching the lives and experiences of Christian models of prayer they will identify ways in which prayer transforms the heart, mind and actions towards each other and towards creation. Students will engage with and reflect upon experiences of Liturgical prayer as a source of nourishment in Christian life (including the Divine Office)
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Prayer is to Christianity what water is to the ocean, what breath is to life, what love is to life’s meaning. Prayer simply is our relationship with God become conscious, deliberate and concrete. It is more a way of being than something we do.
That is why prayer needs to permeate the entire Catholic curriculum; and function in the RE curriculum the way RE functions in the Catholic curriculum overall. Why? Because unless there is a lived experience of encounter with God on God’s terms—and that is what Christian prayer is—then it is simply impossible to talk meaningfully about God in a Catholic educational context.
Prayer is vital. That is why God wants us to pray: because God desires to draw us into a fuller relationship; and praying is simply how that is done consciously, deliberately and concretely in and for us.
At its most basic and essential, the word pray means “to ask”. Learning to ask for what we truly need, when we are ready to receive it, is the key to life and true happiness. Because everything that is, is a free and beautiful gift, grace, learning to ask and receive is the most important lesson we have to learn.
Asking and receiving the gift that is life, being and meaning is the heart of our relationship with God, because grace—God’s gift of himself to us—is the purpose and meaning of life. Prayer therefore points to the deepest truth about human nature itself: we are made for the gift of union with God.
In GNFL this understanding of prayer is developed with emphasis on these theological principles:
- Prayer is about desire—ultimate desire: the desire to become one with God. In prayer we enter into a relationship with the One who intensifies our desire for being. In prayer we find ourselves loved into being in a way that invites us to participate in our own coming-into-being by liberating our desire from all fear, rivalry, selfishness, violence and malice—and therefore, from the power of death itself. Prayer must always be honest if it is to be true prayer, because by praying honestly we discover ever more deeply the ultimate nature of our desire, the desire for God.
- Prayer is our way of participating in God’s work of uniting us with himself. The ultimate expression of that work is the liturgy, “the work of God”, the public act of the Church’s communal prayer as thanks and praise, “the source and summit of the Church’s actions”.
- The central prayer of the Church is the Eucharist. At the most profound level, the Eucharist has to do with Christ alone, who prays for us: he puts his prayer on our lips, for only he can say, “This is my Body … This is my Blood”.
URL link to Theological Conversation chapter (PDF).
- Through Christian prayer we respond to and open to the loving call to encounter God.
- Individuals and the wider Church are enriched by forms of Christian prayer from different spiritual and cultural traditions.
- Christian prayer, at once personal and communal, grows out of and nourishes both the individual and the community.
- Christian Prayer and Christian life are inseparable.
- Jesus’ prayer to God shows us how to pray.
Prayer and Christian life are inseparable. Effective prayer transforms us and leads to a deeper love for God and one another. (TCREK038)
Students will engage with texts and enter into experiences, both personal and communal, that invite and facilitate encounter with God.
They will reflect upon Jesus as the model of prayer and will engage prayerfully with His own prayer, the Our Father.
They will experience forms of personal prayer linked to the realities of their lives.
Students will investigate approaches to prayer in differing historical, social and cultural contexts and identify the enduring characteristics of authentic Christian prayer.
Through praying, through reflecting and through researching the lives and experiences of Christian models of prayer they will identify ways in which prayer transforms the heart, mind and actions towards each other and towards creation.
Students will engage with and reflect upon experiences of Liturgical prayer as a source of nourishment in Christian life (including the Divine Office).
They will explore and experience a range of traditional Christian prayers and prayer practices (e.g.Sign of the Cross, blessings, Christian Meditation, Holy Week and Easter prayer experiences, Lectio / Visio Divina, Examen, Angelus, Rosary, Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament) and will reflect on and draw from the contemplative practice of Dadirri, gifted to us by our First Nations peoples.
TCREI013
The students will identify and use a variety of Catholic, Christian sources to investigate, reflect on, summarise and discuss key findings about the Catholic Tradition.
Elaborations- Sources may include Liturgy, Scripture, Magisterial documents, writings of Saints, contemporary Christian authors, iconography, architecture, sacred art and sacred music.
TCREI014
The students will begin to read and interpret Scripture using literal and spiritual senses.
ElaborationsComing soon
TCREI015
The students will communicate their knowledge and understanding of key doctrinal concepts using appropriate forms, vocabulary and terms.
ElaborationsComing soon
TCRED015
The students will reflect on their reading and interpretation of Scripture as a "light for the path" of their daily living (Ps. 119:105).
ElaborationsComing soon
TCRED016
The students will identify, examine and reflect on personal attitudes, values and behaviours in the light of Catholic teaching.
ElaborationsComing soon
TCRED017
The students will consider ways to transfer into daily life (through attitudes, values and behaviours) understandings gained of Catholic teaching.
ElaborationsComing soon
By the end of Year 8, students indicate developing understandings of the living unity of God: Father, Son and Spirit and of God as Mystery and Love. They explore, reflect on and describe God’s covenant relationship with humanity and the related loving call for each person’s response. Describing sin as a choice to live for self at the expense of others, students can explain how this damages relationship with God, others and all of life and calls for a change of heart. Students explain how Jesus Christ, in revealing God as love, offers hope to the world and calls his followers to discipleship. They identify how Jesus Christ, fully divine and fully human, embodies and brings about the Reign of God. Describing the Church as a community of disciples sent out, they explain how it proclaims the Good News and seeks to serve God’s mission. They describe the Church’s missionary and prophetic nature and explain how the action of the Spirit continues to guide and inspire Christians in reading and responding to the signs of the times. Students explain that a sacramental way of viewing the world sees God in every-day things, people and events. They give examples of how, through the Sacraments, the Church recognises and celebrates the transformative presence of God through ritual, sign, symbol and word. Students explain how living the Christian Life grows out of and is sustained by relationship with Jesus. They reflect on and detail how the life and teachings of Jesus, the teachings of the Church and the lives of Christian witnesses and the practice of prayer can inform conscience for decision-making and action. They will identify examples of how our sinfulness, to choose to live for oneself at the expense of others, contrasts with Jesus’ teaching and values. Students study and meditate on the Scriptures, the Word of God, which reveal God’s love and they explain how this study and prayer can nurture relationship with Jesus and can help guide our lives. Students recognise that effective Christian Prayer is transformative and they identify examples of prayer leading to a deeper love for God and to growth in loving care for one another and all of life.
Students investigate, reflect on, summarise and discuss key findings about the Catholic Tradition using a variety of Catholic Christian sources. They begin to demonstrate their application of the literal and spiritual senses for the interpretation of selected Scripture. They use appropriate forms, vocabulary and terms to communicate their doctrinal knowledge and understanding. Students self-reflect on their reading and interpretation of selected Scripture. They identify and reflect on their attitudes, behaviours and values, examining and identifying ways to transfer their knowledge and understanding of Catholic teaching to their own attitudes, values and behaviours.