Follow up on Blow it. Classroom Prayer

The other day I tried to put together a few lines about classroom prayer. It was in my previous blog. Unfortunately I did not finish and then put it into Save Now, and to my dismay when I came to edit it and conclude the blog, I was unable to make any changes or put in another word. Thus, my previous blog is both unedited and unfinished. Please have a look at it it before moving on to this despite the limitations mentioned.

I'll try to complete now this unedited offering, and beg your pardon for the awkward situation. I am passionate about the subject of class-room prayer because it witnesses so strongly to the importance of prayer in the Christian life. Failure to deny the place of daily prayer in school life reinforces the secular mentality so prevalent today.

Christ Himself has taught us that we should always pray. He was constantly at prayer, spent the night in prayer especially before making important decisons.

Set prayers as indicated above also instructs the participant in Christian knowledge, what is involved in beiong a Christian, and if there is balance and variety in the regular prayers unfailingly punctuating every school day, it involves and instructs the students in all manner of prayer, adoration, thanksgiving, reconcilation and petition.

Rousing hymns, religious images, use of candles, flowers, holy water etc reinforce the set prayers said. Some classrooms have a small holy water font. One famous School, St Colman's Central School, Fizroy, Vic, conductd by Br Paul Bowler in Melbourne had a Shrine of Mother of Perpetual Succour in it and a card containing a prayer or prayers to Our Lady on it. Each Year 8 student, all on scholarship in this one clasroom school, after entering the classroom each morning before would kneel and say this prayer. Of course, the regular prayers in common, prescribed by the Christian Brothers, would preced the first lesson.

It is a custom dating back to Blessed Edmund Rice for the school day to be punctuated by prayer which has been carefully chosen for all Christian Brothers' schools. A Brother or teacher would not be branded as some kind of religious fanatic because he/she had his/her classroom
punctuated by carefully centrallychosen prayers. Blessed Edmund was able to tell inspectors or other enquirers exactly what prayers were said in each of his schools, and right up to the 1960s a Brother would be able to tell enquirers exactly what prayers were being said throughout the school day in any ordinary Christian Brothers' school throughout the world and at what time.

We should not think that today the culture is so secularised it would be counter-productive to immerse the students in a rich daily prayer life. Naomi Turner's acclaimed two volume social history of the Catholic Church in Australia quotes from a letter of Br Ambrose Treacy who founded the Christian Brothers in Ausralia in 1868. In this letter he outlines the lack of faith and religious practice and the moral behaviour of the boys in Australian Christian Brothers schools of the time. Turner, without quoting him, wrote that anearly provinial of the Marist Brothers in Australia wrote similarly to his provincial. The Brothers did not cease carrying out the regular schedule of prayers day after day. Neglecting prayer was not the answer to student malaise, and the results have been spectacular growth during this period of strong Catholic life not a decline.

Finally, I will relate an incident in the life of Cardinal Hume when he was a housemaster, a Benedictine monk, at Ampleforth College in England. This incident is outlined on pages 46 in the 2009 William Charles edited "Basil Hume: Ten Years On" A pupil asked why did stuents have to go to Mass every day and twice on Sunday.

Dom Hume replied: "........The answer is to give you the habit of it. ....When the following happens to each one of you - you will go to prison, the girl will marry the other man, you will go bust, you will be killed in battle, you will be in a wheelchair, you will die young, you will have a terminal illness, your children will get into trouble, your rival will get the promotion, unjustifiably etc. Not IF but WHEN one of these things happens to each one of you, if you don't find it a comfort to go to Mass and say a prayer in front of the Blessed Sacrament, some time in the next 25 years, I want you to come back and to complain to me.

Now I will give you the same answer at the end. It is to give you the habit of it."

Blow it. Classroom Prayer.

When inaugurating the first Catholic school system in Australia. He wrote of the importance of not judging a schools by the perceived presence of any particular virtue if the school day was not punctuated by prayer - because there is no guarantee that the virtue would be lasting if it isnot underpinned by prayer and the sacraments.

The school should unmistakably witness to the importance of prayer in the life of the Christian. By succumbing to the temptation of making prayer hit or miss, perfunctory or giving a grudging amount of time or no time at all to it each day, the school succumbs to the rampant secularism which pervades our time and culture. The pupils are learning then that prayer is not of vital importance, something which can have very sad consequences, especially as temptations abound and many difficulties llie ahead.

For nearly two centuries a carefully thought out programme of prayers punctuated all Chrisrian brothers's schools, the forerunners of schools in the Edmund tradition today. There were slight variations in some of prayers said to meet times of special devotion, such as special prayers of consecration and dedication to the Sacred Heart being said each day during June. However, there were other prayers never changed including the Long Act of Contrition, and long acts of Faith, Hope and Charity, and the Angelus at noon. I mentioned those prayers because I believe the Long Act of Contrition outlines what true contrition implies and needs tobe fostered , the three theolgical virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity are foundational to the Christians's life and the Angelus is a centuries long prayer said at that time every day honouring Our Lady's attitude which resulted in the Word becoming Flesh. It would be a terrible pity if this prayer of such power were lost in our generation.

In the very beginning of the Christian Brothers, every classroom would have a striking clock and every time the clock struck the hour, the brother and his class would say a Hail Mary together.

To ensure that a proper balance would prevail, the prayers were set for every Christian Brothers' classroom. In that way any beleagured brother, or one enthusiastic for the educational activity engaging the students at the time, and inclined for these or other reasons inclined to skimp on classrom prayer would would really have no choice but to uphold the rock-like priority prayer. On the other hand nor would a Brother be able to inflict his own iciocyncrasies on the students.

There were on rare occasions calls for the prayers to be "more liturgical "or "more sciptural".

After Vatican 11, attempts were made by a few brothers along these lines by concentrating daily prayer on "para-liturgies". however, generally attempts along these lines