Message From the President

Magnificently Human

This was a prologue to the Mass of the Holy Spirit

September 18, 2026

There is a verse in Luke’s Gospel about Jesus as a young man that I thought about this summer: “The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.” When Luke wrote those words, obviously, he was thinking about Jesus. When I read them over the summer, I thought about you—our Prep students.

You are growing. You are becoming stronger. You are learning. You are figuring out who you are, what you believe, what kind of friend you want to be, and eventually what kind of man you want to become. And God’s grace is at work in you too, even now, right now, even as you are still becoming. That is what this whole Prep experience is about.

And it connects directly to our theme this year: Magnificently Human.

That does not mean flawless. It does not mean having everything figured out or getting everything right. It does not mean being finished. In fact, I think it means the opposite.

All of us, we are unfinished. We struggle. We worry. We disappoint people. We disappoint ourselves. We get things wrong. And somehow, in the middle of all of that, we remain extraordinarily capable of astonishing goodness. We love. We forgive. We sacrifice. We show up. We begin again. That is human. Magnificently human.

Saint Ignatius asks us, in the Spiritual Exercises, to imagine God looking upon the whole world—all of it. People at peace and at war. Weeping and laughing. Healthy, sick, being born, dying. The beauty and the suffering. The love. The mess. And God chooses to enter it. God did not save humanity by avoiding humanity. God became human in Jesus.

To be magnificently human, then, is not to escape our humanity. It is to allow God to work through it—to become more fully the person God created us and calls us to be. And that is true whether you are a 14-year-old freshman or an 18-year-old senior or a 52-year-old alum. We are all still becoming, all still learning who we are, all still trying to get better at being ourselves tomorrow than we were yesterday.

So maybe this year we take some to pray about that: Who is God calling us to be? What is my “not yet”—the part of me God is still forming?

Maybe it is deeper faith. More courage to love. More humility to learn or forgive. Maybe it is being better at asking for help, saying “I can’t do this yet.” Maybe it is working, studying, just a little bit harder. Maybe it is becoming more generous in being a man or woman for and with others. Maybe, most likely, it is something only you and God know. But I ask you to think about that.

And as we move forward, thinking about our not yet, knowing how we live in the now makes it happen. How we work; how we pray; how we lead; how we love.

If we are going to cooperate with the grace of God already at work in us, then we have to pay attention—to God’s whisper, to what is happening within us, and especially to the person standing in front of us. That kind of attention changes how we see every person. How you pay attention to the person in front of you changes the culture of this school. I hope you say, when you see someone: I am incapable of treating you as invisible. Remember, every person in front of you has a dignity that does not have to be earned and cannot be taken away. That is at the heart of our Jesuit mission.

This year, we have added language to the mission statement of Saint Peter’s Prep. It is not really new. We are simply naming more clearly what Prep has been doing for 154 years: forming boys into young men by developing their minds, hearts, souls, bodies, and characters, so that they become men for and with others.

We are trying to form young men whose intelligence is matched by conscience, whose ambition is matched by generosity, whose confidence is matched by humility. Young men who can compete without losing compassion. Who can disagree without hating. Who can fail without believing they are failures. Who can lead without needing to dominate. Young men who can wonder. Young men who can love courageously. Young men who can give themselves away for something larger than themselves—all for the greater glory of God.

Lofty? Idealistic? Yes. But where would we be if didn’t try to do lofty things?

As we begin this school year and ask the Holy Spirit to guide us, maybe our prayer is simple: Help us grow. Fill us with wisdom. Give us courage. Inspire us to love one another…so that we can become more fully human by becoming more fully who God created us to be.

We are unfinished. We are imperfect. We are still becoming. But fully alive and Magnificently Human.

Sub Umbra Petri,