Celebrating Catholic Schools

“United in Faith and Community.”

That’s the theme of this year’s Catholic Schools week, which takes place between Jan. 25 and January 31. In 1974 the National Catholic Educational Association, or NCEA, established this tradition to typically fall during the last full week of January to coincide with the beginning of enrollment season.

NCEA states its mission on the front page of their website: “In service of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, NCEA strengthens Catholic school communities by convening all stakeholders and providing professional development, data, public policy, and resources to support faith and intellectual formation.”

Each day of the week, every Catholic elementary school across the country will join the same schedule of celebrating their Catholic identity. The schedule of themes for each day are:

Sunday: Celebrating Your Parish

Monday: Celebrating Your Community

Tuesday: Celebrating Your Students

Wednesday: Celebrating the Nation

Thursday: Celebrating Vocations

Friday: Celebrating Faculty, Staff, and Volunteers

Saturday: Celebrating Families

The breakdown of how schools will celebrate their identity highlights why Catholic schools are unique.

First, each Catholic school is tied to a parish, or collection of parishes. These are the heart of the school because the reason why Catholic schools exist is to offer a daily and organic way for students and staff to grow in their faith. Being a Christian means that one devotes his or her entire life to Christ. All aspects of their lives are his–including one’s intellectual life. The parish is the center of worship for the school. The heart of worship is sacrifice. So, all schools offer praise and worship to God by taking intentional time to be with Him in prayer each day.

Catholic schools are also unique because of the way they build community. There are events for parents to socialize as well as an ingrained manner for families to get to know each other because of how these schools are often smaller in size than the large public schools that surround them. Many families have several children so parents can meet other parents who have kids around the same age but also be around families that have older children so those kids can mentor them.

Summarizing the way that the rest of this Catholic Schools Week will be celebrated, you can see that the way they champion our country and the focus they place on finding one’s vocation as particularly important.

Catholic schools advocate that America is the most beautiful place to live. The United States protects our religious freedom. It was founded on the Judeo-Christian values that are taught inside their walls each day. Catholic schools seek to promote discipleship but also patriotism because it is through one’s relationship with God that one begins to see that we have an obligation to the common good.

Finally, Catholic schools will focus an entire day on vocations. This is critical for the life of every believer and every human person. The word vocation comes from the Latin word vocare which means “to summon.” The Church believes, rooted in the way that Christ called his disciples and the way that God called people in the Old Testament, that every single person has a calling in their life that He is summoning them to. The large-scale vocation of a person is to either married life or religious life as a priest, brother, or nun. No matter which one a person is called to, every vocation, or calling from God, is identified with sacrifice.

Catholic schools advocate that if we can place students in a place to meet Christ, grow in the intellectual life, and be emboldened by a strong community they will discover their pathway to holiness–their vocation. This avenue for their own personal sanctification will be intrinsically tied to how God is asking them to sacrifice for the world and make it more whole.

All of the above is a great promotion for the power of a Catholic school education. For me, the words above are not merely descriptions. I experienced it firsthand. This came through my formation in Catholic schools from pre-k through college and graduate school and my current experience of teaching at a Catholic high school as well as having my children being enrolled in a school that transmits the faith in everything it does.

The power and impact of Catholic education comes from being surrounded by faith and being lifted up by the friendships forged in pursuit of the same goal: union with God and the salvation of the world.

What greater goal could a school possibly have?

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