Learn About OUR
Mission and Philosophy
“The Word became flesh and dwells among us.”
cf. John 1:14
Our Mission
The mission of Nativity: Faith & Reason Catholic School is for our students to be transformed and enriched by their encounter with Christ, growing in wisdom, virtue, and in sanctity. We do this by uniting with parents, who are the primary educators, as one community that endeavors to teach, live and witness to the fullness of the Catholic tradition. Our educational approach utilizes a vigorous academic program that inspires wonder toward reality and joyfully recognizes Truth, Beauty, and Goodness as revealed in Christ.
Our Motto
He dwells among us.
SEE OUR MISSION IN ACTION
“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth – in a word, to know himself – so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”
- Saint Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio
Unpacking Our Mission Statement
1. "The Word became flesh and dwells among us."
As a faith community, we are focused in a particular way on the Incarnation of Our Lord. As such, we keep in the forefront that God became one of us to save us from our sins and to be intimately united to us, making us “partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pt 1:4). We believe that education should lead the student to verify the claim that Christ is God-Made-Man, which is the most essential question for each person to answer.
2. Faith and Reason
Faith, in its broadest meaning, is knowledge through a witness. Through their teaching and their faithful living of the Christian life, our teachers are witnesses to our students on a daily basis. We hand on the treasure which is the Catholic intellectual tradition by presenting our students with the lives and discoveries of those impressive men and women in history who advanced human knowledge, such as saints, scientists, writers, artists, statesmen, etc.
Reason is the capacity to embrace reality in its fullness. Our academic approach offers students the method to critically judge everything so that they may recognize and rejoice in the objectivity of the one Truth. As St. Paul said, “Test everything; retain what is good.” (1 Thes 5:21)
3. “For our students to be transformed and enriched by their encounter with Christ, growing in wisdom, virtue, and in sanctity.”
Each one of us has been created by God the Father and invited to share in his love and Glory, in the image of His Son, Jesus Christ. Through the saving sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, we have been freed from Satan’s slavery - of sin, suffering and death, - and a place has been prepared for us in Heaven. As a school, we strive to form our students in the four cardinal and the three theological virtues, so that they can be transformed by the Holy Spirit in the image of Christ and become the saints they are called to be, welcoming eternal salvation.
God calls us to participate in His work of saving humanity; we form our students to give their lives as a service to this Salvific Mission.
4. “We do this by uniting with parents, who are the primary educators, as one community.”
Parents often say, “I am not an educator.” This is true insofar as they may not be professional educators; however, the Catholic Church clearly teaches that parents are the primary educators of their children (see Gravissimum Educationis, Declaration on Christian Education, Second Vatican Council, 3).
Children learn more from modeling than from direct instruction; an outstanding amount is learned by children in everyday family life, in the Domestic Church (Lumen Gentium 11). Parents are the primary educators of life and of the faith. In order to be a thriving school community, the parents and school need to be united in the common mission of leading the students to heaven.
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Part of being “one community” indicates for us that we are there for one another, and we see this in two distinct ways, among others. One, we do not want finances to interfere with a child receiving a Catholic education. Our goal is that the tuition is “affordable”--which is not a guarantee, but a goal. There are outside sources of scholarship that anyone seeking financial aid needs to apply for; in addition to these outside sources, the parish may provide, according to its means, financial support to cover the cost of the missing tuition, as long as each family is ready to make the necessary sacrifices on their part. Through mutual sacrifice, we strive to attain this goal.
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Secondly, we are there for one another by being a school where we can support students of special needs, within our means, considering that the resources we need to put in place for each student with special needs are largely unfunded.
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In both these opportunities given to the school to “help” those in need, we remember that one is more blessed to give than to receive. There is a real richness for those who are blessed with much to be able to be generous to those who have less; furthermore, the community is spiritually and personally enriched by having as its members those in need.
5. “To teach, live and witness to the fullness of the Catholic tradition.”
We teach the Catholic Tradition in its fullness, not selectively or partially. This means forming students within the Church’s complete vision of the human person and of reality, grounded in Christ. In particular, we affirm a Christian anthropology that recognizes every human being, from conception to natural death, as created by God, body and soul, male or female, endowed with an inviolable dignity, called universally to holiness and personally to a unique vocation. This vision is received as a whole, since the Church’s moral and spiritual teaching—often misunderstood as restrictive or selective—is in truth a gift that brings light and life to the human person (cf. St. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 95; cf. 84).
We also educate from a supernatural vision, recognizing that reality itself has a supernatural dimension: God is the source of all being, actively present in creation and in history, and human life finds its fulfillment only in relationship with Him. This supernatural life is nourished and made present through the sacramental and liturgical life of the Church, lived both in close communion with the parish and directly within the life of the school. From this horizon, Heaven and eternal life remain the ultimate measure of human flourishing, preventing education from being reduced to academic performance, utility, or worldly success alone.
These convictions—together with communion, Catholic worldview, and Gospel witness—are articulated by the Church in the Five Essential Marks of Catholic Education, which guide and safeguard our mission. (See “What Is Catholic Education” for a fuller presentation.)
6. “Our educational approach utilizes a vigorous academic program that inspires wonder toward reality and joyfully recognizes Truth, Beauty, and Goodness as revealed in Christ.”
As St. Gregory of Nyssa reminds us, wonder is the beginning of true knowledge. We seek to inspire wonder in our students, introducing them to recognize in the world what is true, beautiful, and good. This intellectual formation is distinct from the current culture, which claims that truth, goodness, and beauty are merely relative. We believe that there is a definite Truth—Jesus Christ—who can be known, and that truth, goodness, and beauty are objective realities that find their source and unity in Him. In knowing and loving the Truth and being inspired by it, one is set free to fully know oneself and to meet and be united to Christ.
Timestamps
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0:00 – Modernity says faith is unreasonable.
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1:00 – Scripture and tradition presents questions and requires reasoning.
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2:00 – Catholic Tradition: Fides et Ratio.
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3:50 – All of life's great questions can't be answered through reason alone.
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6:30 – We find the Lord, and understand him best, in community (The Church.)