Opening Ceremony 2020

Posted on September 8, 2020September 17, 2020 by admin

Good morning gentlemen and welcome back to Gregory the Great Academy!

I want to begin this year by telling you all what I said to the faculty about a month ago. So I thank them in advance for listening to this twice. Given the constraints of this year of Covid-19, we are going to have to hunker down at the school more than is usual for us. We will have to do more things at school, on campus, and on our own property. But I don’t see that as an altogether bad thing. It may in fact be a very good thing. I’ve heard the frustration over the years that we are sometimes doing too much, we’re too busy, we’re trying to be too many places at the same time. That may well be true.

So I propose that we embrace this opportunity to do less things, do more local things, and do them better. And as we embrace this discipline of enforced isolation, as we explore the possibilities of doing things more on the home front, I think we may also have the opportunity to explore more deeply what is essential to our education. What is truly essential? What is the essence?

This word “essential” has been bandied about much of late in the context of the new COVID World that has come upon us in order to designate just who are the essential workers and of course who are the inessential.

Well, by opening our doors wide this year, we have declared to all of your parents and to you that what we do here is essential. Most schools, I would have to say, are not essential. But some schools are. I believe that this school is one of those schools. This school is essential.

And my hope is that this year will afford us the opportunity to deepen our understanding of what is most truly essential in our education.

As radical leftists rampage through the big cities tearing down statues and setting other people’s property on fire, our call is to embrace the challenge of becoming true radicals – righteous radicals who are emboldened by Christ and his saints to go to the roots of who we are and of what we as a school ought to be doing. The word radical comes from the latin word radix, which means roos. So a righteous radical goes to the root of things, not to tear things up by the roots but to plant himself ever more deeply in the soil of the Real.

We seem to be living in a strange time. Is it an extraordinary time. I don’t know. There have been many extraordinary times in history. To me, this seems like it may very well be one of those. You feel something of the flavor of momentous change in the air, change that is by no means all for the good.

In such circumstances, it seems obvious that there is a pressing need to be strongly rooted in the things that are most true, those “dearest freshness deep down things” whatsoever those may be, that the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins speaks of in a poem many of you know.

I don’t wish to be too apocalyptic here but as the adverse forces of our culture buffet us this way and that, there is a need now more than ever for those who have the knowledge and the ability and indeed the grace to gather closer to the center so that the center can hold them in place.

As I speak of gathering closer to the center as torrential winds blow us this way and that I am thinking about lines from a poem by the great Irishman William Butler Yeats called “The Second Coming”. It’s a bit of a terrifying poem. Listen:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Yeats is saying that the world is like a falcon that can no longer hear the call of his falconer, it is a world where anarchy is loosed, causing things to fall apart, allowing innocence to be drowned. And all because man has lost his center. And a man without a center, he says, even the good men, lack intensity, lack passion, lack conviction – in a word, the man of today is weak. And he’s weak because he lacks conviction. What does that mean to lack conviction? It means he’s not convinced of anything, because he has no real knowledge and experience of the center of reality, a knowledge that could root him and guide him through the storm.

So what about us? Where do we find the center here? How do we become men who are convinced of the Good, convinced of the Truth and convinced of Beauty so that we can weather the storm and help others to weather it? Where at Gregory the Great Academy do we find our center?

Music and poetry are at the center; these are at the essence of what we do here for music and poetry form the heart of man both for good and for ill. Let’s take this opportunity to explore this mystery deeper to help us to better understand and to experience the power of the muses. And let’s take this year to carry on and breath new life into one of the greatest treasures and traditions of our academy – our musical culture – by fostering an in-house musical tradition. The same goes for poetry. One of the surprise fruits of last year’s distance learning program was Mrs. Beebe’s sonnet class and the discovery that so many of our boys could learn to write profound and beautiful poetry. Let’s be a school of poets who know how to write sonnets and ballads. Let’s be a school of bards who learn as many folk songs as we can and even start writing our own folk songs.

Sports are at the center. The joy of using the body effectively to do wonderful things on the sports field both with teammates and alone. The intensity and joy of battle. These early existential confrontations on the soccer field and the rugby pitch that call one to courageous action, often for the first time in one’s life. The slow painful but satisfying knowledge that hard work builds strength, ability, and character. And perhaps best of all the sheer joy of learning to play a game well. All of this is central to our education.

The farm is a new plank that is also central. Bringing boys into contact with the realities of pigs and chickens and let’s hope sheep, goats, and cattle up ahead, roots our students on a daily basis in chores that are tied to the earth, tied to the land, and teaches them something profound about the very act of eating: that our lives are dependent on the sacrifice of many other lives. Learning to understand, participate in, and honor this sacrifice and the animals who make it – is a profound and necessary education.

And now what of academics? Are academics central to our education? I certainly hope so. But at the same time I think what makes our school extraordinary and transformative is that we understand that academics is only one of the many educational endeavors that is essential. Our school is not confined to desks and classrooms. Far from it. But what does happen in the classroom? What are we trying to achieve there? As your teachers we are trying to lead or to charm or to surprise the minds and imaginations of our students into a state of wakefulness and liveliness. We do not simply want to pack your minds with as many truths as we can fit into one class period. That kind of learning will only be disgorged onto the next exam and soon forgotten. What we want is for students to come to experience the power and profundity and joy of discovering for themselves that there is truth in history, in stories, in nature, in the very workings of the mind, in the wonderful ways that one’s mind becomes stretched and refined by writing sonnets, working out Euclidean props, and struggling to articulate ideas in speech and on paper.

Prayer is central to our education. I think to myself all the time that our school is ideal for developing the inner life of young men – because prayer forms the rhythm of every day and every activity in this place but also because here boys are given the first opportunity of their lives to begin to form their own life of prayer outside the orbit of their family. They are given a new space, new voices, new ideas, new prayers, and new liturgies with which to encounter God communally and personally.

And there is much more we could include here. What about juggling performance and craft guilds? And what of camping trips and trips to Europe? What role do they play? Are these central? I say yes. They too are essential and thus central.

At this point you may be wondering how many centers there can be. If something has too many centers, then it has no center at all. So am I speaking nonsense here?

An image that could make sense of my claim would be the image of a wheel and all of these planks that I am calling central as spokes leading from the outer rim into the center.

So with this image I think we can truly say that all of these activities that we pursue here are central, are essential because they lead us and our students to what is the true essence and center of all – to Christ.

The great Church father Saint Irenaeus wrote that “The glory of God is man alive”. Sometimes it is translated “the glory of God is the living man”. What this means is that Man glorifies God by living his life to the fullest extent and he can only live fully as man if he is formed according to the image of his maker, the image of Christ. This sentence (“The glory of God is man alive”) gives us a pithy expression of our mission. For our mission as educators is to work with one another and with God to bring ourselves and our students more fully alive through participation in the resplendent form and being of Christ. And we lead our students to encounter this font of Life through music, poetry, sport, history, literature, logic, mathematics, chores, caring for animals, juggling, and many many other essential things.

Yeats writes that the center cannot hold. He is wrong there. For the center is God who is like us a man and he can hold us if we allow ourselves to be held. If we wish to be men who are passionately and intensely good, men who can stand up to the winds of this age and even help others to stand with us, men who are true explorers and adventurers of the world God has made, let us begin here and now by learning to plant ourselves ever more deeply in the truth and beauty and goodness of God.

-Luke Culley, Headmaster

Graduation 2020: Headmaster’s Address

Posted on July 1, 2020August 17, 2020 by admin

by Luke Culley, Headmaster

Reverend Fathers, Faculty, Families, Students, Alumni, and Graduates:

I remember watching this class when they were freshmen, only days after their arrival in what was then our school in a place situated in the Pocono mountains called Pine Hill. I stood watching them from the porch of the cabin where I lived as they assembled around a rock on the field below and one or other member of their class would step up onto the rock and begin addressing his new classmates, soon to be friends. First I remember John Bateman step onto the rock to preach. And then Max Valentine decided it was his turn so he would take his place on the rock and so it went. After watching this for a while, I turned to Ben Strong (our Math and Physics teacher as well as dormfather at the time) and said that I would give a lot to know what it was they were talking about so earnestly and even formally. I could only imagine. This was only the second or third day of their freshman year and they were already forming themselves into some kind of politic body and, at least I imagined it this way at the time, making plans to improve the place. I remember telling Ben: “this is going to be a special class.”

By the time they were juniors, their manifold gifts of intelligence, strength of character, athletic ability, and – let’s face it – all around coolness, began to take shape in not so surprising and not always so pleasant ways. They knew that they were upper-formers now, leaders of the student body, and they wanted to share their ideas, and respectfully, of course, disagree. Were they a bit cocky at times? Well, YES. But we knew that underneath all that they were really good boys who were growing, doing, and thinking with all their might and main. These were good boys, but they were as yet unfinished. Like a rock under the artist’s chisel, they were still taking shape.

But something began to happen to them between their junior and senior year. Only they could tell us what it was exactly. Whatever it was, I doubt it happened all at once. But it did begin with something decisive: almost as if they had re-assembled around some other rock to re-assess themselves and their role in the school. When they came back to be seniors, they were ready to serve, they were ready to learn how to be true leaders: they were ready to be something remarkable: young men who are constantly trying to see the good of the whole and to serve it well, whether that whole was the boys in their room, the orderliness and cleanliness of the kitchen, the soundness and fun of weekend activities. These young men strove to learn from their head dormthather Jonathan Kuplack, from their coaches, from their teachers, and from one another how they could improve in each of the areas of their lives here — and in the end, they truly accomplished what I like to think they were already dreaming about and planning in those first days of their freshman year around a rock. They did make this a better school. We are proud of them, as I know you are and ought to be. But that expression doesn’t capture quite what I mean. A better way to put it, perhaps, is we are grateful for them and even astonished at them. We stand in admiration of what God has wrought in these young lads during these four years at this school. And my sincere hope is that they too stand in astonishment at what God has wrought in them as they worked well with all the grace God gave them to work with.

It is true that their senior year was cut short. There was no rugby season. No chance to show that this year would be the best season in Saint Gregory’s history. No final goodbyes to their room-mates, over whom they took such excellent care. And worst of all, no thesis defenses. Just kidding. That’s the one thing I think most of them don’t regret missing out on.

But their losses were great: there was no Saint Francis Pilgrimage. All of this is very sad for them, for their teachers, and for the whole school. But when I reflect on this year, I believe that what they are left with is no small thing. For God accomplishes all things well and for God a part can become the whole. In this unfinished year, this year that was cut off in an untimely fashion, I can say with complete confidence that they achieved a knowledge that is an experience of the whole of reality. Not that they now know the whole of reality, far from it, but that they have received the whole of reality that our school can give to young men of their age. I believe this. And I also believe that their sudden exit from the doors of our school, when neither they or we realized at the time that the exit was as final as it actually was, has afforded them a hard lesson from which they can learn much indeed. Their senior year was not finished. The fullness of their Saint Gregory’s experience was incomplete. They did not go on a pilgrimage — and yet, and yet… life is a pilgrimage or rather many pilgrimages and all lives end unfinished. To begin to reflect on this rude experience of loss, of being cut off from what is expected, of what is rightly your own, of the fulfillment of all you have striven for, we might turn to some of the greatest unfinished works of man: Mozart’s Requiem Mass (which they listened to in solitude but also in estranged company with the rest of their their schoolmates in this period of Covid exile), a mass composed while Mozart was dying. He did not finish it. Why? Why did God not give him the strength to finish what was so clearly one of the greatest musical achievements of man composed for the honor and glory of God himself? The great German poet Rainer Maria Rilke mused about an incomplete sculpture of the god Apollo. Gazing at what remained of this headless stone torso, Rilke writes:

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

For Rilke the fragment shines in every part in a way that is somehow more powerful than if it were whole. And for him the effect is transformative. Every inch of this unfinished stone cries out to him through the brilliance of a resplendent smile unseen but felt everywhere: You must change your life.

Suddenly these young men found themselves at home, with a pile of essays to write, music to listen to, sonnets to compose, with instructions and encouragement coming from a voice far away but appearing to them weekly on computer screens. This was all good work. But it was definitely not their school. Suddenly they were out of their element. Trying to be who they have learned to be in the company of one another and their teachers and their usual surroundings and events but without one another, without any of these supports. They had become fragments of their own experience, of their own knowledge. Dis-oriented fragments I imagine. And yet bearing within them the resplendent smile of the whole. This uncomfortable, painful, but I dare say illuminating experience of being a fragment and struggling to make of it a whole is the work that each of you will now pursue for the rest of your lives. There will be a pilgrimage and this will be the quest of your pilgrimage. How to take what you know, what has been revealed to you, and revealed even more urgently, more clearly now that you are separated from it. How to take this in hand and translate it, shape it into action for every new circumstance of your life. You must change your life. Because you have already been changed in so many extraordinary ways. This will not be easy, but unlike most Saint Gregory’s seniors who have sat where you sit now, you already know this crucial truth.

Your class began, as I remember, around a rock. (Do any of you remember this?) And it continued to gather around a rock. A rock that took many forms: Countless conversations, class trips into mountains and down rivers, playing on the rugby field and in the IPL league and everywhere else, finding your voice by telling jokes to friends, by giving speeches in rhetoric class, and by being leaders of your room, of your areas, and of the school. When I first taught you in Church History I remember that your class always seemed to be laughing or smiling about something. Now, I know it was probably some comical face Francis Rataj was making, that perfect angel. Or was it James? I still don’t know.

In Humanities you were still full of mirth but ready to tackle serious books and serious conversations. I did not participate in your weekly seminar with Dr. Lefler every tuesday night but I loved to look in on them. It was wonderful to see: the beauty of young men conversing with a wise teacher. The resplendent smile of wisdom is what you have gained here. In your work, in your play, in your contemplation, in your laughter, in your prayer you have been made translucent to a wisdom that will suffuse the rest of your days if you choose to deepen it through memory, inquiry, and prayer. And you have found that the proper home for wisdom is friendship: friendship not only with each other, but friendship with all the students, and even with your teachers, friendship with your parents and your family, friendship with all of Creation, friendship with God. And you know this because you know that it is by giving gifts to one another for something larger than yourselves, like a rugby game, like a class discussion, like a casino night, like a 5 course meal for the freshmen, like a school, that you become more than yourselves. In giving, you are given back, magnified and multiplied. It is the resplendent truth of this rock that you stand around now. And we are all honored to be able to stand here with you.

Graduation 2020: Valedictorian’s Address

Posted on June 29, 2020August 17, 2020 by admin

by John Snyman (’20)

Reverend Fathers, Faculty and Staff, Parents, Classmates,

The other day, I was talking to a visitor who came to the Academy, and he asked me, “So, what do you really learn at this school?” And I thought to myself, “Hm, what did I learn?… I don’t know… I can’t remember.” I’m afraid I didn’t have a great answer for him. I can only hope he comes and finds out for himself. Even though I realize I learned a lot, and that I have forgotten a lot of what I learned, one of the good things about this school is that it ingrains certain things into your character with experiences that, most of the time, you don’t even know are there—that you don’t have to remember.

What I do remember are the innumerable memories of those times that made up my formation. Every boy that comes to this school is given incredible memories. They are the things that we all carry with us, those things that affected us for the good in the moment, but also, I imagine, years down the road. The repertoire of memories I have from this school is vast, and they are ones that I can confidently say I share with everyone I went to school with, and especially my classmates. Whether small or large, silly or serious, they are with me—with us—and they will always bind us to that life that has made us who we are today, and who we will be later on in our lives.

I can’t help but share with you now a little of what comes pouring into my mind when I let those memories run loose.

Being awakened by Colby Robinson handing me a hot cup of coffee, with a look on his face saying, “I didn’t do all this work for nothing—you better get up.”

Walking into the sun porch, hearing the cackling of boys reminiscing an embarrassing moment of the past.

Smelling the fragrant, smoky smell of the chapel at morning prayer, where you find the strength to face the day with a rigorous attitude—sometimes ruined by the terrible breath of your friend who is breathing on you on purpose.

Coming down after morning prayer and getting a little boost by a smile from your friendly neighborhood John Bateman.

Busting out your morning job to get to breakfast on time only to find it’s all gone.

Making my way back to my room to find a large cup of coffee glued to my desk so that when I pull on it just hard enough, the glue breaks, and the coffee spills everywhere. It was funny the first three times, Max… or Billy. (I still don’t know who did it.)

Hearing James Gaetano run by me for the tenth time in ten minutes trying to catch someone who chucked a ball at his face.

Racing to get to class on time and the look on the teacher’s face when you tell him you forgot your book.

Fighting in the chalk wars before algebra class and watching Kevin Howerton walk to the next class oblivious that his blazer is covered with chalk marks.

Re-enacting a battle march in Ancient History class by savagely beating our desks and seeing the terrified kid who happened to be visiting the school when he heard Audino’s war cry.

Smelling lunch filling the building after morning classes, and often finding it tastes better than it smelled.

Mustering the strength during class to face the pain that was about to come from the weight room, or the rugby pitch.

Seeing your teammate give everything he has and turning to do the same for his sake.

Hearing Mr. Prezzia somehow accidentally skip four numbers when counting down the end of a circuit.

Feeling proud after making it through practice without your weakness getting the better of you.

Receiving a letter from your sister and soaking it with tears when she makes you realize just how blessed you are.

Hearing the roar of sixty boys belting out a song that only half of them know at the dinner table.

Feeling of the warm spring sun after winter is over and the bewilderment when it snows in April.

Bringing it all to night prayer at the end of the day, to give thanks for the joy and to offer up the pain.

And finally, falling asleep to the chatter of your roommates that you have somehow learned to love in a few short months.

There is such an accumulation of memories that make up one single day at this school, and we have been here for hundreds. I only wish I could remember them all. But what have I learned? What have we all learned?

What I probably should have said to that boy who was visiting is that living a busy and productive life is the only way to know and to better yourself. And that is what, I think, we have done, what we have learned—to stop, reflect, and recognize the beauty in every single thing around us. Our memories teach us that we have learned to love learning and know the importance of completely engaging yourself in whatever it is you’re doing in any given moment. We have learned to make a habit of sacrificing ourselves for others, whether it be on the field or in the dorms. We have learned to live with guys we didn’t really like and somehow ended up truly caring about. We have learned to take pride in doing the smallest things correctly and to never accept our current state as good enough, enkindling a drive for excellence.

The desire for adventure is in the heart of every young man, and at this school it is well exercised in order, I believe, to give us these lessons and these memories. Here, we took on challenges confidently, whether it was traveling to a foreign country with no money, striving for months to compete for a rugby state championship, or dressing up in a tie to sing to a girl at Dunkin Donuts. We tried hard to be resilient in whatever situation we were in. In fact, my fondest memories of this place are when the surroundings got worse and our spirits got better, making true friendships based on virtue. When I saw the crooked smile on a classmate’s frozen face going into a scrum, I thought to myself that there were few things we couldn’t endure together. Somehow, at this school, we have learned to enjoy the gifts given to us, both great and small.

Perhaps one of the biggest takeaways from this school that my class has experienced only came when the tail-end of our time here was taken away. When we went home last March, the upcoming two and a half months was everything to us. Our last time together as boys, our last rugby season, our last chance to do good in this place where we have so much power to do so—all this was our world, it was all we cared about. When it was suddenly gone, many of us were extremely distraught. But it had its purpose.

One of the books we read when we were home was “The Ballad of the White Horse.” In it, there is a scene where King Alfred of the Wessex men is visited by Mary. At the time, he was despairing at the repeated defeats he had suffered from the Danes. He asked Mary not for the secrets of heaven. He only asks if they will one day be victorious. She does not answer his question directly but reminds him of his purpose. She says this:

“The men of the East may spell the stars,
And times and triumphs mark,
But the men signed of the cross of Christ
Go gaily in the dark.

“The men of the East may search the scrolls
For sure fates and fame,
But the men that drink the blood of God
Go singing to their shame.

“The wise men know what wicked things
Are written on the sky,
They trim sad lamps, they touch sad strings,
Hearing the heavy purple wings,
Where the forgotten seraph kings
Still plot how God shall die.

“The wise men know all evil things
Under the twisted trees,
Where the perverse in pleasure pine
And men are weary of green wine
And sick of crimson seas.

“But you and all the kind of Christ
Are ignorant and brave,
And you have wars you hardly win
And souls you hardly save.

“I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.

“Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?”

It was in this loving warning, this impossible challenge, that my classmates and I realized that we were being told that none of what we loved about our world was greater than loving Christ. If we only do this, then we will have joy without a cause and faith without a hope. This is what this school has taught us through life, liturgy, work, study, leisure, and play—it has taught us what it means to be a Christian man living our lives deliberately according to His Will, even as the sky grows darker yet and the sea rises higher. With the grace of God and the gifts given to us at this school, I feel confident as I stand with my classes and face the world. I am honored to have this opportunity, on behalf of my class, to say thank you to all here present who made it possible for us to have experienced this life-changing school.

Thank you.