Setting the Tone

Setting the Tone

 

This summer I had the opportunity—privilege really—to accompany four of our students to Boston College (BC) as they participated in BC’s Ever to Excel program. The initiative, rooted in the Spiritual Exercises, seeks to “guide the participants in deepening their faith, discovering their gifts, and gaining valuable tools for personal discernment.” It was a phenomenal experience and made me appreciate, and even come to love, Boston College despite the fact that they were a college rival!

As the program draws students from around the world, I had an opportunity to meet and speak with teachers and school administrators from Quebec, Poland, and Japan, sharing “war stories” about life in the classroom and the challenges of forming young people in the digital (and increasingly secular) age.

Over dinner one evening I sat next to David O’Sullivan, Principal of our Jesuit school—Coláiste Iognáid (Ignatius College)—in Galway, Ireland. Asked what brought him and his students to the program, he answered “As principal, I am the faith leader of the school. I want to develop student-leaders to help build its faith-life and thought this would be a good place to help do that.”

His was an excellent answer, and with it he struck me as being an undoubtedly good administrator. First, he sought to empower young people to take a role in their (and others’) faith development, and second (and more importantly), he described himself as “the faith-leader” of the school.

He gave language to what I have seen our administration, in both the Principal’s and President’s offices, doing over the length of my time at Saint Ignatius: acting as faith-leaders of our community.

It is no secret that our school has been a leader in mission-driven education among Jesuit schools in the United States. Our person-centered approach to forming our young men comes from developing our boys intellectually and physically, but most importantly, spiritually. We have come to see that as important as a solid, rigorous curriculum and first-rate athletic and arts programs are in building young men, we will have failed them if we have not helped them grow in their relationships with God. As such we have intuitively internalized the thought of the Duke of Wellington (and later C.S. Lewis) who observed that “[if you] educate men without religion…you make them but clever devils.”

We seek to make saints.

All of this came together as I sat at our first faculty meeting and our president, Fr. Ray Guiao, S.J.,’82, unveiled our school theme for the year, a passage from the book of the prophet, Micah: 

 

You have been told, O mortal, what is good,

and what the LORD requires of you:

Only to do justice and to love goodness,

And to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)

This custom of proposing a theme for each academic year is one that Principal Dr. Anthony Fior, ’01 instituted when he stepped into his role. It is a way of setting the tone for the year and for providing a framework around which all of our endeavors—academic, social, athletic, artistic, and spiritual—can be built.  

Dr. Fior has reflected on the theme in a letter to faculty and parents that my words here cannot possibly capture. Suffice it to say that when the boys return next week, they will be challenged to live more justly: in their personal interactions with each other and in other aspects of their daily lives--but also as outlined in our school strategic plan, Vision ‘30:

 

to regularly engage in experiences—in the classroom and through extracurriculars—that promote understanding and analysis of social justice issues and generate paths to action that emerge from their learning (emphasis mine).

Moreover, living in a world that tends to focus on the ugly and the brutal, they (and their teachers) will seek to find through their studies the transcendentals—truth, beauty, and most of all, goodness—and discover ways to better live them. In humility, recognizing that true humility is seeing ourselves as we truly are: good and bad, strong and weak. In need of redemption.

All of this while “walking” with our good and loving God who “directs their steps” (Proverbs, 16:9).

Having established the year’s theme, Principal Fior went on to outline the specific, practical goals for the 2026-27 school year. Foremost (and he emphasized in his talk that this would ALWAYS remain foremost as an annual goal for the school) was that we will be working “[t]o help souls by inviting students to come to know, to love, and to serve Jesus.” In channelling here the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and the philosophy of our beloved former president, Father Robert J. Welsh, S.J., ’54, Fior reminds our community that Saint Ignatius High School is an apostolate of the Society of Jesus and as such it is primarily in the business of helping souls.

Every class, every extra-curricular activity, every sport serves that purpose and needs to help our boys “do justice, love goodness, and walk humbly with God.” 

For His greater glory.

This is what Saint Ignatius will be about this year, in large part because our administration sees themselves as O’Sullivan did: as the faith-leaders of the school. And that while leadership means doing the paperwork, and going to meetings, and putting out the fires that pop up in the life of any institution, it also means having vision.

Setting the tone.

A.M.D.G./B.V.M.H.