Last Sunday, families, faculty, and students gathered in the Hanley Center's Michael M. Boland, Jr. ’12 Arena for the annual President's Mass, marking the formal opening of Georgetown Prep's 238th academic year. Rev. James R. Van Dyke, S.J., celebrated Mass, commissioned this year's Senior Prefects in a special blessing ceremony, and welcomed the school community before the Parents' Club hosted a reception to continue the celebration together.

In his homily, Fr. Van Dyke reflected on the Gospel's account of Peter: a man who could recognize Christ as the Messiah, yet still resist what that truth would demand of him. It's a fitting way to open a year built around the theme of fortitude: the willingness, as Fr. Van Dyke put it in his opening-day letter, "to struggle even when we don't quite see the light at the end of the tunnel." Just as Peter needed time to grow into the weight of what he believed, our students are invited this year to carry their own crosses, their fears, their uncertainties, their humanity – not alone, but together, as brothers who love "all in," the way Christ first loved us.

We share his full homily below:

President’s Mass
Sunday, 30 August, 2026

Do not conform yourselves to this age
but be transformed by the renewal of your mind,
that you may discern what is the will of God,
what is good and pleasing and perfect. - Romans 12:2

 

“Get behind me, Satan”…Well, that’s a cheery way to begin a new year!

Now, I want to be very clear: there’s no hidden message to Georgetown Prep here.  These are just the regular readings of the day, the 22md Sunday of Ordinary Time in Year A.  They’re the same readings that 1.42 billion Catholics across the globe heard today in their native tongue at Mass.  I didn’t pick them.   Mr. Glennon didn’t pick them.  Not even Dr. Krambuhl picked them, although I wouldn’t put it past him, just to mess me up, you know.  No, they’re just the readings of the day.  And as I’ve prayed over them the past few weeks, I’ve come to think that maybe they are exactly what we need to hear today as we begin this school year together in prayer.

Context is always important.  Jesus has been traveling all over the countryside, preaching, teaching, healing, casting out demons, reconciling sinners, feeding the five thousand, walking on the water and inviting Peter to come for a stroll along with him – com’on out, Pete, he says, the wind and the waves are just fine!  And just before this, he’s chatting with his disciples and he asks them a question – the question we heard last Sunday at Mass: “Who do the people say that I am?”  “Some say John the Baptist come back, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.”  “But you,” he asks, “who do you say that I am?”  And Peter blurts out the truth: “You are the Messiah – the anointed one – the son of the living God.”  And that’s great because Peter got it right.  He’s been following Jesus every inch of the way, watching everything he does like a hawk, hanging on every word.  Good for him!  But he has no clue what that truth means.

And that’s why right after he gets it so right he gets it so wrong.  No, Lord – no, Jesus – you can’t show God’s love that way.  You can’t lay down your life for your friends.  You can’t do this to yourself.  You can’t do this to us.  You can’t do this to me.

I’ll be honest, I find it comforting – consoling – that Peter doesn’t get it.  After all, the fact that Jesus’ closest friend, a guy who’s been with him since the start, if Peter doesn’t have a clue what this all means, then when I get it wrong, when I get confused, when I get lost in my own head, maybe there’s hope for me yet.  Maybe there’s hope for us all.  Because we all make that same mistake; we think as man thinks, not as God thinks.  And in doing so we set our sights too low and invariably miss the mark.  We don’t let God be God for us.  We don’t let God be God-for-and-with-us. 

I will tell you that it’s hard to let God be God.  It’s hard to accept that Jesus actually laid down his life for me.  It’s not very comfortable to think that anyone would love me that much, or still less that it would be necessary for someone to lay down his life for me.  But God apparently thought so.  And God had that same thought for every single one of us in this room this evening – that it would be absolutely necessary to lay down his life for each one of us – you, me, all of us.  And, to be honest, that he’d do it all over again if he had to.  And why?  Because that’s what love does – it gives absolutely everything it has for the person it loves.  You parents – you know this.  We all do.  We may not always get it right.  We may be a little stingy or misinformed in our efforts at times.  But we know – we know – that there is only one way to love, and that’s to be all in.  And that’s what God wants to be for us in Jesus; God wants to be all in with us.  God wants to be all in for us.  And that means becoming completely and totally human, even to the grave, even through the worst torture and mockery and death that human beings can devise – the cross.  So that when we experience the worst we can experience, we can be certain – absolutely certain – that God is not afraid or ashamed or embarrassed to there with us.

Now, many of the guys have heard me say this before.  When we hear Jesus say that we have to pick up our cross, we think that we have to carry crosses because Jesus carried a cross – that this is some sort of mortifying thing that Christians do, a weird thing we put ourselves through.  But the truth is exactly the opposite.  The fact is that we all – each one of us – you, me, all of us – we all carry crosses.  It comes with being human.  There are the fears that we carry, the anxieties for ourselves and for the people we love.  There’s the uncertainty of the future and those questions we all ask: Am I going to be able to face it?  Am I going to be okay?  And, of course, there’s the reality of illness and weakness and even death.  And there’s the truth of our faults, our failings, our sins.  The truth is, we are human, all too human, as Friedrich Nietzsche, who doesn’t get quoted too often from Christian pulpits, correctly asserted, and our humanity can be a very heavy cross to bear.

And that is why Christ chose the cross, because he knew how much our crosses weigh us down.  Because he knew that we needed to know that God loves us even in our humanity, as fallible and weak as it can be.  Because he knew that we needed to know that God is not against us, but always for us, always with us, even when we are at our absolute worst.

My young Prep brothers, my Prep family, I want you to know that this year will be challenging.  Every year is.  But we can pick up those challenges, and we can help each other carry them.  We can be with and for each other not only at our best, but even when we are weighed down by the truth of our fallible and fickle humanity.  And when we do, we are thinking not as man does, but as God does.  We are loving or at least trying to – we are loving the way God loves – all in because that’s the only way to love.  And we are becoming exactly what he always hoped we would be – indeed what he created us to be – the imago Dei – that image and likeness of God that he called us in the beginning.  When we love the way he does – when we love all in – we are becoming the true sons and daughters of our Father ad maiorem Dei gloriam.

AMDG