STUDENT ARTICLE
NEW SECTION: We are excited to announce that we will be adding a new section to our monthly newsletter: a student article. Our students are the reason we are all here. Their thoughts and ideas inspire us daily, so we thought you’d like to hear (read) them, too!
Pursuing the Truth at JPIIHS
Rose Threewitt, Incoming Junior
To be a student at the Chesterton Academy of John Paul II High School is to grow in wisdom, truth, and faith. The teachers of JPIIHS focus on showing us how to pursue truth and grow in understanding. They do this by teaching us to think, listen, and open ourselves up to being wrong. This is the purpose of education: to learn how to think clearly and to always search for the truth. By being a student at a Catholic school, particularly St. John Paul II High School, one can grow in their faith through their search for the truth.
Searching for the truth can be precarious if done idly or incorrectly. Humility is key in the search: one must be able to see the world as it is. In order to find truth in reality one must be able to perceive it, which is only possible through the virtue of humility. One must always consider every view since no one person holds the absolute truth. To find truth one must understand what they are looking for and open themselves up to the possibility of being wrong: to really search for the truth one must understand that they know very little. They must understand that their ideas may not align with reality and so may have to be altered. Most importantly, for one to find truth they must actively pursue it.
The Chesterton Academy of John Paul II High School aids every student in this pursuit. They do this by encouraging students to use their own reasoning to find the answers to their questions. This teaches students how to think clearly, be attentive, and listen. The most obvious example of this is seminar. St. John Paul II High School employs seminar in almost every class because they see that it is not enough to be given answers–we must be able to understand them. However, the most direct way to find truth is through learning about God. This is why Catholic education is so important: God is the truth in all things, and so it is most important in our search for the truth to understand Him. By helping us to understand our faith, this school teaches us how to find truth.
I have found that Truth is the most important. The purpose of education is not to memorize dates and names–it is to find Truth, Who is God. This is why I think it is necessary to be a student at a Catholic school. To be a student at a Catholic school is to be a pursuer of truth, and so of God Himself.
Summer Reading Recommendations from Our Faculty!
Mr. Hockel, Headmaster and Humanities Instructor
Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor
A damn good novel. Perhaps my favourite.
Edmund Campion: A Life, Evelyn Waugh
This biography is robust and enthralling in its tale of the great English Marty and orator. This novel is the reason that we named my son Campion.
Ms. Yeh, Executive Director and Art Instructor
Heart of the World, Hans Urs von Balthasar
This text is very real. There are many spiritual books that tell you what you should feel rather than giving you insight to the real heights and depths of the Christian experience. Also, it allows you to see how God is so earnest and desperate for your love—He just wants to be in love with you. That’s not a surprise, but it’s something you know, but you don’t really know. This text helps you come to terms with that reality of God’s love persevering love for you.
Mrs. Ward, Administrative & Development Assistant
Voyage to Alpha Centauri, Michael O’Brien
A true science fiction adventure, this book is a delightful read with unexpected depth and humor. O’Brien is a Canadian Catholic author, and like most of his other novels, this story inspires thought and prayer.
Mr. Lewis, Philosophy Instructor
Beginning to Pray, Anthony Bloom
Finally, a book about prayer that is more than just encouragements to try “five minutes a day and see what happens from there.” Instead, Anthony Bloom tells us what happens when we begin to pray: what we expect, what God does, the frustrations brought about, and the joy awaiting us. This is the most personal and personalized account of prayer that I’ve ever read.
The Life of St. Macrina, St. Gregory of Nyssa
A touching account of an inspiring saint written by one of the great Fathers of the Church, who also happened to be her brother!
Everything that Rises Must Converge, Flannery O’Connor
O’Connor was a spitfire Catholic and one of America’s greatest authors. Everything that Rises Must Converge is a simple short story about being racist and riding the bus. However, its devastating ending literally kept me up at night.
Ms. Dennis, Theology Instructor
Return of the Prodigal Son, Henri Nouwen
This profound reflection deals with the question at the heart of each of our spiritual lives: whether God is good. I cannot think of any other single book (besides the Bible) which has been more formative for my own faith, and Nouwen’s easy and personal style of reflecting on the painting and the parable make this a wonderful read.
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
A well-deserved favourite of many a Catholic for good reason. It’s the story of a young man caught up in the inner-workings of an eccentric and wealthy English Catholic family, and all that ensues in his life because of them. As surprising as it is profound!
Mr. Crnkovich, Tridium Instructor
Out of the Silent Planet, C.S. Lewis
Out of the Silent Planet, despite the more famous Chronicles of Narnia, is perhaps the best fictional work by C.S. Lewis. The book is tremendously imaginative in its rendering of alien cultures and works as a compelling piece of science fiction in its own right. But it also demonstrates the failings of progressive (scientific) morality. As our civilization continues to advance in physics, medicine, engineering, and other fields, it is essential for us to look at why we are advancing in this way and how we should continue to do so ethically. Out of the Silent Planet provides an avenue to reflect on our so-called progress and what it means for us as man “made in the image and likeness of God.”
Mr. Falconberg, Humanities Instructor
Leisure as the Basis of Culture, Josef Pieper
Josef Pieper’s Leisure as the Basis of Culture, published in 1952 with a companion essay, The Philosophical Act, is one of the most important Catholic philosophical works of the twentieth century. In this short book, Pieper puts forward a simple yet important argument: culture depends on leisure, and leisure depends on divine worship. Pieper’s book remains important even today, especially in an increasingly secularized Western world that is dominated, I believe, by the “total work” that Pieper warned about. This is one of those short little books that has the capacity to challenge and change you, teaching you more about what it means to be human. As an important aside, this book also has important implications for those of us involved in Catholic classical education. As Pieper notes in the opening pages, “leisure in Greek is skole, and in Latin scola, the English ‘school.'” If you can, pick up the latest edition so that you can read the wonderful forward by Fr. James Schall.
Mr. Sicam, Latin Instructor
Confessions, St. Augustine
I’ve always enjoyed reading about the personal lives of the saints, because seeing the ups and downs of their lives helps me appreciate the greatness of the things they achieved, not least of which is sainthood itself. It also helps me feel a little closer to them. But it is rare to find a work that is as personal, comprehensive, and pious as Augustine’s Confessions. He gives us not only a peek, but a total gaze into his life—even the parts he is ashamed of, and how he conquered them with the help of God. For that reasons, it’s a beautiful and encouraging read and one I always return to.
Mr. Pace, Math Instructor
The Bridge of San Luis Rey, by Thornton Wilder
Take a thought-provoking journey to early eighteenth-century Peru to encounter Franciscan monk Brother Juniper as he grapples with one of life’s quintessential questions, “Is there a direction and meaning in the lives beyond the individual’s own will?” In the summer of 1714 Brother Juniper witnesses the collapse of the Bridge of San Luis Rey and the synchronous fall of five trekkers passing over the ancient Peruvian crossing. Can the Franciscan monk divine a connection between the lives of these five travelers and their untimely demise? Pulitzer-winning author Thorton Wilder brings the reader on an unforgettable philosophical quest examining the complexities of love and the consequences of unbalanced relationships. Will the fractured characters resolve their incongruences and find ultimate meaning to their lives? Wilder suggests that love is the bridge connecting a land of the living to a land of the dead, “the only survival, the only meaning.”
St. Thomas More Update and Sign-Ups, Session II
For those who joined us for the first session, an introductory course on the development of scholasticism and the degradation of reason to be observed in idealism and relativism, thank you! Mr. Thomas K. Hockel Esq. led us in a four-week session taking us from the Pre-Socratics to idealist thinkers, and gave a great analysis over how we’ve come to think in the modern world. Indeed, there is much to be said about the travesty of losing the ability to concretely explain ourselves and define our thoughts.
For those who wish to join us for the second summer session—Modern Catholic Fiction, led by Mr. Blaise A. Hockel—you can sign up by emailing Mr. Hockel (Bhockel@chestertonjpii.org) with the email heading “STMI”. The course is $30 for materials, and students that attend all sessions are eligible for high school credits. All sessions are held on Wednesdays in July from 6pm until 7:30pm. Students, parents, and community members alike are welcome
Join our Volunteer List!
This year we have many fun events and fundraisers that we need your help with! If you would like to join our volunteer list to be reached out to with various volunteer opportunities throughout the year, please email Liz Yeh at LYeh@chestertonjpii.org. Thank you!
From the Headmaster’s Desk
My dearest friends,
These summer months, filled, I hope, with all the respite and pleasantness that we could hope for, have been filled with a great deal of excitement as we have progressed into our second year of existence. We are completing a study as we prepare to launch a capital campaign for the formation of our more finalized resting places, and with all of the moving and interviewing, and business, I’ve been thinking a great deal of fish.
I do not know if I’ve ever mentioned before how dearly I enjoy fishing—though, I am more accustomed to surf or pier fishing and find that I am laughably inept at the art of fly fishing. I reflect upon fish not because I wish to liken this school to ‘landing the big one’, but because the vision of the fish beneath the surface has been so very much haunting my dreams of late.
In his song, “The Sleeper”, Greg Brown wrote the line, “It’s another happy April / to every happy fool. / You move through my dreams / like a trout through a pool,” and that is the image that I wish to convey as we are stepping with sure step through these ever-moving waters of the present. Though the rocks below us shift, and though the ripples of the times obscure our vision, we have glimpsed a shimmering brilliance of that elusive creature just beneath the surface. Indeed, we have hooked it, and we are slowly angling the piscine creature closure towards us.
I hope then, wherever this summer finds you, that you will breathe deeply with me the air that plays off of the waters and immerse yourself in the symphony of the aspen; to have begun this school was the first and crucial step, to have populated it with such incredible families and impeccable staff a most imperative endeavor, and now we embark on the penultimate task of building upon the resplendence that we might love the gifts given to us by the Great Artist that orchestrates all this wonder in which (if we will observe) we are so thoroughly immersed. I implore, then, dearest friends: allow yourselves to be absorbed entirely in your observation of this process of school building. The spirit of the Lord hovers above the waters, and in that reflection we will see the glimmer, that living silver, of the thing we long to capture here in our labours.
I suppose, then, that the lesson is that the good fisherman is not merely the one that knows his craft, but observes with pleasure his surroundings as he works; then he hears when he is being hailed from the shore and might know better where to drop his net.
Godspeed and Ferociter bis amate,
Blaise A. Hockel, Headmaster