BREAKING NEWS: St. John Paul II High School Closes on Land, Releases Phase 1 Building Plans
While JPIIHS has been open since 2020 and operating out of Our Lady of the Valley Catholic Church in Windsor, the school is now getting ready to move to its new home. The school officially closed on their land this past week!
JPIIHS has spent the past three years with the help of its dedicated faculty, its highly motivated student body and parents, and its exceptionally dedicated volunteers raising funds to build its new campus. This video shows the anticipated first of three phases expected to take place on the 44-acre campus conveniently located near the I-25 and Highway 34 corridor for the Catholic community of northern Colorado.
In the video, you’ll get a first look at the aerial view of the campus, the initial commons space, a CHSAA regulation gymnasium, SEM and liberal arts classrooms, and the chapel.
The building is scheduled to be completed for the 2025-2026 academic year, and will house our 250 student body until we move on to later phases and additional programming.
Student Spotlight: Big Wins All Around!
Seniors Gabriel B. and Vincent B. won the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Knights of Columbus college scholarship essay competition! They were presented with checks for their college tuition recently at the pancake breakfast. Way to go, seniors, and best of luck in your future endeavors!
Three of our students (senior Ashton M., junior Caleb M., and freshman Colton S.) claimed a decisive victory in their first rugby game of the season, beating the opposing team 72-0. We look forward to supporting their success for the rest of the season!
Senior Joscelynn H. recently took 5th place in the State women’s wrestling competition, and 10th place at Nationals! Congratulations and well done!
From the Headmaster’s Desk: Immersion vs. Subversion: A Consideration of Catholic Worldview
The last two months at St. John Paul II High School have been remarkably busy—we closed on our land last Friday, and so the three years’ worth of work is finally coming to fruition; the word ‘elation’, I think, is the appropriate one. But somehow even that (which has been ever present in my mind for months on end) isn’t where my mind is today.
I do not know much about the charismatic nature of prayer, nor the relationship between God and the mystic, so what I describe here is merely that of a layman’s considerations of the movement of the Spirit (and if I tread into the realm of heresy, please recall the penitent sinner).
I am of the conviction that there is a place in man that, when the Holy Spirit speaks, responds physically. It does not seem to stem the heart, the head, the stomach, or any other discernable location to which I could point. Imagine asking ‘where does it hallow?’ the way one might ask ‘where does it hurt?’, and see the silliness of the phrase. All the same, the physiological reaction to the Spirit is present when He is, and it is similar to that of standing over some great precipice and feeling the desire to reach or leap out. Neither unfamiliar nor unwelcome, the sense is most immediately recognizable, in my experience, during a particularly moving liturgy, immediately after reconciliation, or in the company of a number of men and women striving ardently for holiness and in the pursuit of good things.
It is important to note that this feeling is not one that should be uncommon, really. When we talk about trying to live a life of holiness, it means that we are trying to pursue the presence of the Holy Spirit at all times, and so be in that position where we are sensitive to his direction as the trout is to the change of the current—because of our immersion in His love, we become aware of each subtle change and prompting. And so that should change the way that we live and function in every interaction.
In Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces, the incredible personage of Ignatius J. Rielly is obsessed with the formation of and adherence to his ‘worldview’, where he manages to live every moment of his life one where he burrows deeper into a state of contentment and a vanity whose absurdity should be a profound revelation to all other vanities. The reason to look at Mr. Rielly here is because this should be the last point of reflection when we consider what it is to be moved by the Spirit rather than convincing ourselves that a gut feeling (or the closing of a pyloric valve, in Mr. Rielly’s case) is that movement so described.
We may hazard to define a Catholic worldview as one where the individual makes their choices after a deliberate and prayerful discernment about the way that they will be able to more fully habitiualize virtue in their lives and thus be more aligned to the will of the Father. That means that the worldview of the Catholic is one of subservience. So instead when we would be the directors of the world-view and become modifiers or directors instead of receivers or discoverers, then we become like the incorrigible Mr. Rielly. In another way of saying it, it is good to remember that while God can bring about goodness from any wickedness, God doesn’t perform wicked acts. And so it cannot be that by my sinning that I am doing God’s will, but that He is doing His will in spite of me or He has accounted an alteration from the good that could have been had I cooperated, but is not because of the petulance with which I acted against him.
The Catholic worldview is not like that of Mr. Rielly, who manifests his lumbering, shambling will from one passing pleasure to another, but it is that worldview that Christ so repeatedly describes in His parables—it is one of the eager and willing servant, looking to do that which the Master desires, and pleasing the Master by performing the deeds in unique and individual ways.
Blaise A. Hockel, Headmaster