The 3rd Spirit of Hecker Award

This year’s Spirit of Hecker Award for Newman Hall went to Grace Shannon, our Little Church catechists. She has been leading Little Church, our pre-K and K faith formation class, for over 20 years.

Come see your favorite former Paulists and see the formal presentation of this year’s Spirit of Hecker Award winner for Newman Hall to Grace. Go to time marker 35:35 for our Newman recipient presentation.

Spirit of Hecker Award Presentation

This year is one of the darkest years around, with events like an unjust war in Ukraine, climate change being ignored, and declining church attendance.  Given all this darkness, we are in need of a richer hope and of a future greater than our current now. 

Poet Carl Sandburg once wrote, “A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.”  Our children are that richer hope sent by God.  But we need to equip them for the dire and challenging tasks ahead.

To do this, we need leaders in our children’s faith formation.

At Newman Hall-Holy Spirit Parish, we have been blessed to have a mother who noticed a need and stepped up to care.  Grace Shannon is a parishioner who exemplifies Servant of God, Isaac Hecker’s optimistic vision of the mission to America.

Now is the time to advance the mission, to water the seeds of baptismal faith and spark the fires of the Holy Spirit, and this Grace Shannon does beautifully.  Grace has been leading our pre-K and Kindergarten faith formation program, called Little Church for over 20 years.  While adults are in the main church, she takes our little ones and guides them joyfully through song, storytelling and activities, to break open the same Gospel.

Spooky and scary world, we defy you because God continues to send us his children, and with folks like Grace Shannon, we can properly equip, our children to advance the mission, with the power of the Gospel, to change the world in the image of God’s Kingdom.

 Congratulations and thank you Grace Shannon, this year’s recipient of the Spirit of Hecker Award
at Newman Hall-Holy Spirit Parish, in Berkeley, CA.