Adapted from a reflection at the All Saints’ Day Mass, November 1, 2023.
Dear Saint Peter’s Prep Family,
I love you, and I love our Good Company.
As you know, the theme of our year is In Good Company. I hope by now you have experienced this good company, really felt it in your hearts–in your classrooms, on the playing field, at the lunch table, and at your friend’s house on the weekends. I also hope that you have played a role in creating this good company just by the way you treat people, just by the giving your very best each day. Please know how grateful I am for you. And when I say you, this includes students, but also faculty and staff, administrators, and coaches. Good company does not happen by accident. It is truly you who bring it alive. And people are noticing. I’ll get back to that in a second.
Just because we are in good company does not mean that all things are going well, that all things are always joyful, that we are always relaxed, that we never mess up, that we are not sometimes anxious or sad or scared or even angry. But hopefully in this good company, we feel a shared sense of celebration on our very best days, and a sense of support on our worst days. We try as best we can to see things with clear eyes and full hearts, even though that’s pretty hard sometimes.
So what does this have to do with All Saints’ Day? What I want to talk to you about very briefly is the tension, for me, of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ day being right next to each other on the calendar.
All Saints’ Day—celebrating saints in heaven and maybe even on earth…but also All Souls’ Day…a day where we commemorate the dead and pray for them. These days are back to back, for me, always seemed strange…All Saints—thinking about these great saints, feeling joyful—and All Souls, thinking about the people who have passed in our lives. I certainly think about my mom and my dad.
In one sense, you put those days together, and what a range of emotions. Maybe we put those days together, and it’s an explosion of emotions that form this tapestry of experiences and memories. Isn’t that Saint Peter’s Prep? Not perfect, but so much greatness; lots of struggles, yet so extraordinary.
For example:
The Model UN Team, led by Ms. McElroy, winning thirteen awards at the south Jersey Model UN conference, the most ever. That’s tremendous…and then there’s the freshman still struggling to fit in, or maybe the senior who is battling depression…
Sixteen seniors getting recognition in the National Merit Scholarship competition…but then there are students trying their very best in school but still not living up to the expectations of their parents…
Students recognizing the wonder of God’s love and the gift of friendship on a Kairos retreat…and then we think of the sadness of burying the parent of a current teacher or the grandparent of a current student…
Soccer team and Cross Country winning county championships and looking ahead with great confidence…and seniors losing sleep as they await college decisions and trying to imagine the rest of their lives…
We have the Ebony Club celebrating 50 years as a club that has truly worked together, together, together, and the great culture in the Browning Center of students and staff working together, together, together …and then there’s the Prep athlete, worried whether or not he is even going to make the team…
Teachers and staff dressing up for Halloween with some joy and childishness…at the same time stressing about grades getting posted or the November 1 college deadlines and working on last minute college recommendations…
It is a tapestry of experiences and memories. As a Prep family, we celebrate championships and college acceptances and friendships and doing our best, and I can’t wait to do that all year with you. But we also ask for help when we struggle and pick each other up when we fall, we pray together and mourn together. Obviously, it’s great to share our hearts when they are filled with so much joy and hope and confidence. But it’s also great to be able to share those same hearts when they are filled with sadness or anxiety or uncertainty. That’s the power of good company.
That’s what we believe, but it’s also pretty cool when we know that somebody from “the outside” believes it as well. As a Jesuit school, Prep is part of the USA East province, a network that includes places like Georgetown Prep and Fordham Prep and Xavier and Fairfield Prep among others. Last week we welcomed a representative of the province, Fr. Mario Powell, S.J. for his annual visit. He spent the day touring the school and visiting with members of our community. His final evaluation was this: He said “the school was on fire with our Jesuit mission–a joyful place that adults and students alike truly love and take much pride in.” It’s great to see a guest, especially a Jesuit—and especially one who spends much of his time visiting and getting to know Jesuit schools up and down the east coast—recognize our good company in action. I’m so proud of us.
So as we look ahead for the rest of the year, let’s do so with great confidence. Gentlemen, you’ve only got one shot at this: one year as a freshman, one year as a sophomore, one year as a junior, and certainly only one year as a senior. Don’t leave anything in the tank. Everything we’ve got, your very best everyday…so we can go confidently forward, forever forward as Marauders, knowing that as a Prep family, we celebrate, we mourn, we love, we fail, we do that together and knowing we will always win…not immediately but eventually.
Let’s go Prep!
Michael Gomez, Ed.D., ’91
President