This year, through a school-wide initiative, departmental teacher teams at Newark Catholic High School have selected patron saints that will permeate their academic course of study and provide opportunities for students to join together in fellowship for the celebration of feast days.
Campus minister Chris Grieb explained that the ultimate goal of the departmental patrons initiative is to be, “a school community that desires to grow in holiness through a real relationship with Jesus Christ and His Church and, like our saint brothers and sisters, be a member of a community that is not afraid to shout from the rooftops that Jesus is Lord. Through the witness of the saints, our students will encounter what it truly means to live lives of intense– oftentimes radical– sanctification.”
Students attend Mass, frequent the Sacraments, adore Jesus in the Eucharist, and pray the rosary as a whole school monthly, but experiences of encounter with the Lord round out the school’s rich campus ministry calendar. Students are also formed through retreat experiences, vocations talks, and a whole-school day of service in May, a tradition spanning nearly 30 years where students fulfill the school’s commitment to partner with over 20 community organizations. The year’s initiative – to name, study, and celebrate departmental patron saints – further demonstrates how the school’s mission is alive and at work, not a static statement.
Pope Paul VI, in the 1975 Apostolic Exhortation On Christian Joy, stated, “Dear Brothers and sons and daughters, such is the joyful hope drawn from the very sources of God’s Word. For twenty centuries, this source of joy has not ceased to spring up in the Church, and especially in the hearts of the saints.” Our Church celebrates joyously; however, too often, celebrations have been relegated to secular traditions that, over time, have lost all sense of centuries-old, faith-based traditions. By engrossing students in the study of saints’ lives and taking time out to come together in feast-day celebrations, they will know firsthand the joy and hope which Pope Paul VI discussed.
Departmental patron saints include: St. Thomas Aquinas for Theology, St. Bede for Social Studies, St. George for Languages, St. Hubert for Mathematics, St. Albert the Great for the Sciences, and St. Catherine of Bologna for the arts. With this initiative, NC’s teachers are purposeful in creating authentic connections to the saints’ lives in their instructional planning – to their struggles, successes, and contributions to a given field of study. In coming to understand why saints were selected for canonization given the faith’s teachings across all disciplines, students are met where they are with a soft entry point not only for evangelization but for study of a given course’s content imbued with Catholicism, an ongoing focus area for all teaching faculty.
Science teacher Emily Matuska said, “It’s more than just tying science to a patron saint. It’s more about how science and religion are interconnected and about trying to help everyone make more of those connections.” Building upon this, department teams are organizing whole-school celebrations and events for each saint that will become Newark Catholic traditions.
Senior student campus ministry leaders, Lauren Meier and Nicholas Windholtz, are working with faculty to select artistic depictions of departmental patrons for display to adorn Newark Catholic with art that inspires students to live the faith on a more profound level. Art teacher Aliya Stevens shared, “When we see or hear something profound, we automatically feel a certain way about what we experienced, and when early Christians realized this, they created Sacred Art to evoke emotions. They used aesthetics, basic color theory, and imagery/symbols to stir feelings of reverence toward God, encourage believers to feel convicted of sins committed, and inspire them to live the faith profoundly. We still use those same images to help us think about God and our faith more, enhancing the likelihood that we will be inspired to grow in the faith.”
Newark Catholic High School is committed to creating an environment for students to grow in their Catholic faith, expand their knowledge, and extend their talents in service to others. It is through the faculty and administration’s ongoing commitment to unapologetically Catholic practice such as the implementation of programming for departmental patron saints this year that students are best prepared to live in this life and to live in the next among the saints in heaven.