Faith

Our faith tells us that we are made in God’s image and likeness, giving each of our students and staff infinite and unique worth. We thread service to others into our curriculum and instill traditional Christian moral values in our students. We start and end every day with prayer together as a school and infuse prayer throughout our day. We gather weekly in the church for Mass and are fed by Jesus Himself in the Eucharist, and every week we offer opportunities for Eucharistic Adoration. At our school Masses, students serve as lectors, cantors, and altar servers, and many parents join us each week to worship, uniting us as one school family. Below is an example of a school Mass from the 2022-23 school year.

“The primary function of Catholic education is to instill in a child an awareness of God’s plan for his or her life. We must be excellent at teaching math and science, reading and writing, history and civics. This whole curriculum must be imbued with our Catholic faith; our Catholic way of seeing the world. It is then fitting that Religion be given a priority in our study so that our foundation for everything else – our foundation for taking seriously the beauty and challenges present through the whole range of other subjects – can be more firmly rooted and more deeply understood.

Our mission of assisting parents in their role of educating their children in the Faith is one which each of us takes very seriously. As we begin to give greater clarity and focus to our mission to Unleash the Gospel in the Archdiocese of Detroit, I am very pleased that we can offer this curriculum to our Catholic Schools for this work of evangelization and catechesis. There can be no greater mission our schools can have, than in the midst of helping our youth acquire the necessary knowledge and skills for further education and for their role as responsible citizens, we also instill in them an awareness of the truths – both intellectual and person – of the person of Jesus Christ and his Church.”
– Archbishop Vigneron, introducing the AOD Religion Curriculum

►Download the AOD Religion Curriculm [Pre-K through 8th Grade]

Sacraments are the ways Jesus is physically and spiritually present to us here on earth. When we receive the sacraments in faith, we receive God’s actual grace and are changed from the inside out. At St. Joseph School, starting in second grade, sacramental life is part of each student’s school experience. Our students receive God’s infinte mercy through the sacrament of Reconciliation, and God’s infinite love through the sacrament of Holy Communion. These are perhaps the two most intimate ways any of us will ever experience God and His love, this side of Heaven. 

Our second grade teachers use Matthew Kelly’s “Blessed” series from Dynamic Catholic to prepare our second graders to receive these two sacraments. For more information, visit Dynamic Catholic.

Our 7th and 8th graders prepare to receive an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of Confirmation, using the Christ Stefanick’s “Chosen” program from Ascension Press. For more information, visit Ascension Press.

Service to others is an indispensable part of being a Christian, and Jesus made clear it’s what he cares about most with regard to our faith life. In Matthew chapter 7, Jesus says, “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets,” and then “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’ Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’”

For this reason, not only do we teach our students to serve one another and the poor through service projects, but we weave service into our academic learning as well, through our Serve and Learn program. 

We work hard to make our entire school, from preschool up to 8th grade, feel like one big family. One way we do this is through our Buddy program, where older students befriend and mentor younger students. Preschoolers, kindergarteners, and 1st graders are each assigned a 5th grade or middle school buddy, who helps them around the school, sits with them at Friday Mass, reads to them, and even gives them gifts and notes throughout the year. While this program provides a mentor and friend for the younger students, it provides the older students with a sense of responsibility to care and set an example for their “little brothers and sisters.”

One of the greatest things about St. Joseph School is that it is a ministry of St. Joseph Church. Our priests are in the school hallways and classrooms on a daily basis, and knowing that there is no distinction between school and church helps our students to know that we should never lead a “double life,” where our faith is separate from everything else. Rather, the life of the Church is intertwined with the life of the school, helping us fulfil our mission of teaching the whole child – not just mind and body but also spirit.

Visit the St. Joseph Parish website.