Home is a Holy Place Resource Pack

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Resource Pack 2008

Background to the Resource Pack

Supporting Materials

FAQ's

Diocesan Distribution and Launches

How is the Home is a Holy Pack Resource Pack being used? What's happening now as a
result of producing this new resource? How is it being received? Are any particular issues
being raised and if so, what do we do with these? On this page we hope to feature some
of the answers to these questions. If you are looking for ideas on how to use your pack
you might find something here that will help you. And if you have practical experience of
the pack to share we would be very grateful to be able to pass this on.

Good Shepherd, Arnold

Monica Purdue attended the Nottingham diocesan launch of Home is a Holy Place in May 2008 and has since used the pack in her parish. We are very grateful to Monica for sharing her experience. You can read more reports on the Diocese of Nottingham Family Matters webpages.

Report on a five week course using the materials, from Good Shepherd, Arnold in the Diocese of Nottingham
A flyer for this parish process (pdf 120kb)

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Parish of St Francis, Maidstone, Kent

Home is Holy Place is a resource provided by the Bishops of England and Wales through their Marriage and Family Life Team. In a very down to earth way, it looks at the difficulties facing families in the modern world. It asks three questions:

How do you and your family show love for one another?
What are the challenges in your family relationships?
When are you most aware of God in you family experiences?

It does not ask how many times you pray or what parish groups you belong to. It does not assume that your family is perfect.

In our parish, we are using this resource as a three week programme during Advent. We hope to run the same programme after Christmas for those who missed it the first time. The team preparing for the Mission in October 2009 hope that this will support those wishing to re-kindle their faith and the living out of their faith in their lives.

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Working through schools in Flintshire - Reports by Sue Copp

Diane Hollis and I did our first presentation a couple of weeks ago at our 'Parish Post Mission day'. Diane is hosting an evening at the Ursuline Convent in Shotton on 27 November and I have promoted it at our local Catholic primary school, Venerable Edward Morgan. I gave a short presentation at a school assembly this week and have invited parents/grandparents to a showing of the DVD next Monday 17 November at 9am when they drop the kids off (complete with tea/coffee and biscuits). Diane and I are also doing the same at our local Catholic High School, St. Richard Gwyn in Flint, during Focus Week in December. One of our Parish members works in the local FE college and will be showing the DVD to Social Science students. She thinks that even though these people may not be Catholic the message is real enough to make sense to them....a wonderful idea, I think. Will keep you posted on our work. 15th November 2008

The presentation of Home is a Holy Place at the junior school (Nov 17) went quite well although only 5 people turned up but it was interesting to see how the DVD stimulated the conversation. The people who attended all contributed their thoughts and feelings, some positive but others not so...just gathering to watch the DVD drew out personal testimonies and confidences which took me aback slightly and made me think that there must be many people who only need an invitation, a word at the right time to open up and share their thoughts, worries, fears and hurt. There were good positive ideas about reaching out to more people and I took the contact details of everyone present so that I can keep in touch. Because the school serves a wide area 3 of the people were actually from other parishes ..but they had not heard of 'Home is a Holy Place ' before and I suggested that they could promote it themselves in their parishes and invited them to support us in our next parish presentation. I think (and hope) that the knowledge will spread in this way by small groups taking it away to other small groups. We have reported back to our Parish Advisory Council and asked our Parish Priest if we could have 'Home is'... as a theme at a Sunday Mass. He suggested the Feast of the Holy Family so we look forward to that. Sue Copp. 20th November 2008

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GCSE studies

In Liverpool, Fr Tony Slingo and Veronica Murphy have worked with a 3^rd set Year 11 studying Catholic marriage and family life for Edexcel GCSE, using the DVD and reflection around ‘Home’ ‘Family’’ Holy’. They report that it went down really well. Contact Veronica for more information.

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St Anne's Ormskirk

Item from the minutes of the Pastoral Council meeting 2nd November 2008

Discussions on Home is a Holy Place

Peter explained the nature and purpose of the "Home is a Holy Place" initiative and its exposition in a DVD resource pack. A pastoral area launch was taking place on 12th November at 7:30 pm in the Parish Centre. Peter asked if parishes within the pastoral area could launch Home is a Holy Place over Advent or at least hold a copy of the DVD resource. He would also like the DVD to be offered to parish groups. He felt the quality of the initiative would enable it to take on a life of its own. A discussion took place on the initiative and the following points were made:

a number of groups would be interested in the DVD
it could run for four weeks in Advent and six weeks in Lent
the initiative would match the PPC's aim of developing parish spirituality
Fr Godric said that the Holy Family chapel in the church was to become a place of prayer and petition as part of Family Ministry

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Our Lady and St Teresa, Wirksworth

Notice from the parish bulletin of November 9th 2008

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Mother of God and St Wilfrid's, Sheffield

Parents of children making their First communion at Mother of God Parish in June 2009 attended two sessions on Reconciliation and Eucharist to help them support their children on the next stage of their faith journey.

After exploring what Eucharist means to them, the parents were asked think about what they hoped the Eucharist would mean to their children. They then watched part of the Home is Holy Place DVD and were invited to say when they felt God’s presence most in their homes, and wrote their thoughts on heart shaped paper. (See picture left) As Home is a Holy Place is a strand of the Celebrating Family Project parents were offered Celebration chocolates during the session.

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Year 6 Vocations day, Leeds

Marjorie Parker, Schools Outreach Worker reports:
In June 2008 two vocations days were held for about 300 year 6 children in the Diocese of Leeds. They came to Trinity and All Saints College and experienced various workshops, each one offering a different insight into vocations, including marriage. We decided that ten year olds might be a bit young to want to talk about marriage so we explored the vocation to family. I decided to end the workshop by just showing the two minutes of reflection at the end of the Home is a Holy Place DVD with the subtitles. Then I simply asked the children: where did you see love in the DVD? They all began by identifying the family where they said their night prayers. Next they mentioned the family with someone with special needs and how they were all looking after her. With a little bit of prompting we encouraged them to mention the other loving things they had viewed and then there was an outpouring of the many ways in which their own families show love. It was very easy then to move that into a conversation about holiness - which they hadn’t recognised as being holiness in their own families - and the vocation to love being Jesus’ call to everyone. So it worked very well but afterwards we thought we should have showed this reflection at the start of the workshop rather than the end.

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