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Local schools join together for Thanksgiving prayer service

November 20, 2014 Community

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The students of Saint Peter Catholic Academy are gearing up for a special Thanksgiving Prayer Service to be held the day before Thanksgiving. The service, to which all southwestern Brooklyn parishioners have been invited, closes Thanksgiving-themed events at the Academy which began with a two-week school-wide food drive for an area food pantry preparing to feed the needy of the community on Thanksgiving Day.

Saint Peter Catholic Academy, which serves students of five independent Roman Catholic parishes in Bensonhurst, Bath Beach, and Gravesend (St. Mary, Mother of Jesus, St. Frances Cabrini, St. Finbar, Most Precious Blood and St. Dominic) was featured last month in the diocesan newspaper for besting projected enrollment figures and for a robust expansion of extracurricular activities.

Diane Maione, who oversees the Student Liturgy Committee and co- moderates with Eleanora Burns the Academy’s ASK (Always Seeking Knowledge) honors program, the sponsor of the Thanksgiving Food Drive, has been coordinating the prayer service under the direction of Academy Principal Mary Lou Reitz.
“Our students have been enthusiastically involved hands-on in the planning,” Maione said.

“The students of the Liturgy Committee invited the student chorus to sing, they chose the Opening and Closing Prayers, the First Reading, the Responsorial Psalm and the Gospel Reading. The students also asked each class to participate in the service preparation by writing that for which they are most grateful this season in the form of a Prayer of the Faithful.

Each class will represent their choice either by bringing in an object or by making a poster symbolizing their choice. The posters and objects will be brought forward during the Prayer of the Faithful,” she said.

“The events being held throughout the month of November at Saint Peter Catholic Academy are an illustrious demonstration of the venerable and noble aims of a solid, classical Catholic education,” added Gerard Mundy, Saint Peter Catholic Academy board director.

“In addition to forming the intellect of students, our accomplished and dedicated administration and faculty work with dutiful diligence to instill in our young minds a sense of community, service, sacrifice, and love for others. A proper Catholic education so resplendently considers these aims to be not of the extracurricular realm, but to be requisite components of both proper education and human formation in a society that finds itself troubled moralistically,” Mundy said.