As the nation celebrates Catholic Schools Week this week, it serves as a pertinent reminder that Catholic schools exist for a greater purpose than just providing students with robust academics and intellectual formation; their true mission is to form disciples of Jesus Christ.
Taking this truth to heart and recognizing that the Church is currently amid a Eucharistic Revival, Assumption Catholic School in north Denver recently started celebrating daily Mass for its staff and students Tuesday through Friday.
“I grew up in a Catholic school where I went to daily Mass,” Assumption pastor Father Nick Larkin told the Denver Catholic. “The Church has an actual means of making intentional disciples that she’s used from the beginning, and it’s the daily Mass, right? So we said we’ve got to figure out how can we do this.
“Our tagline is ‘we are saints in the making,'” Father Larkin continued. “And we really try to make that something that we help them to live and to really embody. The ordinary life of living Christian discipleship is to become a saint, right? Well, we can’t claim that we’re saints in the making, if we’re not grafted onto the Eucharistic vine and we’re not abiding in the Eucharist.”
Father Larkin approached Assumption principal Darin Lovelace and expressed a desire to celebrate Mass each day for the school. It seems like an easy decision for a Catholic school to make, but the reality is that due to scheduling conflicts and limited availability, many Catholic schools only hold Mass once a week.
“My initial response was very positive in the sense that I can see the longer vision of what that outcome could be, that a greater devotion to and presence at the Mass for our students and staff will have long term benefits,” Lovelace told the Denver Catholic. “Then my next thought was, ‘Oh boy, we’re going to have to change the schedule.'”
That proved to be the biggest hurdle. Lovelace broached the subject with parents of the school at a monthly coffee meeting back in November, and while they were generally supportive, the biggest concern they expressed was how it was going to affect the school day. The school holds an all-school Mass on Wednesdays, but the additional Masses during the week are for students who have been fully initiated into the Church, generally those in fourth through eighth grades.
“A variety of responses from a good representation of parents in the school was, ‘Well, what are they going to miss during the school day by spending this time at Mass in the morning?” Lovelace said.
Even so, many parents were excited by the prospect of their child getting to celebrate daily Mass during the school day.
“There was a great deal of groundswell also in the direction of, ‘Yes, we want we want this to happen. It’s the most important thing we do,'” Lovelace added. “That was a very powerful testimony from quite a number of parents, that they saw it as a very positive move.”
Photo by Aaron Lambert
After consulting with parents and the staff and exploring several options, the schedule change they settled on was shaving five minutes off of each period throughout the day to allow for an extra 45 minutes in the morning for Mass. The school was sure not to cut the students’ recess time short, out of respect for them. On Mondays there is no Mass, and while this left an odd block of time in the morning on that day, the staff decided to use that time for academic support for students.
“So actually what happened in the end was [the students] didn’t lose academic time, they gained time,” Lovelace said. “So it was a win-win situation.”
After working out all the scheduling details, another confirmation that this was the right move came when they started talking to students about the switch. While Father Larkin expected students to show some trepidation toward more frequent Masses during the week, much to his surprise, it was quite the opposite.
“What was amazing was, before I even talked to Darin and before I talked to the teachers, I actually started talking to my middle school boys that served for me,” he recalled. “And I just started saying, what would you guys think if you came to Mass every day? And they’re all like, ‘That would be so awesome, Father!’ And that was not the response I was expecting.”
Parents of the students are also invited and encouraged to attend Mass with their children, which Father Larkin pointed out is an opportunity to extend the school’s evangelization efforts beyond the students to them as well.
“In a lot of ways I think that’s one of the biggest challenges we face in all of our schools, is bringing the parents along,” Father Larkin said. “We have the kids here and they’re being evangelized every day, but sometimes the parents are left behind. [So it’s] figuring out creative ways to bring them along and especially ground them in the Eucharist. Once you are convinced that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist and that he wants that relationship with me, you’re going to be there.”
While it took several months to fully plan the shift to daily Mass and come up with a way that worked for the school, Father Larkin said it’s all been worth it. For those Catholic school pastors and principals out there who have been considering doing something similar but are hesitant for whatever reason, Father Larkin offered words of encouragement.
“Have faith. If the Eucharist is truly an encounter with the risen Lord, then what else is going to make their hearts burn within them, except for the fact that they have this real encounter with Jesus who loves them and they’re learning about Jesus every day,” he said. “I have to believe that they’re going to bring the grace of that reception of the Eucharist that is indwelling in their soul into the classrooms and that’s going to help them grow in virtue. So I would just say to my brother priests, have faith that the sacraments actually are real encounters with Jesus, and that if the school exists to make disciples, then how can we rob our children of the most concrete way of encountering him?”