Following the account of Jesus’ thrice-repeated question to St. Peter, heard during the Gospel reading (John 21:15-17), Father Mark Gurtner, Vicar General of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, told the students, teachers, and parents gathered for the annual All-Schools Mass on Tuesday, October 22, “This is a question that Jesus asks every one of us: ‘Do you love me?’”  Photos by Joshua SchipperFather Mark Gurtner talks to fourth-grade students during his homily at the All-Schools Mass on Tuesday, October 22, in South Bend. “And Jesus wants to help us to love Him more and more and more,” said Father Gurtner, who celebrated the Mass with Bishop Rhoades in Rome for the Synod of Bishops on synodality. “In fact, you might remember, He told His disciples that the first commandment is, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, with all your strength.’ The second commandment is, of course, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Now, we don’t always know how to love God well sometimes. And God is so good that he has raised up saints … and in the lives of the saints we can see what this means.”  Click here for more photos from the event. Held at the University of Notre Dame’s Joyce Center, where the jerseys of sports heroes line the ceiling, the All-Schools Mass offered students the chance to reflect on other heroes – heroes whose lives, each in their own unique way, embodied the love of God to which all are called.  Fourth-grade students in the South Bend area dressed as their favorite saints at the All-Schools Mass on Tuesday, October 22. During his homily, Father Mark Gurtner quizzed some of the students about the lives of the saints they chose. As is tradition for this Mass, fourth grade students from each school dressed as a saint they had chosen to study this year. The floor of the arena in front of the stage on which the altar was placed was filled with fourth graders in elaborate saints costumes. There were many nuns, popes, and priests represented by their attire, with several glowing St. Lucia candlelit crowns interspersed on heads throughout.  Teacher Angela Reese, who dressed up as St. Thérèse of Lisieux for the All-Schools Mass when she was a student, attended the Mass this year with students from St. Michael Catholic School in Plymouth. The entire school, kindergarten through 8th grade, made the nearly 40-minute drive to attend.’ “We’ve been doing this since actually I went to St. Michael’s School, so every year it’s been a tradition,” Reese told Today’s Catholic. “It’s a way for our schools to come together and to worship. And to see just our whole family – our whole community of Catholic schools – together in one place is a beautiful thing. And our fourth graders all dress up as the saints that they have chosen to research and get to know as their friends in the faith and ones they want to journey with them.”  Various factors drew students to the saints they chose. Explaining to Today’s Catholic what motivated him to choose St. Patrick, St. Michael’s fourth grader Nolan Hensley said: “I just really like him and how he banished all the snakes from Ireland, because I don’t really like snakes.” The students were all smiles as they disembarked their school busses and entered the Joyce Center. His classmate, Camila Antunez, shared that she chose St. Bernadette after hearing about her from her teachers. As she learned more about her, Antunez was drawn to the fact that St. Bernadette saw the Virgin Mary, and was poor.  A common theme that arose as fourth grade students shared about choosing their saint was finding a point of similarity between the saint and themselves. During part of his homily, given as he walked the main floor near the fourth graders, Father Gurtner highlighted three saints – St. John Paul II, whose feast day fell on the day of the All-Schools Mass, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Rose of Lima – and invited students dressed as those three saints to come up and join him. There was much excitement as students and their peers heard their chosen saint called. Students shot up out of their seats, and their peers excitedly pointed to them, making sure Father Gurtner did not miss seeing them.   First up were two students dressed as Pope St. John Paul II. When asked why he had dressed up as John Paul II, the first student shared the point of connection he had found, replying, “Because I’m 62 and a half percent Polish.” Perhaps reflecting the demographic makeup of South Bend, when asked the same question, the second student responded, “Same thing.”  Father Gurtner then engaged with the students about how each of those three saints had embodied the two greatest commandments, pointing out: John Paul II said ‘yes’ to God’s invitation to become pope, even though it meant leaving his beloved Poland; St. Francis gave up material things and cared for the poor and sick; and St. Rose, though beautiful, forsook marriage, deciding to give her whole self to the Lord and no one else, and devoted herself to prayer.” The post Students Urged to Model the Saints at All-Schools Mass in South Bend appeared first on Today's Catholic.