2022 Catholic Schools Fall Festival
October 1, 2022!
Join us for our second annual Catholic Schools Fall Festival, and celebrate the Catholic community in Northern Colorado!
We will have a carnival with prizes, a raffle, food and drink, pie-in-the-face fundraiser, and a barn dance. Come for any or all of the fun!
Address: 32855 Cty Rd 43, Greeley, CO 80631
Don’t miss out; RSVP here! https://jp2hs.com/catholic-schools-fall-festival/
The Great Gregorian Bake-Off!
Earlier this month, House Gregory the Great celebrated their patron’s feast day with a House Competition. They chose to hold a Great Gregorian Bake-Off (a la the Great British Bake-Off), in which students from each House made a signature dessert and a cake for the judges to taste. The “showstopper” cakes were decorated by the whole House during the competition. Our esteemed judges, Mr. Hockel and Ms. Ludvik, judged each dessert based on taste, texture, and finesse of decorating. House Catherine took the best signature dessert category, House More won with the best showstopper cake, and House Greg won the day with best overall desserts. Congratulations to all!
Adventure Gala: Thank You!
A big thank you to everyone who has donated their time and money to make our first-ever Adventure Gala happen!
We are very excited to welcome our guests this Saturday. Please pray with us for the success of the event!
Student Article: A Day in the Life of a Student
Meredith S., Junior
Though sleeping in during summer is relaxing, the systematic routine of a school day feels more ideal. I adapted in the first couple of weeks to the new daily life of Junior year.
Lately, some of my friends and I have been meeting at Coffeehouse 29 before school to study and work through homework together. After, we all go to school together.
My first class is Chemistry. So far, this year of science has been my favorite, despite it being early in the morning. Mr. Engblom teaches the class and he is always more awake than the students. Chemistry has an abstractness to it that I enjoy. After Chemistry, the Junior class joins the school in the chapel for Mass. I love walking in and seeing everyone else there; The whole school is united together into one section, praying together, and it’s a beautiful thing.
Immediately following Mass is Pre-Calculus. My class is not all together for Math and Latin, and so I am in a different classroom with only a few people. The classroom is cozy and it has radiant stained glass windows. Though the large windows add lots of colorful light all over the room, they also heat the room quickly. Hopefully, during the winter months, it’ll be cooler! Pre-Calculus is taught by Mr. Pace and he always makes sure we know new concepts before we move on. Later in the same room is Latin. Ms. Ielmini is one of the new teachers and she is doing an excellent job already! In her class, we read through a Latin text and translate it as a class. So far we have translated sections from Hebrews, the Latin Mass for the Feast of the Assumption, the Traditional Latin Mass, and a medieval story. The last class of the morning is Theology with Mrs. Dennis. All of the Juniors are back together for this class. As underclassmen, we learned the Old and New Testaments, but now we are learning how to respond to Revelation. It is important to learn how to live as a Christian today. The goal of the Junior class this year is to incorporate Christ into every aspect of our lives.
At long last is lunch. During lunch, I reconnect with my friends, especially those in other grade levels. Because it is the tail end of summer, the weather is clear enough to eat in the prayer garden. After my friends and I eat, we usually play Spikeball! When lunch ends, the double block period of Humanities begins. It is taught by Ms. Glaser, who is another new teacher. Though it is the longest class of the day, it is perhaps the most interesting one. This year, we are learning about history from the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution. We recently read the Trial of Joan of Arc, and it was eye-opening to see a saint who was the same age as us. Ms. Glaser is a very kind teacher, and I love being in her class! The Juniors this year have Study Hall Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. This is a super convenient addition that allows me to get all my work done in school. It also enables me to ask teachers questions I may have about class more easily. Then the school day is over! My Junior year of high school is busy, but it also is a lot of fun.
Teacher Article: The Daily Life of the School: Catharsis and Looking Beyond the Self
Mr. Peter Crnkovich, Trivium Instructor
Aristotle, in The Poetics, explained that an outcome of tragedy is catharsis, that phenomenon where, through witnessing the actions of the characters in a dramatic tragedy, the audience experiences a release of emotions and gains a broader understanding of the human condition. In the Sophocles’ play Antigone, the eponymous Greek princess, daughter of Oedipus, saw it as her familial duty to see to the burial of her brother, a declared traitor to Thebes, and made a fateful decision to honor her family and risk death at the hands of Creon, the recently crowned king. Through experiencing this tragedy, we see the conflicts that arise between the culture and our own values. Good literature can bring us outside of ourselves to take our place in the thousands-year-old tradition of Christendom, which is something desperately needed in this culture of self-obsession and self-glorification.
At Saint John Paul II High School, each day begins with Mass. Beginning the day by entering into Communion with Christ, the message is clear that Christ should be the focus of the life of the school. The students are then given the opportunity to engage with meaningful literature everyday in seminar. They read tragedies from the Greeks, like Antigone. The first-year students see the struggles of heroes in The Iliad and The Odyssey. Progressing through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance and Modernity, students will contend with the shifts in society and art that defined those eras. In entering into a discussion with each other and the authors from the Western Canon, the students reach outside the self and must consider the ideas of both their peers and the great thinkers and writers of history. In a spirit of collegiality and charity, the students learn to respect and appreciate the commentary of others in the seminar.
Theology also applies this seminar method of learning, in reading and discussing the Old and New Testaments and works of the Church Fathers and Doctors. In the math and science courses, they experience the natural world and learn its laws through weekly practical labs and the study of algebra and geometry. Every single experience in the school asks the students to look beyond themselves, to the people and ideas that have shaped our civilization.
Christ is omnipresent through all these classes. Every class begins with prayer. The House system, which provides a fraternal community for the students, reminds us of the great saints Joan of Arc, Gregory the Great, Thomas More, and Catherine of Siena. More than just names, these saints are patrons and intercessors for our students, and we hope the students continue to see them as helpers in their academic and spiritual journeys.
In contrast to modern culture that asks us to obsessively look inward, the students are given a chance at Saint John Paul II High School to step out of themselves and see the world, their faith, and the human person in a whole new light. They may find the love of an author, a philosopher, or a theologian, but even more importantly, they have the opportunity to meet Christ every day, to see Him in their fellows, in the subjects they study, and in the daily life of the school.
From the Headmaster’s Desk: How I Find You In The Morning
The morning opens with two harsh calls to reality: the chill outside of the comfort(er) of the bed, and the clamor of the children whose needs supersede all others, even that of being well-rested. The morning isn’t really the morning until the cup of coffee is brewed, the smell stimulating the endorphins even before the caffeine is coursing through the bloodstream. John Steinbeck said he drank coffee not even because he needed it, but because of the community it provided to break up the monotony and
drudgery of the road. That’s nice, and deeply impractical; that’s for decaf people, and that’s not the world we live in these days.
Kids in the car, speeding down the road to propel ourselves into the new day, and then the monotony (Monday or otherwise) commences. At some point, when they were buckling themselves in, there was the brief recognition that this person in the car with us is something more incredible than our child, and that they are becoming a full-fledged being.
Then that smallish creature tramps into school. It was, a few times over their lives, a hard feeling to let them go—the first day of school, the first day of middle school, the first day of high school, and college… At what point did we make the realization that these children are not ours? They are ours to cultivate and to guide, not to prune or to possess. And that was what was so terrifying when they first went off to schools, of course. They began to spend more time with their peers and their teachers than
they did with us, their families. From eight until four, they were in the care of the community, and from four until seven or eight they were embroiled with team activities and friends. Then we’d have them splintered between dinner and homework time. Those marvelous creatures—they used to be so small—became very much independent.
I think that is where the passion for education should come from—the entire animating philosophy should revolve around not a falsely-familial or social experience, but one that mirrors the cultivation for which the parents are responsible. Shouldn’t a school be a place where the child can stretch, grow, be challenged, but also develop strong roots that tether them to the things that we hold so dearly?
So where do I find you when I find you in the morning? It begins with welcome and greeting. As you walk into the building, you are greeted. We stretch and unfurl for the day, being awakened by the call to academic development that a school should strive towards, but then we go to the place that offers more than any course could: we move into the Mass. It is the time for recognizing that Christ provides the nourishment we need—one that is readily available and so rarely partaken in. It is the chance to stand together, asking for intercession and enveloping ourselves in a community that knows
intimately the needs we have in our development towards goodness. And we carry that through the remainder of the day—to each and every class and interaction that follows.
So, as I brew my first cup of coffee (at 10:00 every morning, after Mass has concluded), I am able to savor it as I find the students where they are in their communal journey towards goodness, goading each other on to greatness in spirit and understanding. It is a very pleasant way to start a day—immersing oneself in the gift of a loving community. I write this simply for the chance to welcome you into it.
Please come and see. We love company, and would love to find you in the morning that we may share the glory of the day with you.
Blaise A. Hockel, Headmaster