The first virtue of childhood for boys to sharpen themselves in is the virtue of courage. Courage is a willingness to attempt difficult things. Each student will have strengths (things they readily excel in), and weaknesses (things they initially struggle to excel in), but the challenge we all face is not the reality of having weaknesses, it’s the desire to avoid potential humiliation because of failing in things on account of those weaknesses. An interesting point: the tradition of the Church teaches that the vice of “sloth” is less associated with laziness, and more with something like “softness”, for Sloth is a desire not to face potential humiliation at failure in achieving difficult things. It’s related to avoiding difficult things, not about making sure you’re always busy… Taking this into consideration, it’s especially important for our boys to be taught not to fear humiliation, for failure to attempt a thing is worse than failure to succeed in a thing. If they learn to fear failing-to-attempt a thing more than failing-to-succeed in a thing they will acquire the virtue of courage. An All-Boys school is particularly suited to foster the acquisition of courage through multifaceted competition—sometimes in feats of the mind, sometimes in feats of the body, sometimes in feats of strategy or patience. Sending your boy to an all-boys school should look different than all the other schools they could go to: we recognize this and will facilitate the school’s vision through embracing this reality.

Next, this emphasis on courage will simultaneously help our boys to discern between true difficulties and false ones. True difficulties are things that are hardest for the mind to do—namely, things that are spiritually difficult (i.e. recognizing and opposing the vices of pride, wrath, and sloth, especially). False difficulties are things that are difficult but in a limited sense—usually they are difficult feats of athletic movement or mental calculation, but for one who is gifted in these things, they are hardly difficult for them at all. It’s fun to be good at these things, and we’re excited to see our boys excel in them, but the more important feats are the spiritual ones, for it is harder to conquer the spirit than it is the entire world. “He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, | and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.” (Proverbs 16:32)

Finally, we will facilitate the realization of this vision for our students by exposing them to the mindset of the saints in discerning the grace of God. The saints are saints precisely because they’ve taken on a mindset that is utterly counterintuitive for fallen humans, like all of us, to have. Our problem in this life is not that we don’t get enough graces from God: it’s that we often hate many of the graces God gives us. Getting fired from a job, losing a loved one, undergoing suffering and humiliation: these can be the exact mechanisms of God’s grace by which He detaches us from this world and turns us more perfectly toward Himself—but most of us are most miserable when these things come our way… It’s fitting to repeat it again: The logic of God is counterintuitive to fallen man… God’s grace in these things is most often people’s reason for abandoning Our Lord. To learn to discern the work of God’s grace in our lives, especially when it’s hardest to recognize (viz. in suffering, failure, and set back), prepares us to be united to His grace more perfectly.

Most faithfully Catholic parents report that their primary goal is to make their children into saints. Most schools will claim their primary goal is assisting their families in forming their children into saints. These are both right and good desires… But what does wanting this really look like? And what ought the focus be to actually achieve this? In sports, the team that merely wants to win is not the one who wins, but the team who can play the best. In the practice of faith, the person who wants the glory of sainthood is not the one who does the things that strengthen them against the things which most threatens to separate them from God.

To become a saint all our focus must be on embracing and receiving suffering with humility and appreciation. It’s the single most distinguishing quality of Our Lord Jesus, and the thing that separates him from every other faith leader in the history of the world. Our Lord was the suffering servant. Let us then internalize and say that we will not focus on making your son a saint (though we pray he does become one) because that’s not ours to give (it’s God’s alone), but we will focus on disposing him to voluntarily bear more suffering under more aspects, because that’s what prepares him to more perfectly receive the graces God has in store for him. If anyone will receive the graces of God, God will make them a Saint. (cf. 1 Timothy 2:4) For this reason, our focus is not on the outcome of sainthood, but on doing the things well that will best dispose all of us to receive the gift of sainthood.

We will teach our children (and strive to model it in our lives as teachers and faculty) not to be scared of the crown of thorns—For you cannot have the crown of glory if you will not first don the crown of the thorns. +