DAILY MASS IN CATHOLIC EDUCATION
This past summer I’ve begun my first position as a Principal in a Catholic school. It’s been a whirlwind—some families are happy with the changes I have instituted; others are upset and, most of those, left the school. As my readers here would know, I chose to center the faith in all that we do.
One of the first changes I instituted was the inclusion of Daily Mass in our schedule. I want to share with you all today an excerpt of the letter I wrote to families announcing & explaining this new change.
Daily Mass used to be a regular fixture of Catholic Schools. The logic was quite clear: if you’re in a Catholic school, and the Catholic Church has the sacraments, and the sacraments are the most profound aspect of our faith, why would we not bring our children before them as often as we could?
I don’t know the specific reason this or that school moved away from daily mass, but we could imagine the reasons quite easily—a hesitancy about the goodness and value of our faith increased, and shame/fear/cowardice/indifference/dislike moved schools to remove mass from their daily schedule.
Regardless, the Mass’s beauty endures, and so we are emphatically reinserting it in the school I am now Principal of!
I hope you enjoy reading what I wrote to my families!
Here’s the letter:
St. Wenceslaus Catholic School
Daily Mass Announcement
Dear Parents & Families,
I’m excited to share the announcement with you that this year we will have the privilege of incorporating Daily Mass into our school day schedule. As most people are unfamiliar with Daily Mass, I wanted to take this brief opportunity to explain why we’re doing this and why I’m so excited for this change.
1.
Daily Mass is something that is done in some portion of Catholic Schools across the country & world, but not in most Catholic schools. In the Twin Cities, we will be one of only three Catholic schools that does Daily Mass. I think the reality that most schools do not do daily mass is both a missed opportunity and a major loss on the part of our Catholic schools. We miss the opportunity to participate in the greatest sacrament of our Church, and our children & schools lose out on the grace and love offered to each and every one of us in Holy Mass—a grace and love that we all know our communities need more of, not less.
In the Mass we come before Our Lord, we offer Him praise and thanksgiving, we bear witness to His presence, and we memorialize the passion and death of Christ on the Cross. Mass is not for us—it is for God. But further, it’s not because God needs it—it’s because it’s good for us to be in right relation to God. When we are out of touch with God, nothing can be right beneath that. When we are in right relation to God, we are able to love all things in God, and therefore love all things perfectly.
There’s nothing that can compare with the sacrifice of Mass in showing love, reverence, and thanksgiving to Our Lord. There’s nothing that can compare with the sacrifice of Mass in disposing us to God, and by extension, all things. “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” (Revelations 4:11) The Mass was instituted by Christ at the last supper, and it continues on to this day in our Churches throughout the world. The ability to attend mass daily is a blessing that nothing else can replace. “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” (Revelations 19: 9)
Daily Mass is also different than your standard Sunday Mass. Sunday Masses are typically between 45 minutes and an hour long. Daily Mass is more like 20-25 minutes long. Sunday Mass can be difficult for children to focus through—sometimes even us, adults!—as their attention spans are not as developed as our adult attention spans. The answer to this difficulty, however, is not to remove them from exposure to Mass on Sundays—far from it! Rather, the answer is to expose them to mass in the streamlined form of Daily Mass so that they can build their attention span and appetite for longer masses. Our Daily Masses will be 20-25 minutes long. At least once a month, then, we will have “Feast Day” masses that will be the fuller 45-55 minutes, where the students will participate in the music and service of the mass like they did last year every Wednesday.
As many of you are aware, I was a former collegiate athlete, playing wide receiver for the Minnesota Gophers, and the answer to not being strong or fast enough to play at a higher level is not to stop playing, but to work your way up to greater levels of performance and excellence one step at a time. So too, the same principle applies to sharpening our minds and souls for the Mass of Our Lord: when we are not yet ready for the full length of Sunday Masses, we must prepare ourselves by experiencing Mass in regular intervals at an abbreviated pace. In time, the transition to the longer mass will be effortless and easy—and we will be better prepared to receive the rest and repose-of-soul that Our Lord offers. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am humble and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:29-30)
2.
One of the things that I’ve made a primary focus of my Principalship for this year is trying to address the phenomenon of “cognitive overload” that our children face. Cognitive overload is where, when taking in large amounts of disparate, or unconnected, information, the mind struggles not only to retain some excess of information, but also to retain much of anything that it is being exposed to. A school day that is not thoughtfully and intentionally set up to counter this phenomenon will always fall victim to it. To address this, in our Middle School (grades 5-8), we’ve instituted structural changes to the daily schedule. We’ve condensed the curriculum and worked hard to make every day a better fit for the natural ebbs-and-flows of our children’s attention and energy expenditure. We’ve increased the amount of physical education they will have, we’ve provided extra time for Math classes, and we’ve added communal times throughout the day where the whole school is together as a school.
In most schools the only “communal time” that students have is during Lunch/Recess. When I taught at St. Thomas Academy—a military Catholic high school in St. Paul—prior to coming here, there would be something called “Formation” for half-an-hour every morning at 10:00am. At this “formation” the students would get into military formation, go through their daily protocols, make school announcements, and give the students time as an entire student body together. People that would visit the school—consultants, other principals, current & prospective families, etc.—would consistently remark how struck they were by what they witnessed. It was clear how meaningful and valuable this time was for the school to form its community and for the students to cultivate a sense of connectedness with one another. Experiencing this, a number of my colleagues couldn’t help but realize with clarity and conviction how much greater this would be if a school were coming together daily for 20-30 minutes to do daily mass, instead of any alternative. Not only would such a school have this same benefit of communal bonding, they would be doing something infinitely greater in communing around worship and thanksgiving of Our Lord. The grace that Our Lord gifts us is infinitely greater than any natural gifts we can give one another.
For us at St. Wenceslaus, by incorporating Daily Mass into our daily schedule, we have an opportunity to step away from the classroom in the morning, unwind for a brief period of time, be present with our entire school, and give thanks to the Lord for all that He has given us in this life. “In him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) Students will have class to start the day; we will then all go to Mass, followed by Breakfast; then they will go back to class for another window of time; then they will have Lunch; and finally they will have afternoon class. You can begin to see already how this day is entirely structured around what cultivates the attention, energy, and learning of each and every student.
I’m happy to share this good news with all of you!, and I look forward to the effect this great privilege will have on our students, our school, our faculty+staff, and our entire community. May God bless us and keep us, always. St. Wenceslaus—pray for us! +
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