Save the Date: JPIIHS Spring Picnic May 6!
Mark the date in your calendars for our next community event, the JPIIHS Spring Picnic on May 6! Details and tickets forthcoming- can’t wait to see you there!
Denver’s Archbishop Visits JPIIHS!
It was an immense honor to have Archbishop Aquila join us in our daily enterprises in February, both for his leadership and for the fact that, were it not for him, we should not exist as a school. I want to take just a moment to voice that gratitude again– we are incredibly humbled and thankful for the Archbishop’s presence in our diocese and in our school!
The Archbishop mentioned during his visit how impressed and pleased he was with the work we are doing here, and he was very active in his encouragement that people should come and sit in on classes to see what we do here. I was struck by this– the Archbishop did what we always suggest to folks; we invite people to come and see what we are doing so that they can really get a feel for what we want our students to get out of life. The Archbishop came, he saw, and he liked it. What a wonderful thing for us to take into our hearts.
Blaise A. Hockel, Headmaster
Wednesdays at JPIIHS: Labs and Electives!
Here at JPIIHS, Wednesdays are slightly different schedules for the students. Our students get to participate in science labs, seminars, and chosen electives during the longer periods on this day. Check out the pictures below from our labs and electives- we are so grateful for all our donors and community members that make these classes possible!
Student Article: Fellowship During Lent
Charlie G., Freshman
Throughout Lent, many Catholics do a penance. It is almost second nature to choose something to give up from Ash Wednesday until Easter. Due to it being so natural, we often overlook the reason why we give something up. Instead of being meaningful, it is merely something we check off our list. There might be a couple of times we have to fight off the desire for these things, but other than that, it is forgotten. When Lenten penance is done like this, it might as well not be done at all. The beauty of giving something up for Lent is that it is offered up to God and allows us to grow in faith. When it is forgotten, it achieves none of these things.
The wonderful thing about being in a Catholic environment during Lent is that the different sacrifices made for Lent, which are sometimes seemingly trivial, are consistently brought to the forefront of our minds. We are reminded both how and why we practice mortification or other forms of penance. When penance is done with this proper understanding, it is able to serve its purpose to purify us and allow us to grow closer to God. Our penances, both the ones we choose to do and the ones required by the Church, are able to truly help our spiritual lives grow when done properly.
Here at Saint John Paul II High School we are given an additional avenue to engage in penitential acts. We have the ability to participate in either the Exodus 90 for men or the Fiat 90 for women. The programs begin before and continue through Lent. Each of these programs provide the opportunity for spiritual growth. Additionally, these programs provide an added benefit of fellowship with people holding each other accountable and lifting each other up. Those who participate in these programs especially succeed at spiritual growth during the season of Lent as they require intense devotion. The students who participate don’t do it because it’s particularly fun, they do it because they desire to grow in faith. Their attitudes spread to the rest of the school and serve to encourage all the people who study or work in the building to succeed in and benefit from their Lenten offerings.
I have benefited greatly by being surrounded by people who are actively seeking the Lord during Lent. I still go through dry times during Lent where I see my sacrifices as futile and as something to just “check off my list”, but those times are short lived. Here at JPII High School, I am privileged to have reminders of Jesus’ sacrifice for us and that reminder helps bring meaning back to my own small sacrifices during this Lenten season. For that, I am very thankful.
Teacher Article: The Importance of Posture
Ms. Clare Glaser, Humanities Instructor
I have been teaching the sophomore class about feudalism recently, both its more formal occurrences, and the far parts of life it affected. One thing I was particularly excited to teach them was the ceremony establishing two people as lord and vassal to each other. The words, gestures, and other aspects of the ceremony were often prescribed and formalized. Now the traditional gesture of the man making himself the vassal was kneeling down, with his hands pressed together in front of him, before the man he wished to make his lord. This might ring a bell as being our traditional pose for prayer in the West, seen in church (at least by the altar servers!), and on nearly every holy card that shows a figure praying. This can add incredible depth to the understanding of this pose as we pray, because its meaning is no longer vague, unrooted “tradition” or “history”, but it now stands in a specific history of meaning, with connotations of requesting a specific relationship. We are promising fidelity to God, asking to “be his man” (in the words of the infeudation ceremony) and in turn asking for his protection. We are accepting that this will be the relationship by which we define ourselves, that our honor will come from serving him well, and that we can give him honor when we do right by him.
We know the greatest commandment to be “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mk 12:30) An awareness of this cultural history can assist in this total direction of self toward God. But this specific cultural history is not the only one in the Church. In the Eastern Catholic tradition, standing is the historical pose of higher respect, so even during Consecration at a Liturgy, you will see Byzantine Catholics standing to express their worship. There is something about these and other such differences that add greatly to a recognizing of our humanity in how we approach God. We are rational, feeling, social and temporal beings, and we seek God with all of ourselves.