SALT LAKE CITY — Middle-school students from Blessed Sacrament Catholic School in Sandy celebrated All Saints Day and All Souls Day with an Oct. 28 field trip to sites significant to the history of the faith in Utah: the Cathedral of the Madeleine, the mother church of the Diocese of Salt Lake City; Kearns-St. Anne Catholic School, which opened in 1900 as an orphanage; Mount Calvary Catholic Cemetery, the only Catholic cemetery in the state; and the cross in Spanish Fork Canyon that commemorates the Dominguez-Escalante expedition in 1776, during which the first known Mass was celebrated in Utah.
The sites were chosen to connect the school’s religion curriculum to experiences that are relative to the students’ lives, said Joseph Martin, Blessed Sacrament’s middle-school religion and social studies teacher. He added that he wanted the students to learn about the sacrifices made by early Catholics in the region, “that hopefully will help shape their lives – that they’ll be bold in sharing the Gospel in wildernesses that they encounter in their lives” and that they would form a connection with their “spiritual ancestors.”
At the cathedral, parishioner Colleen Gudreau acted as a tour guide, pointing out, among other things, the saints depicted in the various stained-glass windows and explaining about the relics of the saints that are embedded in the altar. The students also were able to view the relics of the True Cross and of St. Mary Magdalene, which are housed in reliquaries behind the altar.
The students began their visit to the 100-year-old cemetery at the “holy plat,” where some bishops, priests, religious and deacons who served the diocese are buried. John Curtice, the cemetery’s director, explained that bodies typically are buried so that the head is on the west side of the grave, “because traditionally, everybody believes that Christ, at the Resurrection, is going to come from the east, so everybody raises up to meet Christ.”
At Kearns-St. Ann School, John McHugh, Blessed Sacrament’s history and religion teacher, urged the students to think of all the prayers said by the orphans in bygone days who had lived there, as well as the nuns who had cared for them.
“Think of all the just deep, soulful thoughts and hopes and dreams that occurred right here in this room,” he said.
The field trip concluded with sack lunches at the 37-foot tall cross near Spanish Fork. The cross honors the expedition of Dominican friars Fathers Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante, who set out from Santa Fe, N.M. in July of 1776 and reached the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon on Sept. 23 of that year.
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