Reflecting on Our Spring Picnic
Dear family and friends,
My heart is still overflowing from the generosity and community I witnessed at our Spring Picnic on Sunday, May 2. Not only at the Spring Picnic did I witness people coming together to commune, and celebrate, and give to our high school, but the weeks preceding the event, too.
The Knights of Columbus from three different councils helped us sell tickets and promote the picnic. Individual women from the OLV’s Women Group, as well as from St. John XXIII and SEAS, provided all the food for the sides. One member of the Women’s Group provided all the decorations and centerpieces. The pig was gifted to us by the Knights and one of our families. JPIIHS families and volunteers put such care into making the baskets and desserts for the raffle. One of our parents made t-shirts for the entire faculty and student body the week of the event. A parishioner from St. Peter’s called saying she had six dozen gluten free rolls Canyon Bakehouse would like to donate. The OLV staff helped us send out flocknotes in case of rain and gave us full access to their kitchen for cooking, not to mention letting us use their beautiful garden space. Dr. Scott and Annie Powell drove an hour to speak to us about adventure and the importance of our school.
I witnessed Knights I had never met set up tents for us for hours and cook all day and then pull pork all night before the event. The day of the event, I turned to set up tables or ask someone if they could do this or that and there was always already someone there.
It brings tears to my eyes as I write this, because I really experienced two things through this event. One is that our school is abundantly blessed and so cared for in this community. The second is that this is the Body of Christ. This is what it feels like to be a member of the whole. For someone you never met to hug you and tell you that you can call on them any time for help—for people to come together and just be.
Thank you so much to everyone who made the Spring Picnic happen and for all who attended. It was beautiful to simply be there with you.
Ferociter bis amate,
Liz Yeh, Executive Director
STUDENT APPLICATIONS
DUE SOON!
If you are interested in joining us for the 2021-2022 school year, or f you know of any students or families that might be interested, please direct them to our website www.chestertonjpii.org/admissions to learn more about our application process.
Even though our early application deadline has passed, there is still time to apply this year: the late application deadline is May 28!
All applications after that date will be moved to our waitlist for first-come, first-serve opportunities.
If you have any questions, or would like to schedule a shadow day, please contact our headmaster, Mr. Hockel, at BHockel@chestertonjpii.org
St. Thomas More Institute at St. John Paul II High School
Now Announcing the St. Thomas More Institute! Parents in our school and community members have suggested that we begin to offer courses for interested adults and tenacious high school students centered on the teachings of the Church and tailored to the educational experience of our students. In response, we have determined to begin the St. Thomas More Institute at St. John Paul II High School.
Each initial course is $30 for supplies, and spaces are limited! High school students that wish to take the courses are welcome, and each course they take awards additional credit for their graduation requirements. Please email the headmaster, Blaise Hockel at Bhockel@chestertonjpii.org if you would like to participate.
To review the course catalogue, see the form below:
Course Catalogue, Summer Semester 2021
Ancient Philosophy: How We Came to Think
Instructor: Thomas K. Hockel, Esq.
Location: Our Lady of the Valley, Room 201
Dates and Time: Wednesday June 2nd, 9th, 16th, and 23rd, 17.30-19.00
Course Description:
In a four-week course, Mr. Thomas Hockel leads a balance of lecture and seminar covering the development of Western thought from realism to idealism and the cultural effects of that transition. The course will outline the underpinnings of the philosophical traditions in the West and their influences on culture, from the Pre-Socratics and Aristotelian philosophy through the Cartesian revolution and Hegelian idealism. The course will explore the consequences of metaphysical and epistemological assumptions about reality on language and ethics, and will be tailored for a future courses on epistemology, medieval philosophy, and modern philosophy.
Modern Catholic Fiction
Instructor: Blaise A. Hockel, M.Ed.
Location: Our Lady of the Valley, Room 201
Dates and Time: Wednesday July 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th, 17.30-19.00
Course Description:
In a four week course, Mr. Blaise Hockel leads a discussion of Catholic Fiction, a conversation about the development of the interior life, and teaches a means of reading literature and pairing it with tools that allow participants to analyze literature from a Catholic lens for the better development of their own internal life. With a mid-ranged reading load, participants will work through a few smaller texts together, rather than reading an entire novel over the four-week period.
The course will be tailored for a continuation into interior freedom, poetry and short story analysis, and a study of the humanities and classical education.
From the Headmaster’s Desk
Blaise a. hockel
My dearest friends,
A pair of weeks ago I was locked in conversation with our Executive Director, Ms. Elizabeth Yeh, and our humanities teacher, Mr. Steve Lewis. We were rapt in conversation, as we so often are, about how to best answer the Christian crisis in the modern world—a crisis that involves our lack of community outside of a few pockets, our willingness to go it alone, and the infiltration of ideologies that used to belong solely to the world, but more and more attempt to mutate and strain the Catholic Church. Most of these changes seem to circulate around the way we live our lives—in comfort and contentment, which leads us to neglect the needs of those immediately around us. Mr. Lewis closed the conversation by saying, and I thought important enough to write it down word-for-word immediately after he said it, “No Christian should tell another Christian to live sacrificially and then walk away. We’re supposed to do this together.” How right he is.
The image that I get with both sacrifice and suffering is something like going on a ski trip—you take a day to go out of your way and make an event of it. Some people really enjoy getting on the mountain for a little while, and some folks enjoy just sitting in the lodge with the cocoa and claiming that they’re avid fans of the sport. It’s not unfair, I think, to say the same of people that sacrifice only in Lent or sacrifice by not having a five-dollar coffee one day a week. I think it’s not unfair to compare this to missionaries that go to impoverished nations to take a picture with children while they wear a tool belt and then neglect their neighbor’s need when they get back home. Perhaps I am too simple in my thinking, but I think this perspective reveals a few of the realities surrounding what it is to truly sacrifice:
Sacrifice is something interpersonal—it always come down to how one individual gives of themselves for the good of another, requiring us to step outside of ourselves and encounter the other’s need.
Sacrifice is often obvious, even if it isn’t blatant—though it might not be clearly apparent to the person you’ve sacrificed for, you know the depths of your sacrifice because you feel it clearly in yourself.
That is to say, sacrifice is intentional, and (when done right) is hard.
I have no idea how to conclude this, except to say that I’ve concluded that I don’t give enough. I think that all this blather about sacrifice and suffering should give us a great encouragement; it is clear that this idea that we are meant to sacrifice together, and that makes the sacrifice both more meaningful and less difficult is integral to the heart of the Christian Paradox.
Maybe the conclusion to this pondering is that we ought to wage war against convenience and luxury because the more materially self-sufficient we are, the more ego-centric or idolatrous we become. So when we tell another to live sacrificially, it means that we need to help them convert their suffering into sacrifice and not to offer such commentary from a position of plenty, but from shared poverty.
Godspeed,
Blaise A. Hockel, Headmaster