Skip to main content

Living the Faith

Faith is an integral part of a student’s life at MPB. Students attend mass at least once a week to celebrate the new covenant. Our faith in Jesus Christ is the reason our school exists. Therefore, we utilize both spiritual and academic experiences to allow students to deepen their relationship with Jesus Christ, increase their understanding of their faith, and connect their faith to their daily lives. Regular school liturgies, prayer experiences, sacramental preparation, retreats, classroom instruction, service learning, and extracurricular activities form the core of faith formation.

Celebrating the Faith

Our Catholic faith is the center of all that we do. Once a week we gather to celebrate the Mass, a celebration that brings together not only the students and the staff but also parents, grandparents, and parishioners.

Beyond the liturgy, students learn the power of prayer early and often. Each day begins and ends in prayer. Each tribulation, each thanksgiving, and each contrition evokes prayer. Our community values and encourages children to use prayer as a means to speak with God.

MPB is dedicated to developing Catholics that share in the glory of the sacraments. Sacramental preparation is a parish-sponsored process.  Parish second graders are prepared for their first reconciliation, and third graders prepare for and celebrate their first communion and confirmation through the Archdiocese of Denver’s Restored Order.  For more information and to register your child for sacramental preparation, please visit our parish website.

Fifth grade leads the school in a dramatic still-life presentation of the Stations of the Cross during Lent. Kindergarten leads the school in May Crowning. Sixth grade reenacts the Nativity during Advent. The entire school celebrates the birth of Jesus in a heartfelt Christmas concert.

Embracing Service

Most Precious Blood believes in faith put into action. Each year our school supports parish efforts to provide Thanksgiving dinner to many families. We come together to purchase gifts for the needy so that others might share in the miracle of Christmas. Students are encouraged to spearhead their own projects to help others. Students have engineered projects to preserve the rainforest, pay for cleft-palate reconstruction, raise money for Children’s Hospital and donate towards cancer research. We give special support to the Delores Project which provides shelter and food for the needy in Denver. As students grow, they take on more responsibility for the community around them.

Celebrating Community

Most Precious Blood prides itself in our commitment to community. Students and parents learn very quickly that the school is a group of caring people willing to grow, help, and share. Collegiality is established through a buddy program that groups children from different grades together so they can interact and learn from each other. Younger students learn how to act and think like Catholics from the older students while older students learn the value of compassion and patience from the younger students.

Inspiring Achievement

Students are taught using the latest and best instructional practices. Teachers are invested in their own learning and participate in technological and instructional courses. A rigorous curriculum through the Archdiocese of Denver is the basis for instruction. Students will become sound thinkers, writers, readers, mathematicians, scientists historians, and Catholics. Teachers carefully monitor student progress with MAP testing (Measure of Academic Progress) and the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, along with periodic STAR assessments. Teachers use data from these and other assessments to formulate the best method for teaching their students. Students’ strengths are encouraged and weaknesses are addressed. Students are given the instruction and tools necessary for them to succeed.

Prayer

Students at MPB pray! The school day begins and ends with a school-wide prayer over the public address system led by a member of the student leadership team. All students stop what they are doing and join in this communal prayer. Other opportunities to pray are found by different teachers in different ways. Whether you look at the junior high students who begin religion class with a time of personal petitions or the kindergarteners who give thanks before snack time (and who will remind their teacher if she appears to be forgetting their daily prayer time!) you will see prayer at MPB.

Family Service Sundays

The Family Service program began in 2015 as a way for families to do the work of the Gospels. At each Family Service Sunday, Most Precious Blood families gather to complete a variety of service projects that support non-profit organizations in the greater Denver community, as well as those in our own MPB community. The materials and supplies needed to complete each project are provided at each “service station”. Families are invited to visit as many stations as time allows, complete a wide variety of projects, and learn about the organizations in our community that work daily to love, support, and care for the vulnerable. For more information, please visit our parish website.

Convocation

 

Students gather with their buddies to celebrate our MPB community monthly. MPB believes that every person is a unique gift and that each of us has our own wonderful, God-given set of talents and traits. For this reason, Convocation has been established as a way to celebrate the triumphs and successes of MPB students with prayer, announcements, and conversation.

The Delores Project

The Delores Project is the focus of many of our students’ service works. Each week a group of students makes lunches for the ladies at The Delores Project, a women’s homeless shelter in Denver. The treats for these lunches come from our annual Halloween candy collection. While the older students pack the lunches, students in the primary grades decorate the lunch bags. Administrators at the shelter report that their clients truly appreciate the cheerful artwork of our younger students!

Student Charity Leaders

As part of the Leader in Me program at MPB, students take leadership roles in Action Teams that serve and support the school. Our Charity Team raises awareness and funds for different causes both within and beyond our school community. Each month, the Charity Team researches charitable organizations that connect to our studies and our mission. In recent years, the students supported the Walk for the Poor/St. Vincent DePaul Society, the Max Fund/Dumb Friends League, the Denver Santa Shop and the St. Jude’s Children’s Research Fund and the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Family to Family

MPB School collaborates with the parish on Family to Family projects. The two highlights of the year are the Thanksgiving Food Drive and the Christmas Present Project. In both cases, students learn that they are part of a larger community that has many struggles and needs. They learn that giving to others is a very real part of their faith.

Christmas Pageant

On the last day of school before Christmas break, MPB students take time before Christmas parties and room clean-up to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas. Sixth-grade students perform a simple version of the story of Jesus’ birth complete with shepherds, an angel, three wise men and some very interesting innkeepers.

  

Living Stations of the Cross

Fifth-grade students present the Living Stations of the Cross to the entire school during Lent. This very moving prayer service combines the visual of Jesus’ passion with prayers aimed at school-aged children. The students share this prayer to the students during the school day and the parish in the evening followed by a soup supper.

May Crowning

Kindergarten students help present Mass and lead the student body in a celebration of Mary during our very special May Crowning Mass.

 

Each Friday from 8:30 to 9:30, the entire MPB school celebrates Mass.  Students from kindergarten through eighth-grade take turns presenting Mass to the community by homeroom. The school year begins with the leaders of the school, the eighth grade, presenting the first two Masses. From there, the seventh graders present two Masses and so on. Teachers spend the week before their Mass preparing with the students, and as many students as possible are included. A student is selected to read the first reading at the ambo. Other students read petitions created by the class. Still other students are responsible for bringing up the gifts. Great care is given to offering students varied and meaningful opportunities to participate.

When one homeroom is presenting Mass, the other homeroom of that grade is responsible for leading the school in song. The music teacher prepares all students during music classes so that they are familiar with the current collection of songs sung at both daily and weekend MPB Masses. The music teacher also works with specific students who will lead the community in the responsorial psalm.

Each week, students are given the opportunity to gather together, to reflect on the message given during the homily, and to celebrate the Eucharist together. It is quite common to hear a connection between the Gospel and the playground during an MPB Mass. Once a month, students celebrate “Buddy Mass” where older students and younger students attend Mass together in their buddy groups. Older students have an opportunity to model appropriate Mass behavior and to guide their younger buddies in the celebration.

  

 

Sacramental Preparation is a parish-sponsored process. If your family is registered at Most Precious Blood Parish and you would like for your baptized child to prepare for the Sacraments of First Reconciliation (2nd grade) or Confirmation and First Communion in the Restored Order (3rd grade), you may register your child to prepare for and celebrate these sacraments through the parish website.

The religious education curriculum provided at Most Precious Blood Catholic School supports the preparation process in providing children a firm foundational understanding of the rich tradition of our Catholic faith. With the assistance of the pastor and the Faith Formation team, parents are responsible for preparing their children for the sacraments in the parish’s home-based program. This is a time of obvious growth in faith for children, but also an opportunity for parents to renew and deepen their personal faith as they engage in this process with their children.

For more information on MPB’s sacramental preparation programs and to register your child, visit the parish website!