I always like to keep the parish informed about some of the great things going on in our school, and this past week was one of my favorites: the 8th Grade Service Immersion. Our 8th graders spent three days in Indianapolis serving others in a variety of contexts: the largest food bank in the State of Indiana, an inner-city Catholic school serving at-risk children, and various shelters serving a variety of populations, from women with children, to men living on the streets, to homeless veterans. Our students did some great work during our time in Indiana (and I trust that they had a fun time doing it.)
This Service Immersion is intended to be a capstone, the culmination of a school-wide service program that every student begins during their time in pre-Kindergarten. Each grade is partnered with a different service organization with whom the classes are involved throughout the course of the year. The students perform service, as well as learn about these various social issues while praying for the people and organizations they serve. By the time they reach the 7th grade, our students have been exposed to a wide array of populations in need: the elderly, the developmentally disabled, expectant mothers and the hungry. Then, as 7th graders they begin performing service hours on their own. In 7th grade they can perform these hours in a variety of places as they continue to broaden their experiences and discover their interests and talents, and then in the 8th grade they focus on one service site so that they can enter into a deeper level of service.
This all culminates in the Service Immersion, where we spend the academic year introducing the students to Catholic Social Teaching from a variety of academic perspectives, with the hope that the students can integrate this experience into the broader context of their relationship with Christ, realizing that “whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 Jn 4:20). (I am also very proud of the students because they earned all of the money needed to put on this trip through their hard work at the Economic Mall last December.)
The Constitutions of the Congregation of Holy Cross (2.14) tells us that, “For the kingdom to come in this world, disciples must have the competence to see and the courage to act.” I hope that the Catholic education our students are receiving at Christ the King forms them into this kind of Christian disciple. I’m grateful to all of them for the good work that they’ve done, and will continue to do in the future. And I’m also grateful to Rianna Doyle, who led this Immersion with me, and to the staff and parent chaperones who sacrificed their time to make this experience possible.
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