Every year a group of Holy Cross students and faculty members come together to share a powerful experience. For five days in one city, they literally “immerse” themselves in needy communities — from people who are poor in spirit to the materially poor. These programs, which enroll applicants from high schools throughout our Province, integrate service, prayer, and reflection for a deeper understanding of social justice.

These experiences bring students into contact with homeless persons, people in recovery and struggling with addictions, and AIDS and hospice patients, among others. Immersion is designed to break down the unconscious barriers between “us” and “them” through shared experience. Participants not only help prepare and serve meals in shelters, for example, but sit down and eat with the people they serve. Students live simply, make their own meals, and draw on journal entries and common prayer to articulate what they have learned, given, and received from the people they have met.

Each immersion is unique to the school and city that hosts it. Moreau Catholic, for example, brought students to the San Francisco wharf at sunset, to appreciate natural beauty in contrast to harsh urban realities. In New Orleans, the trip from the airport — past mansions on St. Charles Avenue to the poverty of the Iberville Projects and St. Claude Avenue — immediately introduced students to harsh inequities; this group also gathered for morning prayer on the levee overlooking the Mississippi River.

These immersion experiences have inspired some schools, such as St. Francis, to develop multiple immersion programs on their campuses; Moreau Catholic students have traveled to the Philippines on immersion. Typically, participants bring the mission home and want to forge relationships within their own community. They also return with a deeper sense of shared purpose and strong bonds with students from other Holy Cross schools.