Although Saint Joseph’s Preparatory School in Philadelphia accepts only persons of the male gender, I have had, since my childhood, an abiding affection for that noble institution. I suppose that the seed of this affection was partially sown by several male members’ of my family having attended the Prep. This supposition, however, is unsatisfying. It fails to articulate the root cause of my heart’s sincere empathy for all the school's endeavors. I remember myself as a young woman cheering on its football and crew teams from the sideline and the riverbank. I fondly recall accompanying Preppers to their dances. To this day I thrill to the sound of men’s voices singing, “Swing on along with the Crimson!! Swing on along with the Grey,” the opening lines of the Prep’s fight song. I often ask myself why I have such fondness for a school that I did not attend and that, in fact, my sisters and I were unable to attend. Perhaps the best reason is this: I have watched, with steadily growing admiration for the Jesuit educators, my three brothers enter the Prep as boys and depart from those hallowed halls, as two of my uncles and a cousin had, as men. Since that time my admiration has intensified as I, myself, now a Dominican Sister, am laboring to educate the young women of Saint Thomas Aquinas High School in the Bronx and am sharing that experience with a fine dedicated alumnus of Saint Joseph’s Prep.
The Reverend Pedro Arrupe, S.J., the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, also known as “The Black Pope,” once wrote that the goal of Jesuit education is the development of “men for others.” Over the years, I have found that many Jesuit preparatory schools, colleges, and universities have been most successful in the development of persons for others. St. Joseph’s Preparatory School, however, in my experience, seems to have been particularly blessed with the grace needed to develop such persons. I am thankful that I have had the opportunity to make acquaintances, friendships, and working relationships with so many of the Prep’s idealistic and hard-working persons for others in both my hometown of Philadelphia and my present place of service, the Bronx. It is truly a blessing to have encountered so many Prep alumni providing a variety of services to “those in need.”
A fine example of the type of person I am attempting to describe is Mr. Michael Mulligan. Mr. Mulligan teaches Global Studies and American Literature at Aquinas High School in the Bronx. He is as committed a teacher as I have ever been blessed with whom to have come in contact. He prepares and executes his lessons very well as evidenced by the success of his students. He is a gentle, patient educator as well as a firm disciplinarian.
He often telephones a student and her mother when a young woman has difficulty with whatever he might be instructing her in. Mr. Mulligan is also active in extra-curricular activities with our young women. He does fine work coaching our soccer team and assisting our softball coach. I have never known him to pass up an opportunity to spend extra time with a student-athlete. His popularity is nearly unanimous. If one walks the halls of our school with this Prep alumnus, this fact is made self-evident. “Hello, Mr. Mulligan,” you will hear the young women all cry.
Even more extraordinary than the exemplary work which Mr. Mulligan does are his bearing and his demeanor, which I would describe (and please excuse my hyperbole as I am a mere educator in the service of God and not a literary artist) as, “saintly.” I can find no other word that both denotes and connotes the impression of him that exists in my mind. His face exudes a radiance that I have seen in few others. His movements reflect the grace and dignity, the meekness and humility of a true saint. His conversation nearly always has as its theme our students and our school. In short, Mr. Michael Mulligan exhibits those qualities of the type of person about whom Superior General Pedro Arrupe S.J. has written and those qualities having been instilled in him by the educators at St. Joseph’s Preparatory School have, in turn, been a force in our school and have caused me to apply the aforementioned adjective, normally reserved for the faithful departed, to the impression he has made upon myself and others. Mr. Mulligan lives the principles he has been taught. Because of this I here pay him my respects. He, unlike many less fortunate human beings, is at peace.
Mr. Mulligan has been endowed with the ability to personify the qualities that are most admirable among former Preppers. As much as I continue to admire him and those like him, however, I am disturbed by a recent experience I have had with a Prep alumnus. Over the Thanksgiving holiday this year I had a rather eye-opening encounter with a Prep graduate that has led me to conclude that my generalizations about the idealism of those whom St. Joseph’s Prep sends out into the world need to be re-evaluated.
My brother Brendan, his spouse, Kathleen, and their lovely little Brigid treated me to a splendid Thanksgiving in the true sense of the word. My work with the poor and disadvantaged in the Bronx has given me a real appreciation for this American tradition. Myself and my family have so much for which to be thankful, so many blessings which we need to recall and for which we need to be truly grateful in those quiet times when we put ourselves in the presence of God and we allow Him to come into our hearts, especially when one sees and works with those who have not been equally blessed and when one compares oneself with those hearty pioneers who ardently gave thanks to their Creator, Provider, and Savior after having survived that first winter in their newly found home in Massachusetts. Before our meal, Brendan, Kathleen, Brigid, and I attended mass at Saint Bernadette’s Church in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. What a joy it was to watch young Brigid, that young white soul so close to God, carry the homemade bread her father had baked up to the altar to be blessed! Her attitude was not unlike that of the statue of the young Saint Bernadette kneeling before Our Lady outside of the Church. I couldn’t help but be moved by that lovely piety. Afterwards, I must confess, I indulged in a gluttonous second helping of turkey. (Soon the young women at Aquinas will be calling me La Gordita!)
The Friday evening after Thanksgiving has traditionally been set aside for the Homecoming Dance of St. Joseph’s Preparatory School. I had not planned to go. Normally I do not attend such gala social events. However, I allowed my brother to easily talk me into joining him in revisiting his alma mater. With a mixture of apprehension due to my being unaccustomed to such events and a strange kind of excited anticipation the like of which I cannot recall as having had for some time, I left for the school for which I have felt so much admiration for as long as I can remember.
In the past, Saint Joseph’s Prep has entertained its students, parents, alumni, and friends in Philadelphia’s fashionable Center City hotels. During my youth the affair was held perennially at the well-known Bellevue Stratford. This hotel with its Old World elegance is inextricably tied to the memories of my young womanhood, of the Homecoming Dance and of SJP itself. (Of course, these were the days before Legionnaire’s Disease.) Other hotels have hosted the Preppers et alia since then but no venue has been able to replace the Bellevue in my mind and heart and in the minds and hearts of many others. This year the Prep tested out a new facility for its annual soiree ¾ itself! SJP opened its doors on Friday night, November 26th to welcome home “The Prep Family.” This made my coming home even more significant and disturbing than I would have anticipated. I was to socialize with old friends and acquaintances in the very hallowed halls of the Prep! Also, I was to see the contrast between the opulence of those halls and the devastation of the surrounding ghettoes of North Philadelphia. Although I must say the devastation pales in comparison with that of the South Bronx, I was, nevertheless, moved by reflecting on the lives of the poor, marginalized people who live in the rundown, three-story rowhouses by which we drove. I experienced some guilt over the fact that I was going to enjoy the company of the wealthy, the educated, the gay, in the midst of such poverty, ignorance, and despair. My mind entertained a notion of what it would have been like to throw open the doors of St Joe’s Prep in a magnanimous gesture of personhood for others to the poor of North Philly but then thought better of this bit of whimsy. The poor will always be with us, I remembered. I did pray for them, though, silently, as my brother and Kathleen chatted over the chattering disc jockey and his rock and roll Hot Hits. The guilt did not leave me readily. It clung to me and cast doubts upon my soul as to whether my going to the Homecoming was right. After all, hadn’t I just enjoyed a simple Thanksgiving during which I thanked God for all I have and prayed for those who are less fortunate? Now I was about to enjoy festivities that could be called nothing less than decadent while surrounded by the homes of the destitute. Still, this school, despite the inequity of material goods it and its beneficiaries possessed, had produced Michael Mulligan and countless other persons for others like him. Perhaps what did not make sense to my feeble mind was somehow reconciled in the Mind of the Divine. Besides, I couldn’t very well have gotten out of the car and gone home alone, especially from that neighborhood. For the moment, I abandoned my feelings of culpability and allowed myself to celebrate the blessings of the good people with whom I was about to be surrounded.
As we climbed the stairs leading to the main entrance of the school, I was struck by the school shield displayed above the doors. It is the Prep’s “coat of arms,” if you will. The upper left quadrant shows the stripes of the House of Loyola. Two wolves sharing a cauldron of food are depicted in the upper right quadrant, representing hospitality (a fitting quadrant for this particular evening, I thought.) In the lower left quadrant is the Lily of Saint Joseph, symbol of purity. The lower right quadrant contains a radiant circle inside of which are the Greek capital letters Iota, Eta, and Sigma, the first three letters of the name of Our Lord and Savior in Greek. Above these letters and inside the radiant circle is a cross, and, below the letters, still inside the round enclosure, are three nails. These are to remind us of the suffering of Our Lord because of our sins. This last quadrant is the symbol of the Society of Jesus. Below the arms are the initials of the Jesuit motto, A.M.D.G. (Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam, For the Greater Glory of God.) These are wonderful arms and motto in my opinion. The seal calls to mind the great Spanish founder of the Society of Jesus, Saint Ignatius de Loyola, reminds us of our Christian duty to give and share as persons for others, calls us to be pure and chaste, and reminds us of the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ which is the cornerstone of our faith and which, I believe, has inspired many of the young men who have crossed through the very same portal that I was then crossing to become persons for others. I thought of Michael Mulligan, a young lad of fourteen years, looking smart, perhaps, in a new suit and tie given him by his parents, entering this building for the first time and wondered how many other fine Catholic young men were inspired to live lives of service by Saint Joseph’s Preparatory School.
At any rate, the atmosphere inside was quite festive. I imagine that anyone who did not have the holiday spirit before entering the Prep on that night quickly got in the mood of the season when that person arrived inside the Prep. The tapping of stepping dress shoes, the quiet murmur of casual conversation, occasional outbursts of hearty laughter, and faint, distant Big Band music were the sounds that greeted my ears upon entering. Men and women appropriately bedecked for the occasion stood in pairs and in larger groups conversing and sipping from their drinks. The foyer was beautifully decorated with illuminated Christmas trees surrounded by a myriad of gaily-decorated boxes of every size.
My brother politely offered to get drinks for the three of us and disappeared. I surveyed the foyer and glanced up toward the second and third floor galleries. I then turned my gaze toward the groups of young people. I tried to imagine myself in the place of the youthful and beautiful high school young women who wore corsages or carried roses given them by amorous young men from the Prep. Oh, to be in one of their places, to feel the first stirrings of nubile young womanhood rushing through me as if in celebration of God’s nature, and to wear lipstick, makeup, carefully selected lacy undergarments, dresses, and jewelry, to receive and wear flowers to enhance my appearance and symbolize beauty, fertility, and the awakening of the spiritual and physical capacity for love! Oh, to be in that first flowering, that radiant evanescent flowering I had witnessed (and envied) so often in my students at Aquinas! Oh, how wonderful each young woman around me must feel, I thought, to be young, attractive, and in the arms of a Prepper!
“This is nice,” remarked my sister-in-law.