As we enter a time of Thanksgiving, let us take a moment to appreciate the blessings of God’s grace.
We are grateful for this school and the opportunities it provides to our students. Our heartfelt thanks go out to the community whose support makes it all possible.
Looking forward to the beginning of Advent Season, let us reflect on the words of The Holy Father -
"Advent invites us to a commitment to vigilance, looking beyond ourselves, expanding our mind and heart in order to open ourselves up to the needs of people, of brothers and sisters, and to the desire for a new world."
- Pope Francis, Angelus, 2018
At a Time When Finances are at the Front of Many Family's Minds, JP2 HS Leadership Delivers Some Welcome News
During the installation mass for JP2 HS President, Timothy Gallic delivered an exciting announcement. Effective immediately, there will be a freeze on tuition for the next three years, ensuring that the cost of attending our school will not increase during this period. Mr. Gallic also shared his vision for the vital role of Catholic education in our community, stating, “Catholic schools represent the best of what we are, during the years of high school, as we grow into our adulthood, to be surrounded by the salvific news of Christ Jesus all the while being pushed and encouraged to grow into that full expression of the person HE made you to be, is the birthright of all men and women.”
JP2 HS President, Tomothy Gallic
Early Application Deadline for SY 25-26 is December 9!
Come join our community! Our early application deadline for SY 25-26 is December 9. Applications submitted before December 9 have the application fee waived- don't miss out on this opportunity!
Mark Your Calendars! Catholic Schools' Week Open House - January 26, 2025
Mark your calendars for our upcoming Open House in honor of Catholic Schools' Week! Come see the JPIIHS difference for yourself and enjoy some time with our faculty and students. All prospective students who attend the Open House will be entered into a raffle for $1,000 off of their first year of tuition at JPIIHS! Don't miss this special event!
Colorado State University Math Day
On November 13th, numerous students from JP2 HS participated in the annual Math Day at the CSU campus. The event featured competitions against local schools, as well as those from Denver and even a few from Wyoming. Students also compteted in a research based poster competition. It was a fantastic opportunity to make math engaging and enjoyable for our students.
Mrs. Taryn R. Bratnick (Dennis), S.T.M.
Theology Educator
From the Faculty
Theodore (my almost 4 month old) is in a sleep regression.
As exciting as it is that he is really progressing developmentally when this happens in a baby’s sleep, it feels like torture. It feels like starting over back at newborn sleep, like I’m a terrible parent who must be doing something wrong, like we’ll never sleep again. All the science and all the baby development books all assure me this is totally normal, but it’s still the worst.
They say the best thing you can do during one of these developmental leaps is to focus on guarding the sleep they are getting. So here I am, writing this is the dark on my phone as Theodore naps next to me. I’m here to put his pacifier back in, to shush and feed and comfort, to extend this nap as long as possible. Meanwhile mom guilt creeps in - I should be cleaning up my kitchen, I should be getting some laundry in, I should be using this time to work out, or do something for myself, I would never be able to do this if I also had a toddler so I shouldn’t get used to it… ad infinitum. It would be so easy to be crippled by this thinking.
But something in my heart taps on my shoulder: it’s gratitude. Surprisingly.
Because my life has rarely had so sweet an opportunity to love Jesus back as this little son of mine.
The litany that Jesus gives in Matthew 25 for how to love the least of these could just as easily be a litany of parenthood: I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was naked and you clothed me, sick and you visited me (I couldn’t sleep so you sat with me in the dark …pretty sure it says that in the Greek right?) Jesus is crystal clear. To love the little one and to love Him are one and the same.
I’m grateful because I so badly want to love Him, and in this He’s made it so easy (even when it’s not).
How wonderful it is that loving Him does not require me to sit in perfect prayer and simply feel love, or think profound and pious thoughts. How wonderful that instead He does what He’s always done- makes Love incarnate.
He’s always been in the business of making it easier and more accessible to love God, even to the extent of making Himself need a simple woman and man from remote Galilee to help Him sleep.
And it makes me start to wonder: how much more grateful would I be if I had eyes to see all the places He is incarnating Himself into my life? How accompanied, how pursued, how loved I would find myself to be.
From the Headmaster's Desk
Stories, Because Nobody Can Give What They Have Not
It probably doesn’t come as a surprise to those who have been inflicted with my company to know that I like stories. I like to hear a good tall one, and I relish the chance to hear a good storyteller. I often imagine what it would be like to hear one of my favorite authors tell a tale to an invested audience, and am captivated by their voice as I work through their novels. And I am one of those people with the appalling habit of always having a dozen books that I’m chipping through, and somehow in all the different books I’m reading it seems that they’re all talking about the quality of the good story and the good storyteller. And that means that I, along with loving the telling of a good story, am liable to tell one from time to time, my children being my most frequent audience.
This week we told a few stories at bedtime. We’ve done a few classic Irish tales, and trickster stories like Anansi are always favorites. We work family lore into the stories, and the kids will frequently ask for “GG and Pops” stories that center around my grandparents’ house and the episodic narratives of the Hockel family at large. But on Sunday I told one of my own, just on a whim. I told the story of Coyote and Moon, which is in part a ‘how and why’ story about day, night, and why Coyote sings each night. The story talks about Bear who steals the sun so that he can take a long sleep, and how Coyote sees Moo, and her beauty is such that he loves her from the first more than he has ever loved anything. But the suffering creatures who need the sun are pitied by Moon, and she asks her beloved Coyote to steal the sun back from Bear, which of course means that she will disappear behind the sun once more.
I had never written this story. I was merely making it up as I went along. I wanted to take a moment to explore the notions of joy and suffering, love and pain, not as being exclusive. In a way, I am hoping to prepare my children for this complex interplay that I know they are not ready to face but necessarily—by virtue of their being human—will.
Well, Coyote has a moment where ‘all the love in his heart and all of the pain of his heart meet’, and he knows that he must do this thing that is asked of him, even if it will take his beloved away from him, and he steels himself to the task. And I shan’t spoil the ending of the story for you (there is a special circle of Hell reserved for those who spoil stories, I am convinced), but the story ends with places to make you laugh, to make you cry, to make you love, and to make you quiet with thought. And as I finished, my children were silent. They stayed silent for a long couple of moments, which is in and of itself a strangeness. I wondered if they had fallen asleep during the telling, which is not their normal way. But Genevieve (6) asked, “Can you turn on music now?” and I said I sure would. Then, miffed that my story had been thus dismissed, because they usually thank me for a story or give some criticism of the narrative, I asked, “Well, how was the story tonight?” and Genevieve answered, “Well, it was really great, but it also made my throat dry and put tears on my face for some reason.”
My response was to assure her that it was a good response to feel and feel deeply about things, and of course it was a sign that she is blood of my blood that a story should move her so. But this is, I think, the thing I will be most reflecting upon during this holiday season: everything that we do moves us, whether it be to great heights, terrible depths, or sinks us deep into a mire of sedimentary sentimentality. For my part, I will try to be thinking about those things that move me and try to reflect most deeply upon what moves me in the right direction. For the purpose of my children, at the very least, I am operating under the idea nemo dat quod non habet, and I am hoping that by providing these stories for my children, they will be guided well in these strange lands that they have to navigate.
This knack for storytelling, I think, is not an acquired taste, though it may be an acclimated one. It is my hope that by exposing my children to stories of some quality of content not that they will avoid lesser things and treat it as drivel, but that they will be able to see the difference between the high and the low, and that they’ll have a nuanced perspective about beauty, truth, goodness, unity, and find them to be desirable things. We give them good stories to excite, and we give great stories to grow. We mingle water in the wine, so to speak.
In the meantime, let me leave you with a poem that Genevieve and I have been learning together. It would be a travesty if I were to spend all this time in my own low, banal language and not give you some of the high and beautiful of which I speak. This poem is from Mr. William Butler Yeats, and it is a personal favorite.
Blaise A. Hockel,
Headmaster
“To an Isle in the Water”
Shy one, shy one
Shy one of my heart,
She moves in the firelight
Pensively apart.
She carries dishes,
And lays them in a row.
To an isle in the water
With her would I go.
She carries in the candles,
And lights the curtained room,
Shy in the doorway
And shy in the gloom;
And shy as a rabbit,
Helpful and shy.
To an isle in the water
With her would I fly.