Our annual V+J Day was Tuesday, March 10. V+J Day (taken from the initials St. Francis de Sales wrote on the top of his letters and correspondences) is an abbreviation for the words Vive Jesus in French, or Live Jesus in English, often with a cross in the middle. It was his rallying call as a Catholic bishop and spiritual guide: that we are all created in God’s image, called to be the presence of Christ visible in the world through our kindness and compassion.

V+J Day is a school day filled with opportunities for learning outside the classroom on topics of interest and relevance to the lives of our students. This year we discussed the challenges young men are facing in the world today -- in education, in careers, in relationships -- a topic of considerable interest with recent best sellers ranging from Of Men and Boys by Richard Reeves, The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, and Notes on Being a Man by Scott Galloway. Those same three authors sat for a podcast recently called The Crisis of Boys and Men. 

We invited two guest speakers to be with us on March 10. I set the tone by noting that this week in March includes the anniversary of two difficult moments in my 16-year term as principal. The most recent -- March 13, 2020 -- was the last day of in-person school before the COVID-19 restrictions. The gradual return to normalcy would take two long years, but innovations such as PREP, the current daily schedule, and expanded roles for student leadership resulted from learning the limits of technology, and we prioritized relationships and opportunities for student leadership as never before, redefining brotherhood and belonging.

The second of those dates - March 12, 2016 -- is the anniversary of the worst tragedy I have endured in my 30+ years in education: the day we learned that senior Tyler Brown had died in a serious car accident. Tyler’s girlfriend, Kelly Muchiatti of Padua, was seriously injured, but survived. John Kirsch, one of Tyler’s rugby teammates, was driving that night. He walked away physically unharmed, but bore the invisible spiritual wounds of grief, guilt, and regret that eventually claimed his life. This tragedy revealed the depth of student struggles with mental and emotional health, as that week in school the masks that said “I’m fine” to the world were dropped and we grieved and mourned together. From this horrific loss, the Wellness Center was born, and with it our resolve to provide students with the emotional support they need to thrive. 

This year’s V+J Day focused on Brotherhood, Gentle Strength, and the Power of Connection. I introduced author, educator, and developmental psychologist Michael Reichert, who spoke to recent research indicating that most young men ages 18-25 do not feel there is anyone in their lives who know them well. While we’d like to think the strong sense of brotherhood at Salesianum might help many of our grads to give a more positive response to that question, Dr. Reichert led the students through an exercise in which they were paired with a peer and engaged in conversation - 5 minutes of talking about life while the other listened attentively, and then the roles were switched. While 5 minutes may not sound like much, being listened to for that long gives them the chance to share more personally about substantive things going on in their lives, and this is exactly what happened for many students.

Following this exercise, the students were addressed by Sean Curran ’93, who is quadriplegic. Sean suffered a catastrophic injury while surfing in 1989, the summer following his freshman year of high school, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down. After a year of physical rehabilitation, Sean’s family sought to re-enroll him, but his original school declined to accept him, citing that they lacked the resources to educate and care for him. They turned to Salesianum, and then-principal Fr. Richard Grant, OSFS, told Sean in the meeting, “we will learn more from you than you learn from us.” Words that were prophetic.

Sean was assigned a team of classmates, four of whom were always with him to push his non-motorized chair through the hallways, to carry Sean in the chair up and down the steps in the stairwells, and to feed Sean during his lunch period. Nine of these classmates returned to school with Sean on March 10, and were by his side as he shared the importance of growing more comfortable being cared for and literally carried by others. Sean described this as moving from a “Why me?” mindset to a “Help me” perspective -- not easy, especially for many men. But as Sean shared, we will all be paralyzed by something in life; his physical limitations are mirrored by the times we are worn down by grief, sadness, depression, loss, and so forth.

Following Sean’s moving story, the day ended with an Anointing and Healing service in the spirit of Lent, at which the gospel of Jesus healing the paralyzed man was proclaimed. In this gospel, the man’s friends carry him to Jesus and lowered him through the tiles on the roof onto the floor in front of Jesus. It was a moving and fitting conclusion to the day that spoke so often of the need for connection and healing in our lives.

Like all V+J Days, this is a topic that impacts 100% of our students, whether they are aware of it or not. We all want them to thrive, and Salesianum, more than any other school, meets well what so many boys and young men need in the world today for the four years they are with us.