ll good things are ordered to faith in Christ Jesus and worship of the triune God. According to ancient custom and decorum, the sacred liturgy of the Church of Christ is the fitting adornment which attires the Sacraments of holy Church with due ceremony, one rich in signs of the heavenly liturgy.

As the Second Vatican Council teaches in Sacrosanctum Concilium, "The liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; it is also the fount from which all her power flows."

Accordingly, our curriculum has been shaped by and ordered to the sacred liturgy in light of the perfection of the human person and his supernatural destiny. In fact, a fruitful participation in the sacred liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church is the ultimate purpose of the education of the College of St. Justin Martyr. As a molder of souls and a school for grace, the sacred liturgy itself is an incomparable mode of education. This view of faith, liturgy, and education unites the love learning and the desire for God.

Liturgy, the public service of worship and rite of sacrifice, is ever required to raise and to consecrate the whole human community to the higher life, each according to his capacity, and to show gratitude, to honor, and to express the dependence of man on the Absolute, the source and donor of all life, existence, and truth, of all reward and of all correction. This is the natural duty of religion. However, the natural liturgies of ancient peoples, and even the rites of the house of Israel apart from the majesty of the Decalogue and the prophets, fell so far short of the true and acceptable offering, a worship in spirit and in truth, that the minds of many were left in no small degree of obscurity regarding matters divine. And thus the philosophers appeared to surpass religion in divine science, especially for the educated, sometimes presenting a more spiritual and dignified appreciation of the human in relation to the transcendent. Not until the emergence of what St. Justin Martyr called the "true philosophy" - viz., Catholic Christianity - was philosophy reconciled with religion, and revealed religion seen to be superior to the handmaid of natural reason. In order that this might come about, divine providence, in the fullness of time, begat in the flesh the eternal Logos, desire of all who love wisdom and truth.

Hence, ancient rites, and in a special way those of Israel, were purified, transformed, and elevated to supernatural efficacy in the conduits of grace, the sacraments of the Catholic Church, by means of the sacrificial passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thus, the one, divine, true, and perfect sacrifice has been perpetuated through time by means of the celebration of the sacred liturgy. This liturgy of the New Israel has, in Jesus Christ, High Priest and Victim, extended the heavenly dialogue of the prophets and the divine contemplation of the few philosophers who were able to achieve this in some small measure, to all who participate in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Christian rites, with body, mind, and heart, the whole person. Even more wondrous still, the liturgy brings about a fellowship with the triune God, and a share in the divine nature itself.