CHARLOTTE — Instead of protesting gun violence by walking out during National Student Walkout Day March 14, students at several Catholic schools in the Diocese of Charlotte turned to prayer.
Across the country, students joined in a 17-minute walkout – one minute for each of the 17 people killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. – in honor of the one-month anniversary of the mass shooting.
Instead of protesting, students at Catholic schools in the diocese and across the nation prayed, either individually or in groups.
At Charlotte Catholic High School, student council members led the school in prayer over the loudspeakers before several classes, said Principal Kurt Telford.
Shortly after the Feb. 14 deadly shootings in Florida, students at Charlotte Catholic High School had met with administrators to discuss how to best handle this “protest,” Telford said. “I told them I didn’t want the students to walk out. We talked about praying a rosary or a special Mass. Students decided to pray prayers they picked out before each period.”
Students highlighted and memorialized victims of the recent shooting in addition to the prayers, Telford said.
“We’re at a Catholic school. We pray. That’s what we do,” Telford said. “We have the ability. That’s part of our Catholic culture to pray.”
Two students did walk out of class, and Telford said he told students that there would be a penalty if they did leave. He said he didn’t tell students in advance what that penalty would be. That punishment – community service – ended up being similar to the penalty that students incur if they leave class without permission.
“I’m very proud of our students,” Telford said. “I started the day by saying a family prayer. We are family at Charlotte Catholic. I believe at the Catholic schools, we have more options than a public school may have. Our school is centered around prayer.”
About a dozen students at Christ the King High School in Huntersville left classes to pray, said Principal Carl Semmler.
“It was voluntary. Some students just sat quietly, a couple walked around the back courtyard – which is protected – and some prayed the rosary together,” Semmler said. “Ultimately, the only stipulation was they couldn’t go out the front of the building, for safety reasons.”
“It was a nice little event,” he said. “It wasn’t the majority of the students, by any stretch, who chose to participate. It was pretty positive, and they were well behaved.”
Students returned to class after about 15 minutes, he said.
It wasn’t just high schools in the diocese that turned to prayer last week. Students at St. Mark School in Huntersville also prayed.
The third high school in the diocese, Bishop McGuinness High School in Kernersville, could not be reached for comment.
Praying instead of protesting was the trend across the nation in Catholic schools.
In the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, more than 100 middle school students, teachers and parents gathered on their school’s front steps in St. Paul for 17 minutes of silence and prayer. They lit 17 blue candles in memory of those who died in the Florida school shooting and held signs in honor of each deceased person.
In Missouri, Catholic school students held a prayer service that included an encouragement for students to write a commitment to action and place it in a basket in the chapel. The suggestions included reaching out to someone at the school who may be experiencing difficulties or is picked on, expressing love and care to a family member, and more. At another school in St. Louis, the students marched in the street wearing orange armbands or orange shirts, carrying posters with messages such as “#StopTheViolence,” “Enough is enough” and “Blessed are the children.”
In the Archdiocese of Denver, where schools offered special Masses, prayed the rosary or held prayer services March 14, Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila urged archdiocesan Catholic schools to use the time of prayer for the conversion of hearts and for the souls of those who died.
Elias Moo, Denver’s archdiocesan superintendent of Catholic schools, echoed the bishop’s words, saying: “We believe the first and most important response can and should be to unite in prayer."
— Kimberly Bender, online reporter. Catholic News Service contributed.
CHARLOTTE — St. Patrick Cathedral was filled to capacity March 29 as Bishop Peter Jugis celebrated the Mass of the Lord’s Supper.
The Mass of the Lord's Supper on Thursday commemorates Jesus' institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper, His washing the feet of His disciples, His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, and His betrayal and arrest. The liturgy marked the start of the Triduum, the three holy days preceding the Resurrection of the Lord at Easter.
In his homily, Bishop Jugis reflected on the day’s Gospel reading from John 13:1-15, particularly the statement, “He loved His own in the world and He loved them to the end.”
Jesus’ love, even as He approaches His death, Bishop Jugis noted, “is constant. It does not vacillate; it does not waver at all. It is full and it is undiminished.”
Knowing that He is about to die, Jesus gives His disciples – and us – the ultimate gift of His love: the Eucharist, Bishop Jugis said.
Of course, Jesus shows His love throughout His life, from obedience to His parents in His youth to the working of many miracles and healings during His public ministry, the bishop continued, “but here at the Last Supper is the greatest expression, the most perfect expression of His love for the whole human race.”
“He’s laying down His life. Everything is now on the line.”
The bishop recalled that Jesus had once said, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.” (John 15:13)
Jesus’ coming death on the cross is “the most beautiful and perfect and full expression of His love,” he emphasized.
Bishop Jugis also explained that Jesus institutes the Eucharist at this critical moment before His death, and not earlier in His ministry such as when He multiplied the loaves and fishes. Why?
“He chooses now, as He is approaching His death, because the Eucharist is the perpetuation of the sacrifice that He’s about to undergo. The Eucharist is the greatest expression of the love that He wants to show us.
“The Eucharist is the perpetual reminder of His living presence with us, the Real Presence – His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.”
There is “no greater memorial that He could possibly leave us about how much He loves us.”
The Eucharist, Bishop Jugis said, is “the great love, the great sacrifice, the ultimate sign of His love, that remains also constant, full, undiminished, even to our own time. He wanted a sign of His love to remain to the end, until the end of the world.”
“That greatest love will remain constant through the institution of the Eucharist.”
Bishop Jugis also recalled the words of St. John Paul II that “the Eucharist is the fruit of Jesus’ death.”
“Out of Jesus’ death springs forth abundant life,” he said. Just as when Jesus said that a grain of wheat has to die to produce fruit, He had to die for the fruit of His salvific grace to be produced.
“That love changes lives. That love changes people,” the bishop continued, because the Eucharist nourishes the faithful, enabling them to share God’s love with others.
The saints and martyrs are prime examples of this fruitful, selfless love, he said.
“That Eucharist, that sacrifice of Christ, His Real Presence continues through the ages to produce abundant life for the Church and for the world,” he said. “How blessed we are to be able to know the meaning of the Last Supper, why Jesus is doing this now, and now to be receiving what He wanted to be perpetuated throughout history, until His Second Coming.”
“This is the gift of Jesus, the gift that He gives you,” he said, gesturing to everyone gathered for the Mass.
“Ask the Lord to make His Eucharist produce in you abundant gifts of holiness, of faith, hope and charity and mercy, and all the other virtues that you especially need to live faithfully,” he concluded.
At the end of the Holy Thursday Mass, altars in every church were stripped bare, candles and lights were extinguished, and the Blessed Sacrament was transferred to a temporary altar of repose until Easter – outwardly demonstrating the sense of the Church's bereavement and loss during the time of Christ's Passion, death and burial.
Catholics then spent time in Eucharistic Adoration, recalling Jesus' words to His sleepy disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, "Could you not keep watch with Me for one hour?"
On Good Friday, no Mass is celebrated.
— Patricia L. Guilfoyle, editor
See more photos and video highlights from Holy Thursday liturgies
