At the end of each week, the school community gathers for the House standings and to shake the rafters with "Jubilate Deo," our unofficial school song. 

A note from the Headmaster:

Dear friends,

A prospective Chesterton parent recently shared a tentative reservation: “Mass everyday? Well…isn’t that a lot for a high schooler?”

It occurred to me that one might say this about a lot of Chesterton’s educational program: Seminar discussion - Every day? Plato and Aristotle? Aquinas? Singing and dancing and drama and drawing and painting – for every student? Why do we do that?

I was pleased to share with that parent that nearly all our students enter with this question about daily Mass, and that now -- across the board -- Mass is their favorite part of the day. Even so, these are helpful questions. 

As we all know, we are shaped by our cultural backgrounds. Culture expresses itself in all the little details we take for granted: “in food and the style of dress, in music, in adornment, in the forms that constitute the practices of daily life, as well as in ... the dishes and eating utensils to vessels and tools, buildings, and the layouts of villages, towns, and cities.”

Even though culture is normally handed on as a side-effect, it is vitally important. In the words of one Catholic philosopher, culture communicates "an ideal conception of human nature, a distinctive interpretation of reality, of truth, beauty, and goodness…In short, culture is embodied meaning.”

If this ideal is not right, or is not handed on, this has real life -- "embodied" -- consequences. For example, a recently published book called The Young Adult Playbook reports the discouragingly common phenomenon of successful young men and women at top universities – including Catholic universities – waking up at 19, or 21, or 24 years old, realizing they don’t know where they are going or why. 

At Chesterton Academy of Our Lady of Hope, our daily life is designed to hand on “an ideal conception of human nature,” an “embodied meaning.” Daily Mass, seminar, Plato, music, dancing, Holy Hours, athletics: we do these things to foster a culture that embodies the meaning our students need to lead truly full lives -- to live vibrantly, creatively, and well, in high school, college, and beyond, and to give themselves completely in the love to which God calls them (cf. Rom 12:1-2, Eph. 2:10).

Please read on to learn about what's happening at Chesterton - including updates on our building improvements! - and opportunities to participate in and support Chesterton’s distinctive culture, where we encounter the deep meaning handed on to us in the Great Tradition – a meaning embodied in wonder, gratitude, courage, joy, and hope.

Gratefully yours in Christ,

Robert Duffy, PhD

Headmaster

Upcoming Events

(See below for more details!)

• Reminder: Mass at 10:30 Tomorrow for Frassati Friday Field Day
• First Friday Holy Hour: Nov. 1 (tomorrow); Dec. 6
• Daily Mass at 11:10 (check Mass schedule)
• Open House: Nov. 16
• Sophomore/Junior Drama Capstone: Dec. 5
• Entrance Exam and Admissions Information Session: Dec. 7
• Lessons and Carols: Dec. 13
• Shadow Days

Open House - Nov. 16: All are welcome!

Shadow Days - Schedule yours today!

 Holy Hour and Campfire - Tomorrow! 

Glimpses of Chesterton

Wisdom from G.K. Chesterton

 “One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.”