Attention, Class of 2027!
Applications for SY 2023-2024 are STILL OPEN!
Come see the difference a Catholic high school education can make!
8th graders, we want to welcome you to our school. Schedule a shadow day with us by filling out the form on our website here.
Applications are open until March 20, 2023! Apply now online here.
Student Life Snapshot: House More’s Feast
On Thursday, February 9, House Thomas More celebrated their patron’s birthday/feast day with a celebration and House competition. The teacher heads of House More planned a scavenger hunt with minute-to-win-it games along the way. House More claimed victory, as is fitting for their day of celebration. Congratulations!
Student Article: Hearing God’s Voice: Not Just for the Ancients
Averi U., Junior
When we think of hearing God’s voice it typically comes in one of three ways. One, a big, booming voice from an Old Man in the clouds, giving us the Ten Commandments and the laws. Another possibility is through some sort of prophecy telling you exactly what to do in light of your dilemma, or maybe through intense prayer that can only be reached by the Saints. All in all, these circumstances seem unattainable and only for those in far off places and times, but I can attest to the certainty that God is still speaking to us even now.
When I was in eighth grade, like every other middle schooler, I wanted to go to high school with all my friends; which meant only big public schools. But my mom had heard that there was a Catholic high school opening, the year that I was going to be a freshman. I was still set on going to the public school with my friends, but I felt something calling me despite initial hesitance. So my family and I started a 54-Day Rosary Novena. We prayed not that I would even go to a specific school, but only that we would be able to hear God’s voice and He would put me where I needed to be. This is when things started falling into place. The first announcement that we heard was that JPIIHS was committed to keeping tuition affordable, which took away the fear of an unattainably high tuition. Even though we were apprehensive about the classical element of the school, through prayer and several good explanatory talks, we eventually came to the conclusion that the classical element would actually be really great for me. Then the final assurance that I was meant to go to this school was the fact that the tuition was provided for the first year, thanks to some very generous donors. This took away one of the major stresses being the financial situation, and it was the assurance needed that God was really calling me to this school. I was at peace where before I felt scared when I would think about starting high school at a public school. All these logistical miracles, combined with my interior peace, are how I heard God speak to me. Even though it wasn’t the big booming voice of old, this process helped me to be able to hear His voice and recognize it elsewhere.
After reflecting on these sequences of events, I realized how clearly God was speaking to me in my life and I now am able to hear his voice more clearly in every aspect of my life. This school helps me to continuously hear and understand God’s word and voice through everything we do. Namely, Mass, theology class, the Christ centered community, and the integration of the faith into every class. St. John Paul II High School presents me everyday with opportunities to hear God’s voice and apply it to every aspect of my life.
Teacher Article: The Value of a Catholic Education
Mr. Josiah Engblom, Science Instructor
What is the value of a Catholic Education? Why do we put this time and effort, money and resources into an education in a country that offers free public education to all its citizens? And why do we, teachers, bother with this project?
I continually remind our students that being a Catholic is the hard way to live your life. Jesus leaves no doubt in our minds in telling us that we will have no shortage of persecution, suffering, and hard times in choosing to follow Him. Catholic schools are charged with equipping students to face this hostile world through a strengthening of their faith by engagement with the challenging ideas of science, religion, history, literature, and art. The question is, will you continue to live these hard, uncomfortable truths or fall away after you are finished?
I grew up in an Evangelical church and attended the local public school, and so have no experience as a student of the value of a Catholic education. So I asked. I asked a group of upperclassmen the value they see in a Catholic education and got these responses:
“Catholic education will help shape me as a person for years to come.”
“Having teachers that do care and try to understand me has definitely changed me and the way I think.”
“This is the only curriculum in which you can learn the whole truth instead of just parts.”
“ It provides a community where your faith can grow with the support from everyone around you”
“I know my faith deep enough to see it working throughout my life, and I’m fortunate to now be so in tune with it as the end of my ‘formative high school years.’”
Public school taught me the separation of the world of Faith and Reason, and my life supported this idea. In contrast, students at JPIIHS are challenged, confronted, and hopefully sharpened in their answers for how their Faith enlightens their understanding, their Reason. And yet, the question remains: will you continue to choose this difficult way to live a life? We can teach an engagement with the challenging ideas that shape our culture and faith: who is God? Who is Jesus? What do we make of the Big Bang? What do we think about evolution? But will that knowledge make the important journey from their heads into their hearts?
With so many of our young people abandoning their faith, particularly in college, the value provided by a Catholic education has never been more urgently needed. The statistics do not make for enjoyable reading; for every 1 person entering the church, another 6 head out. As the Science instructor, I feel acutely aware that one of the leading reasons given for leaving is the so-called incompatibility of Faith and Reason, or Religion and Science. Given all the technological achievements and amazing discoveries in Science, isn’t belief irrelevant?
Continuing to ask these good questions leads us to the Good Himself. This is the Good News that has changed your life and the Good News that has changed my life. Bishop Fulton Sheen, in commenting on the Wise Men returning to their Eastern lands via a different route, remarks that, “of course they did, for no one upon encountering Christ could simply return to his former life; they have been substantially and forever changed.”
I took great encouragement from the same students’ response when directly asked whether they will leave the Catholic Faith after they leave high school. They responded, “No, we can’t now. Knowing what we know and encountering the Truth like we have, we can’t leave.” Yes, this is the hard way to live your life. The challenge to live as a faithful Catholic in this world has never been more difficult. They will still need help and guidance, forgiveness and grace to make it through, but yes, these students, armed with faith and knowledge, will be ready for that challenge..
So thank you. For whatever your role in supporting the Mission here at St. John Paul II HS or in support of Catholic Schools in general, we thank you. Thank you for trusting us with your child’s education, for giving of your time and tuition dollars and prayers for this important mission of preparing our next generation with the tools, the courage, and wisdom to boldly proclaim the gospel.
Aided by His grace, may the Gates of Hell not prevail against our efforts. And may His Kingdom Come and His Will be done, beginning right here in the small slice of the Earth we have been given. God Bless our Catholic schools!
From the Headmaster’s Desk: The Nature of Prophecy
Of the prophets of the ancient world, there is probably no seer stranger than the Sacred Chickens of Rome. Unlike Daniel or Ezekiel who were visited by God and given insight to the hearts of men and their relationship to heaven, the chickens had the uncanny ability to predict when the Romans were going to win a naval battle. The chickens would be let out of their coops aboard the sea-faring vessels, and if the chickens strut around the deck pecking at the grain scattered about for them, it meant a Roman victory. Famously, during the first Punic Wars, Publius Claudius Pulcher opened the coop of the sacred chickens and proffered them grain to secure their victory, but the chickens refused to leave their roost. In a fit of rage, Pulcher lifted the coop and pitched it overboard saying, “If they are not hungry, perhaps they are thirsty”. The resulting battle was one of the worst losses Rome would have, not because the Carthaginians defeated them, empowered by the holy hens, but because of a storm that blew in and destroyed the Roman fleet.
This is reminiscent in some way of the defeat of the Spanish Armada at the hand of Queen Elizabeth in 1588. Elizabeth delivered her speech to the troops at Tilbury, proclaiming that God would aid them in their fight, and sure enough a storm defeated approximately 15,000 war-bound Spaniards before they ever landed on Elizabeth’s soil. I do not mean to make light of Elizabeth—she is my favourite queen—and I certainly don’t meant to balk at the chickens’ insight. But my soft suggestion would be that they don’t have a divine insight so much as they have a shrewd one.
The prophets of past ages are many and mysterious. I do not mean only those of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and those holy prophets in the Old Testament, by I also mean the blind seer Tiresias or the gifted Telemachus. There were the Oracles of Delphi and the Sibylline Oracles. Today, we might count Pope Paul VI and Pope St. John Paul II as prophetic in that they had some great foresight of the world to come. But what is the difference between Habakkuk and those oracles of Hellas? The oracle sees clearly and the prophet sees God.
To see the way that JPII and Paul VI saw the world, it is entirely possible that they had the accuracy of their commentary because they were afforded to see through the eyes of God rather than merely making human predictions. On the part of the chickens, I do not think we should rely on the paltry power of poultry, but that we can rely on the fact that birds know when a storm is blowing in. I think that, with Humane Vitae and the theology of the body, we have something closer to what Elizabeth did rather than what Hosea went through. Both popes knew the hearts of the people, and were able to surmise the logical outcomes of following the destructive paths that they were set upon.
So, too, I think it is important that our students be given this kind of insight—it is stronger than the old adage about knowing history so we do not repeat it, but better we are able to anticipate and prepare for the future. Humanity wishes for goodness—Aristotle is not wrong—and we are, all of us, frequently convinced that we have a clearer sight of the good than those around us. However, if we can take this innate desire, if we can combine it with empathy, and if we can learn to be discerning in our ideas applying just a touch of forethought rather than the mythical foresight, we can better prepare ourselves for the pangs that the future holds, instead being eager to reap the harvest that we’ve helped prepare.
For now, as we wait for the harvest, I will watch and attempt to, as my Mother does, take all these things into my heart and ponder—consider and contemplate—upon the wonder before us. It takes no prophet to know that the goodness and generosity of God is at work in the hearts of us all, and I am deeply grateful for being afforded the chance to see it.
Blaise A. Hockel, Headmaster