Upcoming New Student Events &
2023-2024 Application Now Open!
St. John Paul II High School is a special place. We invite you to come and get to know us this month in honor of St. John Paul II, whose feast day is in October!
8th Grade Prospective Family Night This Tuesday!: Current 8th graders and their families are invited to join us for an information evening on Tuesday, October 18th at 6:30pm in Room 102 at Our Lady of the Valley to meet our Headmaster and our teachers, as well as discover the unique educational and extra-curricular opportunities available to future JPIIHS students. Please RSVP to this special event by emailing Mrs. Ward at eward@jpiihs.com.
JPIIHS Open House: Come see what life is like at St. John Paul II High School! Join us on Saturday, October 29 from 10:00am-2:00pm at Our Lady of the Valley to encounter our students, teachers, and facility. Go on a guided tour, check out our curriculum in action, and chat with the Director of Events and Recruitment and our Headmaster about what your future at JPIIHS could look like. You won’t want to miss this opportunity!
SY 2023-2024 Application: We are so excited to announce that our new student applications for the 2023-2024 school year are now open! Click the link below to apply.
Adventure Gala 2022: Thank You!
Thank you so much to all those who attended and donated to our first ever Adventure Gala to benefit St. John Paul II High School.
For a first-time event we had an exceptional turnout of 210 guests. Together we raised over $260,000 during the course of the evening. What an amazing act of generosity from you all! Your impact on Northern Colorado’s Catholic High School will be a lasting effect on generations to come. We are so thankful for all of our volunteers and sponsors who made this night possible.
We look forward to seeing you at future events and keeping in touch about the exciting growth of our school.
JPIIHS Fall Festival 2022
On October 2nd, 2022, we had our second annual Fall Festival! Thank you to all our participants who braved the uncertain weather to join us for our carnival, dinner, and barn dance! We love seeing our community come out for events like this and are very excited to host more in the future.
Student Article: Our Patron Saint
Sophia G., Sophomore
St. John Paul II was a charismatic man who moved the world greatly. His words have
been engraved into all our minds and have changed history.
St. John Paul II led many World Youth Days, one of which my mother was able to attend in 1985. He also traveled to many countries during his lifetime. On one of his many trips to the United States, he visited Colorado. His walking stick remains as a relic at the St. Catherine stone church on the front range, and I was even able to see it in person recently when my family visited. During his 26-year papacy, St. John Paul II was able to write 14 Papal Encyclicals, helping many Catholics on their walk of faith. Even now, 17 years after his death, his teachings are still relevant.
One of his quotes that truly impacts my life is “The future starts today, not tomorrow.” This quote not only motivates me in school, but also in my personal relationships. It reminds me that every moment we have here is useful in serving God in whatever time of our life that we are in. I feel very blessed that I get to attend this beautiful school named after him and strive to grow in my faith and knowledge here.
Teacher Article: Vessels Made Worthy of the Journey
Mr. Wesley Pace, Math Instructor
The pithy Latin statement de gustibus non est disputandum seems to be the refrain of our times. In our native vernacular this motto simply means that one should not quibble over matters of taste—literally “there is no disputing about matters of taste”. Mustard on soft-pretzels satisfies my palate, while you might prefer cheese or plain salt on yours. Fair enough, but what about matters of moral consequence? Are there individual preferences that determine the right course of action in any particular situation, or are there existing, immutable moral principles left as guideposts for our pilgrimage along the way of virtue? To the latter statement, the Christian apologist C.S. Lewis responds in the affirmative with a three-part analogy describing the Christian journey toward our heavenly homeland.
In Mere Christianity Lewis speaks about a fleet of ships and its journey toward a specified destination (i.e., Heaven). If the ships are always colliding with one another or lacking a unified nautical mission, they are bound to damage their counterparts, and thus, deviate from their divinely inspired purpose. In the Gospel of Mark, a scribe asks our Lord, “Which [is] the first commandment of all?”—that is, which commandment carries the most weight. Jesus exhorts his listeners with a summary of the Shema—the supreme Jewish profession of faith—followed by a corollary order to “love thy neighbor as thyself” (Mk. 12:28-34). Of course, in Lewis’ analogy the ships represent our neighbors and our treatment thereof. If our cupidity, obstinance, or domineering traits overcome our commitment to love our neighbors as ourselves, we will have rejected this divine rule in favor of self-interest. In other words, the fleet of ships will suffer the ramifications of disordered helmsmanship, not to mention the resulting damage brought about by battering of bows.
Implicit in this command is the part about loving oneself. Love of oneself does not preclude loving one’s neighbor. In fact, loving oneself empowers us to share the beneficence that our Lord has so generously and gratuitously bestowed on us. C.S. Lewis describes the importance of each vessel being seaworthy—that is, that we are obliged to preserve our interior hearts according to the divine law of Love. Developing healthy practices of prayer, consistent habits of scriptural and catechetical reading, along with frequent and worthy reception of the holy sacraments disposes us to overcome our negative inclinations. By following this recipe we will have responded well to the inverse of the golden rule—we will not have done to others as we would not want done unto ourselves because we will have meditated deeply on personal stewardship and acted with proper prudence in these matters. But an absence of disorder does not mean fulfillment of virtue. An actualization of virtue requires a complete turning toward the Good, the True, and the Beautiful—a return to our Maker so as to become a gift to our neighbor.
C.S. Lewis completes his ship analogy with a description of “the relations between man and the power that made him”MC. One may suppose that what is done to one’s own vessel is of little consequence so long as it does not negatively affect another. The problem with this stance is that we are not our own—we belong to “the power that made” us. St. Paul’s first Epistle to the Corinthians clarifies this as “Or know you not, that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, whom you have from God; and you are not your own? For you are bought with a great price. Glorify and bear God in your body” (1 Cor 6: 19-20). Each of us is called to become mature, intentional disciples of Christ—in short, to become saints. “Often in today’s world,” states St. John Paul II, “which is dominated by secular culture that presupposes models of life without God, the faith of the many is greatly tested and often suffocated and put out. Therefore there is an urgent need for a strong testimony and a Christian formation that is solid and deep. What a great need there is today for mature Christian personalities who are aware of their baptismal identity, of their call and their mission in the Church and in the world” (L’Osservatore Romano). The individuals invested in JPIIHS (e.g., parents, students, religious, faculty, donors, etc.) are dedicated to making this goal a reality. That is, providing a “solid and deep” formation in the Catholic Faith ensures that our graduates will become seaworthy—many of them will be the faithful leaders, parents, and religious that spread the Faith and keep our Catholic traditions alive.
A strong Catholic formation at JPIIHS is evident in the way students conduct themselves. They show this in their daily participation in the Mass, by becoming acquainted with the great minds that have preceded them (e.g., Athanasius, Homer, Dostoyevsky, Euclid, etc.), and by pursuing mastery in different subject matters. Students temper this spiritual and academic rigor with well-chosen leisure activities. Altogether, they are growing in virtue through practice and are able to do so through the sanctifying grace provided by our Lord. For it is in fulfilling the positive golden rule—“do unto others . . . ”—that we become doers of the Word and not merely hearers.
There may not be serious concern over matters of taste, but there certainly is a clear distinction between giving oneself to Christ’s directives or not. Let us continue to follow our Lord’s plan for St. John Paul II High School. Let us bring Christ to the world, and the world to Christ. Christum mundo, Christo mundum. God Love You.
From the Headmaster’s Desk: Why I Am Not Allowed To Hate John Steinbeck
I think the greatest disservice that was ever done unto me by my high school education was that it made me believe that I hated John Steinbeck. It gave me The Pearl and Of Mice and Men and The Tortilla Flat and insisted that Steinbeck’s commentary— a gospel of the gall, a recital of rancor and resentment—was beautiful and true, and that every high school student needed to read it so that they could put their pitiful suffering in perspective. At least, that’s what I had to endure for three years.
I didn’t grow to hate literature because I read Hemmingway and Lewis, Whitman and Hughes, and I found some nourishment there. Then I read Shakespeare and Homer and I found revitalization—the magic inherent in words that allows for the turning of the souls of men. They made me hungry and gave me appetite for even more— for Dostoyevsky, Doyle, Hugo, Hurston, Percy, Poe, Orwell and O’Connor—and when I got to Kafka and Vonnegut and decided I had bit off more than I could chew, I circled back for Twain and Christie for a dose of the elevated and banal all crammed together.
But Steinbeck… I could never accept him. He did something like Fitzgerald or Waugh that I couldn’t stomach—he had started into the belly of some beast (that slouching sphinx of eternity) and saw the heart of a man. What’s more, it was a man that I hated. It wasn’t like reading so many other authors. Achebe made man great or ghastly. Austen aired humanity in all its silly sipidness, but still let me love them in spite of their absurdity. But Steinbeck… Here he made men that I loved and hated, that I identified with and detested. He wrote of people as they truly are. And my high school English
teachers who were convinced that mankind was nothing but dregs took the harshest and worst examples that Steinbeck had cooked up and thrust them down my throat until I was choking on the bitter vision of humanity that they had concocted on their own and refused to sugar over. I don’t like sweets all that much, so I didn’t mind that, but I do like people and so I was angry at an author who refused to see any goodness in humanity. I was desperately wrong.
Eventually I learned that my wife-to-be and father-in-law loved Steinbeck. So did my mother (but I had less incentive to believe her take on authors, as I was already related to her). They would rave to me about what he saw in the world and in the hearts of men, and I would try to avoid the topic like one who’s had food poisoning avoids the smell of strong fish. Then I took a teaching job and was made to teach The Grapes of Wrath. My wife and father-in-law exchanged cryptic, knowing looks that I remember irked me. But they were, as they almost always are, right. My entire perspective shifted from a single text.
Steinbeck said a number of things that hit me to my core in The Grapes of Wrath. Here’s some of what he said:
- “How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can’t scare him—he has known a fear beyond all others.”
- “It was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.”
- “If you’re in trouble or hurt or need—go to poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help—the only ones.”
Could it be that I was wrong about this man? I read on to discover that I had been so in error that I had turned my nose up at perhaps the richest writer America can claim (perhaps aside from my beloved O’Connor, that it). I read Travels with Charley this summer (or, most of it; I plan to finish this month), and I am going through East of Eden now. And what I have realized, and continue to, is this: The most unkind thing you can do to a man is to take a beautiful thing, contort it beyond recognition, and pass it
off as the real thing; he’ll come to believe you after a while, and the amount of time that he’ll spend hating what he should love will haunt him after he finally, inevitably, sees things as they are.
Blaise A. Hockel, Headmaster