Freshmen field trip combines education, Christian mission and Catholic culture
Goldie Rapp
On April 16, Fr. Dominic Garramone, OSB took the entire freshman class on a field trip that combined education, Christian mission and Catholic culture. He and junior religion teacher Eric Davy accompanied the freshmen to visit a soup kitchen, study stained glass at a 19th century church and attend noon Mass and devotions at another church in downtown Peoria.
The students traveled by two busses to Sophia’s Kitchen, a soup kitchen and food pantry run by a group of parishes known as the Heart of Peoria Catholic Community. The center is attached to St. Joseph Church, where the students met with Sophia’s Kitchen director Claire Crone (who just happens to be a Fr. Dom’s high school classmate!). She described the center’s ministry, which includes serving 400 meals a day Monday through Friday and providing food assistance for the weekends. Prior to the trip the freshmen collected eight large boxes of canned good and non-perishable food as their contribution to the ministry.
Macy Strauch said, “Learning about the soup kitchen on this trip gave me chills. Just with how many people they are helping out and how much they have changed their community.”
Fr. Dominic then took the students on a tour of the church, pointing out various features of the beautiful stained glass windows which came from a studio in Germany. Most of the windows depicted the life of Christ, so our young scholars were able to identify many of the images from their studies of the Bible. One of the unique features of the church is a window depicting Jesus as sowing the seed of the gospel. Closer examination reveals that the seeds are actually tiny crosses.
After a boxed Subway lunch, the students boarded the busses to travel to Sacred Heart Church across from the Peoria Civic Center. This parish, founded in 1878, was where Fr. Dominic attended grade school and he learned to serve mass in the church. Sacred Heart was recently renovated, and features exquisite mosaics and frescoes, including many images of saints from North and South America. The students attended noon mass, and stayed afterwards for the weekly special devotion to St. Anthony, which included a blessing with a relic of the saint.
Kerstin Williams appreciated an experience which made their classroom learning more relevant: “The trip was a great way to connect the topics we learned in class to the real world.”
Fr. Dominic said that he got such a good response from the students that he hopes to make the event an annual tradition.
If you would like to help fund next year’s freshman field trip, please contact Fr. Dominic or the Development Office.