Educating for eternity

pictures of Jesuit Tampa provided by the author

Most of my life has been dedicated, one way or another, to education. My grandfather founded three elementary schools in the New Orleans area, so one way or another, I started attending Lake Castle even before I was born. My mom taught math there, and my aunt was the principal, and two other aunts and an uncle and my dad and my grandmother taught there as well. My grandfather died when I was two, but the school remains a family enterprise.

I have been a student for 27 years now—and counting. Having taken three years off after completing my undergraduate studies at the University of Dallas, thinking then that I was done with my schooling, I somehow embarked on graduate studies which show no sign of letting up.

Likewise, I have been a teacher for seven years now. Here, no doubt, my credentials will in the eyes of certain parties begin to fray. For I teach at Jesuit High School in New Orleans, the same school where I, with my father and uncles and grandfather, was educated. Already I can hear the cries—Jesuit? Begone with you, heretic! Out upon your sophistry!

Let me make clear that I offer hear no wholesale apology for every action of every member of the Society of Jesus. Yet I confess that when I first left New Orleans for the wider Catholic world, I was astonished by the vitriol with which I heard the Jesuits discussed—not simply the miscreants but the entire order. For the Jesuits I knew as a child, and those I know now, remain among the finest examples of orthodoxy, of intellect, of sheer holiness, which it has been my privilege to meet in this life. And though I have known Jesuits who fit the stereotypes, I have known more who have constantly bolstered my faith, who have turned to me with the eyes of Christ and said “follow me” in such a way that I heard and was changed and went.

It has been in the context of Jesuit education that I have known these great priests, and while I have spent a combined ten years as student and teacher at Jesuit New Orleans, I wish here rather to draw attention to Jesuit Tampa, where I spent a year and which I would set against any educational institution in America for its power to call men to conversion.

The numbers speak for themselves. Over the past several years, under the leadership of Fr. Richard Hermes, SJ, and campus minister Jimmy Mitchell, Jesuit Tampa has called more than twenty hitherto unconvicted students per year to Baptism or, for those already baptized, to renewed acceptance of the faith and embrace of the sacraments. These students are on fire for Christ, and they in turn call their brothers to conversion. Several of those students who came to the faith when I taught in Tampa have since followed calls to the priesthood.

How is Jesuit Tampa calling so many students to conversion? While we could point to countless factors, two bear special reflection: first, the rooting of all school activities in the liturgy, and second, the ardent cultivation of beauty.

Jesuit Tampa makes it clear that every part of its activity is ordered to one thing: forming saints. The campus centers around an astonishingly beautiful chapel dedicated in 2018. Rising above the rest of campus, the chapel serves as a prominent local landmark. And the chapel is the focal point of life at Jesuit. Every school day (save Thursdays) begins in the chapel, where students gather for convocation. Mass is celebrated twice daily, before school and at lunch. Confessions are heard every morning. First Fridays begin with twenty minutes of all-school adoration, with Theology classes spending their periods in adoration that day as well. Fr. Hermes would often celebrate impromptu Masses at the end of the school day, too, to honor particular saints. The place is as saturated in the sacraments as it is in sunshine.

All of this was done with style and with an air of intense celebration heightened by the immense beauty of the place. The chapel itself is decorated with paintings and sculptures by Raul Berzosa and Cody Swanson, artists who are constantly reminding the Church that her artistic greatness is not simply a thing of the past but is a living patrimony. Masses there are celebrated with ample

Latin, with incense, with gold, with hosts of servers. The music of organ and trumpet, of choral voices raised in exquisite harmony, rises from the loft to lift the heads of even the drowsiest boys in stupefied wonder. And I was struck at every Mass by the way in which every boy turned to meet the procession as though at a wedding, as though welcoming Christ into Jerusalem.

The result is conversion, the turning of boys surrounded by an affluent and hedonist culture to the path of Christ, the formation of souls for eternity.

While the way for me and my family has brought us home to New Orleans, my year in Tampa was an education in education, a reminder that the enterprise of schooling is not for anything—for grades or college acceptances or scholarships or careers—except insofar as those things form part of the work of salvation. We educate so that our students can know, love, and serve God, and so be happy with him forever. As we seek for ways to transform systems of education around us, we can recall with confidence that in the Paschal Mystery, Christ has revealed to us all that is needful for education—an encounter with Him. Let us lead students to that Paschal sacrifice today.