Faith in Action

As a school in the Jesuit tradition, we educate the whole person, that is, we not only develop the intellectual capabilities of each of our students, but we also develop each child’s emotional faculties, physical health, and spiritual life.

With regard to the spiritual life, we do more than teach our students the doctrines of the Catholic Church. We also prepare each child for a personal encounter with God through regular prayer and spiritual conversation, and we model for one another the Gospel message and help each child to become an active, contributing member of the Church, the family, and the civic community. In other words, we teach our students to become people for others in the manner of Jesus.

Some of the ways in which our students learn what it means to be persons for others include:

• Participating in regular food and toiletry collections for local poor and homeless in cooperation with the Decatur Emergency Assistance Ministries (DEAM)
  
• Making “blessing bags” of food and other items for distribution to the homeless the students may encounter in the course of their day
  
• Participating in a school-wide, student-led event during which students honor the service of the those who have served and are serving in our armed forces
  
• Along with the youth of Glenn Memorial Methodist Church, assembling gift boxes at Christmastime for the students of Global Village Project, a school that serves refugee children who are being resettled in the Decatur area
  
• Hosting an “Empty Bowls Dinner” at the close of a multi-month project in which STM students support the students of The Good Shepherd School and a medical clinic in Port-au-Prince, Haiti