Category: Faith Formation

Katie Bogner’s Latest Book

Congratulations to St. Philomena School’s junior high faith formation teacher, Miss Katie Bogner, on publishing her latest book: We Have a Pope.

 Said Katie in an interview for The Catholic Post in March 2024, “One thing that I didn’t plan but that became quite evident during the writing (and then later the illustrating process) is that rather than the pope, the “main character” of this book actually ended up being the Holy Spirit.”

Katie continued, “We wanted to show that the Holy Spirit has been guiding the Church for 2000 years and will continue until the end of time. We shared this by including a Holy Spirit dove on almost every page spread. The dove flies over the nearly empty St. Peter’s Square, leads the Cardinals into the Sistine Chapel, sits on the shoulder of the Cardinal Elector, and waits on the chapel roof for the sight of white smoke.”

For more information on the book, including how to order, visit Katie’s blog, looktohimandberadiant.com. 

Lent in Our School

(February 20, 2024) — This Lent, our school students and staff are focusing on the three acts of sacrifice for Lent: Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving. Teachers will work with their classes to focus on these aspects throughout Lent either with choices in the classroom or acknowledging the choices students are making personally.

Each time a student or class takes part in a new sacrifice, a small slip of purple paper will be filled out and deposited into the community jars outside our learning center. This act will show the entire St. Philomena community that we are in this journey together preparing for the sacrifice of Jesus and His eventual Resurrection.

We hope you can join us by taking time as a family to choose different aspects of sacrifice. If you have a child in our school currently, we encourage you to talk about the different ways our kids are sacrificing in school.

Adoration Chapel Visits

(Dec. 6, 2022)  During the Season of Advent, all junior high students are making a weekly visit to the Adoration Chapel. During a recent visit, they prayed with the Sunday Gospel and meditated on the virtue of hope. We are grateful to have access to a chapel on our campus and to be able to offer this time with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament to our students.

7th Grade Stewardship

Seventh graders are tackling the issue of hunger this year as their service project. They collected canned goods and other non-perishables in November and then delivered them to New Hope Apartments. While there they learned about what happens at New Hope and how their efforts help the community. Also in November they spent a day at Midwest Food Bank where they packed 4800 cans in an hour. Students then wrote reflections on service in their community. Below is a poem by 7th grader, Marcus Ice.

 In One Day

In one day

Many people touched

Feeding the people who need it  

In one day

Putting smiles

On the hurt

And struggling

In one day

Putting your feet

In others shoes

Who are more unfortunate 

Than you

In one day

A deed is made

And our service dedicates us

To help them

In one day

Lives are changed

Emotions, happy, joyful, surprised

Are all glowing

In one day

The sun lights up

Like the people

We have helped

In one day

The work is done

Surprising the unfortunate

In one day.