November 2020

Young alumni are sharing how they are succeeding after high school in our #becauseofCJ series. Through your gift to the CJ Annual Fund, you make this happen for all students. As Samantha Evans '18 shares her thoughts and reflections on how the CJ community helped deepen her faith and encouraged her to participate in faith-based groups, please consider joining others today in supporting the mission of CJ — thank you!

"Dear CJ Community,

Thank you! It is after spending time away from CJ, even if only a couple minutes down the street at the University of Dayton, that I have acquired a deeper appreciation for this community. After two years of college, I have realized that there are no classrooms quite like those at CJ, no teachers are the same and no set of classmates. During my time here I was given the opportunity to deepen my faith and participate in smaller faith communities. This was a key experience that helped me to decide to live in an intentional faith community this school year.

Each year during religion class I was put into a sodality. During my sophomore year, I was grouped with several classmates that I came particularly close with. We shared in deep conversation, but also provided comfort to others when needed. My four companions in class pushed me to think about things from a different perspective, which then pushed me to decide what I believed in and how I would live out my faith.

Participating in Marianist LIFE after school was another opportunity that introduced me to others and talk about my faith. I formed strong bonds with the other people from CJ that went on LIFE week the same year that I did. This was one of my first intentional faith communities, because we chose to live our faith together outside of meetings. These people became some of my best friends as we continued to grow closer and share more. I found a support system here that was established upon faith, and I learned that this was something I would continuously need to foster.

Here I am, several years later, in an intentional faith community at UD with six other girls. Throughout this year we will host events for the entire university community to invite others to deepen their faith. We have also set aside time each week to share in prayer, conversation, and food as a community. This is something that I find great value in after my experience of faith communities at CJ. My time at CJ taught me the importance of who to surround myself with and how to find these people.

Another way that CJ has helped me to find my faith and comfort in it was from prayer at the beginning at most, if not all, of my classes during high school. Teachers would take time to pray with us before class. I did not realize how special this way until college when it was missing. Now during my junior year, I have my first class in college in which we have structured prayer every day, something which gives me a sense of comfort in such a chaotic and unfamiliar time.

CJ instilled a deeper appreciation for prayer and structured faith communities in me. Without the CJ community and wholesome experience this year would be very different for me. Even in this unpredictable and ever-changing time I know that I can turn to my faith, something I learned at CJ. Thank you to the faculty and staff and my classmates for helping me to value my faith more and grow in it."

Samantha Evans, Class of 2018
 

-- This story was published on November 20, 2020. 

Mission-based activities entrenched in the beliefs of CJ’s namesakes, Blessed Rev. William Joseph Chaminade and St. Julie Billiart, are what help unite the CJ community year in and year out. One of these activities encourages faculty and staff to come together in faith-based groups called sodalities to open up about their faith and their love for CJ, along with their struggles and some things they need guidance from peers with.

“Sodalities are among the core components of what makes working in a Catholic school so special,” said Jama Badinghaus, school counselor, City Connects Coordinator, and organizer of faculty and staff sodalities. “There is not only value but priority in stopping the routine to remind ourselves of how we are interconnected, to help us share our joys and struggles, and to deepen our personal faith.”

Sodalities trace back to the late 1700s and early 1800s when Blessed Chaminade fled France for Spain and began preaching to small groups to help reinvigorate the faith after the effects of the French Revolution, eventually establishing the Marianist Order, born from these small group sodalities.

These faith-based, conversation driven groups have centuries old roots and remain incredibly valuable today, especially in times of great turmoil and uncertainty.

“At a time when little seems certain and many challenges can't be solved easily, sodalities have provided a comforting space for faculty and staff to be reminded of the gift of community,” said Badinghaus. “Perhaps not always to fix anything, but to provide a space where listening can offer support, strength, and hope. There is grace in a reminder that while much is different in the ways we interact this year, none of us have to be alone in our efforts to stay focused on our ultimate mission of serving students.”

Serving students is not possible if faculty and staff are not connected and compelled to support each other. With COVID-19 measures in place on top of the typical hustle and bustle of a school year, time for connection with peers can be difficult to come by. CJ leadership made sure to carve out time during the typical workday to allow these sodality groups to gather, discuss, and connect with each other.

“This year, the process of gathering in our sodalities is even more important,” said Kelly Muhl, administrative assistant to the principal. “Allowing us to connect to community members that we do not see face to face within the confines of COVID-19 and our safety measures was of such great comfort to me. I love our community and miss the sharing of day to day with my co-workers.”

Spread out across Roger Glass Stadium, home of the CJ Eagles, and surrounding areas, each sodality enjoyed the fall weather and shared joys, victories, struggles, and takeaways from the school year so far, concluding with prayer.

“Just being able to hear that you are not alone in your struggles day to day, or in finding faith in the process or journey, hearing what has worked and what hasn't was so very helpful to me, personally,” said Muhl. “The time to reflect and pray together was of great comfort!”

--This story was published on November 17, 2020. 

By Captain Eric Etter ‘03, U.S. Army as presented on Veterans Day 2016 at a Town Hall in Longmeadow, MA. Etter is in his tenth year of active duty and is currently assigned as an assistant professor of Military Science at the University of Massachusetts for the ROTC Program.

In many ways the story of my service is still being written. Written by the everyday classes I teach, the time I take to train the next generation of soldiers and leaders, and in the sharing of my experiences with them. When I think of my service over the years, I think simply of my uniform.

My service officially began ten years ago, but perhaps I was always meant to be in the military. I have worn a uniform my entire life: grade school, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, private high school, and College ROTC. I’m pretty sure my first day out of the service, I won’t know how to dress myself. I grew up in a Midwestern town in Ohio, my dad a police officer and my mom a nurse. One grandfather at Pearl Harbor and the Battle for the Pacific and the other at Normandy and Bastogne. I had never thought to enter the service, but it seems fate intervened on the first day of my adult life when I attended freshmen orientation in college — because you see events started at 0830, 11 September 2001.

No less than 25 minutes into what I thought would be just another event in my life, school was canceled for the day and I returned to my room in time to see the second plane hit and the towers fall. Whether it was naiveté or youth, my mind didn’t fully comprehend what was happening at the time. Only that a landmark I had visited on a family vacation less than four years prior had gone and a lot of people had died. I didn’t know that two of my three roommates were already enrolled in ROTC, we never got to the icebreakers.

Over the next two years, I watched as shock and fear turned to sadness and anger, and sadness and anger turn into national fervor and steely resolve. To this day, I don’t know if I was compelled to the service or bored with my engineering classes, but I spent the summer of 2004 with eight drill sergeants and 200 of my closest friends, in Fort Knox, Kentucky.

There is a difference in putting on this uniform and all of the others that I have worn throughout my life. It feels like I become something more. Not more of what I am, but rather more than myself. We veterans here today are a testament to this, as we few represent the countless that have served or are serving; known not by our deeds, but rather by the single article of clothing put on every morning.

I put my uniform on every day. And I smile at my family as I leave, on the rare occasion they are up by then, because I know that the time I sacrifice being without them is for them. In Iraq, I put my armor on every day. And I laughed with my brothers and sisters because I knew that every step into danger I took was one they wouldn’t have to take for me. I put my uniform on this morning so that every word I speak, though just one man’s story, my story, can somehow share part of the collective narrative that is service.

But not everybody can serve, for one reason or another. Perhaps, not everybody should serve. Again, for various reasons. If everybody served, for whom would we be serving? I serve for those who cannot as well as those who will not.

I appreciate that there are those out there that will never fully understand the fullness and depth of what we do. Just as I could not possibly fully appreciate the many aspects that enrich their lives. It is a small hope that they will never come face to face with the horror that man can cause, just as it is a prayer that man one day comes face to face with the wonders life has to offer.

It is somewhat unfortunate today, as is evident by the generations represented speaking alongside myself, that war and armed conflict continue. They have given their service. It is a shroud, or maybe a veil of safety they provided, that allows innocence to last, just a little longer. So, “I must study war so that my sons may study philosophy.” (-John Adams). So, we put on our uniforms and render our service.

For a list of CJ military veterans, click here. 

--This story was published on November 11, 2020.