BARCELONA, Spain
The Arrel Educational Center in Barcelona celebrated its traditional feast day last May. This year the motto has been “we form a net and we surf it together” and the shared symbol has been: “the Arrels little boat.”
Living the feast day
Each grade returns to the classroom ready to enjoy the feast. Throughout the day they are going to experience the values that have been explained at the opening session. Creativity and cooperation are evidenced in the ludic activities of the whole school. The interrelationships and netting among the students have been set. The project called “Godparents for Reading” that this year has been carried out among the primary students celebrates the feast with games among the godparents and the godchildren. The students of the secondary education have also shared games with the pre-school and primary students; they have proved to be wonderful monitors of games and of cooperative workshops.
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As in every feast, they had the traditional coca with chocolate and a token of the feast: a magnet with a little paper boat that, during the school year, has been delivering instructions for the sailing which has almost reached harbor today. The boat displays the motto: “We form a net and we surf it together”.
The day starts at 9:30. The students go to the Parish next to the Arrels Center. Their smiling faces reveal that the day is different: May 3rd, feast of the school, in which each year the canonization of St Pedro Poveda is also celebrated. The altar for the Eucharist is presided by a statue of Poveda surrounded by the symbols that, during the year, the Arrels community has been living: “We form a net and we surf it together”.
The students go to their assigned seats accompanied by their teachers and older students. The last ones to enter are the pre/schoolers; they seat on the floor before the main alter. They are very attentive to the directions their teachers give them. It is a very special day for them; they already know St Pedro Poveda and now they join the entire school to celebrate the feast. Some parents attend and discreetly follow the ceremony.
In charge of the liturgy is the pastoral team and some students from the secondary education that dramatize the motto of the year. They are dressed as fishermen and are waving a net in colors which symbolize unity, commitment, prayer, solidarity, joy, study, cooperation, goodness and Faith.
During the act the community sings along with a group of students that lead the songs accompanied with instruments.
The act finishes with the display of a net representing union and cooperation. Everybody, students and teachers, meet outside for the Arrels Family picture of the year.
At the end of the day all leave very happy, specially the little ones showing their made up faces and their little Arrels boat. The feast is over but in their hearts and minds they carry the imprint of St. Pedro Poveda.
Arrels School Team
Translated by Maria Teresa Cuervo