Join Us! Spring Picnic May 6, 2023
Activity Spotlight: Discovery Day 2023!
This April, we had the honor of hosting several esteemed members of our larger community to explore their fields of expertise with our students and staff. The day was devoted to an array of fascinating talks and demonstrations featuring subjects such as physics, poetry, geology, archeology, and many more. We are so grateful for the speakers who came to impart their wisdom to us, and we are looking forward to making this an awesome tradition for years to come!
Student Article: Become A Saint
Vincent B., Junior
In my entrance interview to St. John Paul II High School, I was asked a question that is still just as relevant to me now as it was to that eighth grader I was in the midst of the Covid interruption. It was the question, “What is the purpose of an education?” Even though this was asked to me almost 3 years ago now, it is still something I reflect on often (especially after a particularly tough final or extraordinarily long reading homework). Nowadays, the world will say that the purpose of education, especially a high school education, is simply to go to college, or to prepare kids for college. While this is an answer, it does not fully satisfy the scope of the question, and the question then becomes: what is the purpose of a college education? To get a degree, to find a job, to work until you retire or die? This seems to be the world’s mindset, but that doesn’t sound like greatness to me, and I would be willing to wager that it does not sound like real greatness to most.
The answer to this question I was then given was something that my 14 year old mind at that point had never comprehended or been willing to think about before: The goal of an education is to become a saint. “A Saint”, I thought, “Like those guys in robes with big beards and women who wear those funny things around their faces that lived like 700 years ago? That couldn’t be me.” But the school’s Catholic worldview changed my perspective on what a saint really is, and how a school with a Catholic worldview can give its students the things they need so that they might become saints.
The faith at JPIIHS is not simply put into a “box,” but since Catholicism is holistic and the truths of the Faith speak to the whole of reality, JPIIHS takes on this Catholic Worldview and applies it to every part of itself, starting with the subjects students learn. “But how can there be a Catholic algebra, or Catholic science?” one may ask. These subjects are taught at JPII not simply to be learned for the sake of themselves or, worse, for the sake of standardized tests, but rather for the purpose of teaching students how to use our reasoning and logic to come to find truths in reality through logical processes. As for the latter, studying God’s creation, for the mind of the Creator can be further understood through studying the creation. Having this view of the subjects taught at JPIIHS helps the school to not become a school parents view as the “next best thing” where their child may not have to hide in the dark shadows as a Catholic. JPIIHS does not function in this way, but rather makes the material the students engage with (especially in the Humanities classes) challenging not only academically, but on a personal and spiritual level.
In my own experience, as I read the books and materials at JPIIHS throughout the years, a common theme has been present in my mind. This has not been a theme of a literary analysis, but rather a challenge: because of these things that I am reading, because of what I’m learning, my life can no longer remain the same. As I have learned the truth, it has demanded that my life change. And this is the challenge of the Truth Incarnate to us: to change our lives to conform to Truth, rather than explaining away whatever we please. It is only with a truly Catholic worldview that a person, and a school, can begin to embark on this endeavor.
Teacher Article: A Catholic Worldview
Ms. Taryn Dennis, Dean of Students & Theology Instructor
Christ is risen from the dead! By death He trampled Death; and to those in the tombs He granted life!
It struck me as I sat down to attempt a reflection on the meaning of Catholic Worldview and its significance to our school that there was nothing worthy to write about except this.
I could talk about the way a truly Catholic understanding of reality colors and affects everything we do, from the way we study, to the way we plan the future, to the way we interact. I could talk about how the Catholic sees themselves as a body-soul unity, and the world as a communion of brothers and sisters in solidarity, and even nature itself as a true “Sacrament” of God’s goodness, but at its very heart, a Catholic Worldview is this one thing, without which all else would be for nothing:
Jesus Christ is God, Who has died and is risen and by this has put an end to the ancient reign of sin and death. And we are the people in whom lies this same hope of victory over our own sinfulness and death.
The words above are sung multiple times in every liturgical service of the Byzantine Catholic Rite from the early dark of Easter morning through the very last evening prayer of the 50 days of the Easter Season. Their soaring melody lives in my heart all year, waiting with longing until we can sing them together each Easter. They are the very meaning of Christianity.
I have felt the longing to sing these words with a particular immensity this Lent and throughout this school year. I have faced several personal difficulties this year, from a car accident last Spring, to the tragic loss of my younger brother in the Fall, and now the loss of my dear Grandmother this Spring. My heart has been pushed toward and beyond its limits, and, to be honest, I have felt like it is the first time I have been required to be a real Christian.
Far beyond my years as a missionary, far beyond what it takes to teach Theology and to witness to its Truth, I have had to ask myself – do I really believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and that because of this reality, the world and all its darkness and all its suffering do not have the final say? If I say I believe this, then what does it look like to face even the darkest days like it’s true? In short, this year has been a kind of crash course in Catholic Worldview.
In this year, I have also experienced the profound gift that is living in a community centered upon this same Truth. The warmth, compassion, and support that the students, teachers, families, and wider community of our school has extended to me this year has been the greatest consolation. I cannot imagine how much more lonely and more sorrowful a year like this would have been had I worked in a place that does not know the hope of the Resurrection. I am humbled by everyone’s love and patience, and so deeply grateful for it. Thank you.
As we look to the end of the school year and the great commissioning of Pentecost which begins our summer, I can feel the ever-ancient and ever-new hope dawning. As a dear lion once put it, this is the deeper magic from before the dawn of time, which returns every year with the green in the grass to remind our hearts which reality is most real in the world. As we look forward to the next season, –I to my own wedding, and our first seniors to their entire post-high school lives– let us bear this Worldview in our hearts. I pray especially that our seniors (and we all) can let it become an ever-living wellspring of joy, one which makes them live, pray, think, act, love, and hope differently their entire lives long. I pray that even when they (and we all) are tempted by the hardships of the fallen world, some small seed planted firstly by their families and, God-willing, in their time at JPIIHS will never let them totally forget or deny this deepest Truth. Christ is alive, and so we live not as slaves to sin and heartbreak, but as the free and victorious children of the Father.
And so with joy let us sing: Christos Anésti!
From the Headmaster’s Desk: Eyes, Hungry and Seeking
Over this Octave of Easter, I spent a good amount of time in prayerful reflection on the Caravaggio painting The Supper at Emmaus. Before anyone gets the idea that I’ve an eye for art, let’s get straight that if it’s not words I don’t know a thing about it. But I like the painting, and it’s been a source of prayer for me because of the faces of the men in the painting.
Actually, the more time I spent thinking about what I wanted to write here, the more I started thinking of my bride and a few women friends have started infiltrating my thoughts as I pray. It starts with one having introduced me to Caravaggio, I think. And, to the rest, they were the ones that introduced me to my bride (over time, revealing more and more of her mind, humor, mirth, and joy). Between those women, they open up the meaning behind the Caravaggio and thereby the way in which I can actively see Christ in those around me.
If you look, as I do, through the eyes of a novice, The Supper at Emmaus has three men at supper with Christ. As the Scripture says it, those who were dining with Christ did not recognize Him until the moment He blessed the meal, and the Caravaggio is the moment of their recognition, each one recognizing in their own gradual time, with whom they dine. The women of whom I refer have given me more understanding as to the reactions on the faces in the painting, in three ways—in the way they view beauty, in the way that they see their beloved, and in the way that they live out a strong family life.
All of these to whom I refer have become (or are shortly to become) brides. Most of these women have become mothers. I knew them all when they were young, and I have seen how much more there is to know now that their time has increased, and with it their love, their faith, and their charity. I know that this must seem disjointed to the reader—I am trying to connect things without a clear understanding of how they relate, but I am thoroughly convinced that they are intimately related; the growth of these fine persons and the three looks of wonder on the faces of the men as they observe Christ.
Perhaps it is because it was so easy for me to see Christ in them when I first met them—joyful, kind, and exuberant in their faith. I think, in that instance, they allowed me to be like the man to Christ’s left. Look at him and you see that he clearly sees something impressive, but he’s slow on the uptake (as I assuredly was and still am). Then, in watching them become brides I have been more like the man to Christ’s right. I beheld more than I ever had, and was startled into great reaction.
But with my own bride, and particularly in seeing her motherhood, the change in me has been like that of the final man—the one whose face can barely be seen. He is about to spring from his chair, knocking it from the table, prepared to spring towards Christ. If I thought I saw the face of Christ in my bride ere we were even courting, how much better I’ve come to know that face as it has become intimate and familiar to me.
If this reflection were to go on for many more pages, I think that I would take time to reflect upon the strangeness that I think we (Americans) have an easier time of seeing what we believe to be the face of Christ in perfect strangers than those that we spend all our time with. Maybe it’s the sanctimoniousness of my own self, but I think I, at least, make a more conscious effort of finding the good in people unknown to me. This is not to say that I do not know to good of those people immediately around me, but isn’t it true that I know their faults the more intimately, too?
And so, I think that this is the gift of the Caravaggio and of these remarkable women whom I have had the gift to know: they reflect the stages of seeing the other, of the stages of encounter, and encourage me to reflect more honestly about what it is to view the world at a Christian ought. Beholding—not at once, but gradually and with growing excitement—the splendor of Christ and His ordered creation.
Blaise A. Hockel, Headmaster