Loving: Reflections on the Strake Jesuit Service Program

“How did all this art get on campus?” asked one adult visitor during an Open House, student-led tour. “On trucks, I guess,” the student guide said as he shrugged his shoulders. Sometimes, we intend one thing by our words while others hear something different. Few words in the English language are more elastic and capable of so many different nuances as the word “love.” Strake Jesuit, like Jesuit schools worldwide, prioritizes helping our students grow into loving young men. What does this mean, and how can we help make this a reality?

 

Early in Community Life, a foundational school document that lays out the mission, philosophy, and specific rules that govern life as a Strake Jesuit student, there is a description of the five categories that Jesuit high schools generally agree are essential to their formative work (i.e., Open to Growth, Intellectually Competent, Religious, Loving, Committed to Doing Justice). Regarding “loving,” the description found in Community Life of a loving person heavily focuses on the development of deep loving relationships with others, especially through service to them.

 

 

Strake Jesuit deeply embraces and proclaims the Catholic worldview. This all-encompassing perspective or framework for understanding the meaning of human life is grounded in the conviction that the supreme source of all things, God, loved all things into existence. This love is most fully manifested in the self-offering of Jesus Christ, the perfect Man for Others. We, in turn, are invited to lovingly respond to God. We express this in our love and care for one another and in the gradual discovery of God’s patient and transforming work within ourselves.

 

St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, invited us to consider this truth in his meditation, “Contemplation to Attain Divine Love.” St. Ignatius begins with the dictum, “Love ought to show itself more in deeds than in words.” Becoming deeply conscious of the many ways God has loved and continues to love us encourages a mindset of gratitude and generosity. We can’t help but desire to love others when we become deeply aware of how much we have been loved. To know one is loved is also to know a call to loving service.

 

 

The Strake Jesuit service program, like all aspects of the school, continually evolves. We regularly exchange ideas and experiences with other schools and experiment with various ways of ensuring our students serve others. Periodic adjustments and new approaches are the norm.

 

Our service program presupposes patience with our students and helping them grow beyond the forces within and without that encourage self-centeredness rather than an others-oriented mindset. Paradoxically, the more one becomes self-centered, the further that person will drift from true fulfillment. Conversely, the more one turns to others in love, the richer and more meaningful life will become. Herein lies the true and original sense of Men for Others.

 

In our efforts to help students grow a “for others” mindset, we have long required our seniors to complete a significant number of service hours at an approved service location. For decades, the hope has been that these student service hours involve regular and meaningful interaction with those they serve. 

 

As our focus on the importance of service for our students intensified over the years, requirements were expanded to include underclassmen. For several years, there was a distinct focus for each grade level that encouraged students to experience a wide range of service experiences during their high school years. Freshmen, for instance, spent time with the elderly. Volunteering in one’s parish or place of worship and volunteering to help the most vulnerable or impoverished members of our community were emphases of subsequent years. Seniors, who always have significantly larger service requirements, could fulfill this expectation in various ways, many choosing to serve at a summer camp or through service trips to other countries.

 

 

The 2023-2024 school year featured another stage of our service program’s history. Instead of doing required service hours outside the school day, underclassmen participated in a day of service for their grade level with their classmates, faculty, and staff members. Students gathered for Mass in the morning, were divided into groups, and boarded a fleet of buses and vans awaiting them outside the Parsley Center. They fanned out across the city, arriving at a wide range of service locations as groups who would serve meals, play board games and sing with the elderly, dance with Down’s Syndrome persons, pair up with Special Olympics athletes, and various other activities. These days were a truly beautiful display of our institutional commitment to serving our community.

 

These days required a new kind of planning and all the new challenges a new vision creates but they also provided a class experience in which students could serve alongside each other and share and reflect on their experiences with one another. Seniors continued to have a significant service requirement but also had a day set apart for them to reflect and share their experiences of serving others with their classmates. The sense of serving together was one of the beautiful fruits of these wonderful days.

 

We continue to consider ways to improve the student service experience. Exciting new opportunities and plans are taking shape to enhance the senior service experience and provide even more meaningful opportunities to encounter others in loving service.