top of page
Search
  • Writer's picturePatrick McKeown

Discovery Days

Recently, I attended a three day conference in suburban Chicago at Chesterton Academy of the Holy Family. It was an intensive and joyful dive into the successful launching of a Chesterton school. Many ideas were discussed, but for this post I will focus on three:

Call to Holiness, Giving Appetites and Tools for Triage.


Call to Holiness


One of our many aims is to create students who know and understand the personal call to holiness that our Father seeks from us all. This does not mean just being a good person or simply doing the right thing-these are fine-it means our daily lives in all its funny parts should strive to be made perfect. (See Matthew 5:48) This is accomplished in many ways, first off daily Mass and a fully integrated curriculum that puts God in all things since He is in all things. Secondly, our House system which fosters leadership and community not for its own sake (again that is O.K.), but because our young need opportunities to know they have great potential and gifts which need deliberate exercise. Student prefects are leaders within our four houses and they are the building blocks within that community.






Giving Appetites

Our teachers know that a great student is developed and not premade. As created beings made in the image and likeness of God the inherent desire to know, seek and imagine is already there and we are the proud fire stockers who aim to make bonfires! We take our students beyond a knowledge of God (this is a good) into a relationship with God. As anyone can plainly see, our young adults yearn for purpose and meaning and they definitely will find it, but where? If we do not create an environment where God can be known in love, they will find other things to love. Chesterton Academy by design cultivates a spiritual fruitfulness in students and assumes nothing. Can they get a lot out of a theology course? Definitely! Is that the end of it, not by a long shot. By intentionally designing a thirst for the faith we lead them to truth and they continue the race.




Tools for Triage

Lastly, we know that our students need the right tools and weapons to face a world filled with those who are hostile to God. Can we rightly say we are doing them any good by making them smart, but sending them defenseless among wolves? Therefore, we richly cultivate a love for all people so as to be in the world and yet not be of the world. These young men and women have been given a vocation and we commit at Chesterton to giving them and showing them the tools in which to live that call out for a world that is yearning for Truth, Goodness and Beauty. St. Mother Teresa was once asked why she is bothering with the sick children in Calcutta when there is so many that she will never be able to help. She said she is called to be faithful not successful. Our school may be relatively small compared to the world, but we will cultivate future saints so as to be faithful not merely successful.



AMDG,


Patrick McKeown



250 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All
Post: Blog2_Post
bottom of page