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This breezy Friday morning, students on the New England Summer Program woke up refreshed from their evening in the Chapel and looking forward to the weekend as they made their way to breakfast before their last day of classes. Though the programmers may not actually realize it, this first week at the Program has been much like any other week at the College during the academic year, with the busy trade-off of studying, attending classes, and balancing the spiritual and social life. Each busy week is exhilarating and rewarding, but that restful weekend feeling is nevertheless more than welcome when it comes around.

The first class of the morning was on Pascal’s Pensees and his famous “wager.” Pascal makes an argument to prove God’s existence according to human reason, questioning whether man should believe in a god in the first place. He puts this decision into the form of a bet with different outcomes for the different sides of the decision. In the end, he concludes that, though he cannot himself prove the existence of God, it is still the better bet to believe since the benefits of believing in a god will ultimately be more beneficial than non-belief. The students were full of ideas about and objections to Pascal’s argument, and the conversation was animated and exciting.

After class, prefects and programmers headed to Mass or back to the residence halls before enjoying a lunch of fresh homemade sushi before the next class. Then, they were off with their Fabre and St. Thomas, back on their way to St. Gianna Molla Hall for the last class of the day. Correlating directly to the last reading and the morning class, students discussed the order present in nature, witnessed and written about by French entomologist J. Henri Fabre in his piece, The Bees. When even the tiniest creatures seem to possess so much intelligence simply through instinct, it becomes apparent that, for there to be such an order in nature, there must be an Orderer. Here, the St. Thomas reading came in, as students brought up St. Thomas’s fifth way of proving the existence of God — through observing the order in nature and natural things. 

Later, the students will have their first dance class and perform for their peers at Open Mic Night — check the Summer Blog tomorrow to read about it!

More photos from the High School Summer Program

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