As about 1,250 students at Our Lady of Good Counsel High School in Olney, Maryland gathered in the Kane Center for an opening school Mass celebrated by Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory on Aug. 29, they were united not only by the blue Oxford shirts they wore and their tan slacks or skirts, but also by the handcrafted bracelets on their wrists bearing the word “TRUST.”
Near the ceiling of the gymnasium were banners for championships in many sports, but also five banners reflecting the values emphasized at Xaverian Brothers Sponsored Schools including Good Counsel – simplicity, humility, compassion, zeal and trust.
Greeting the students before the Mass, Izzy Magyar, a senior at Our Lady of Good Counsel, noted that each year, the school chooses one of those values “to be our guiding light in all that we do,” and the value for the 2024-25 school year there is “trust.”
“The Xaverian Brothers define trust as ‘total confidence in our God and our brothers and sisters in Christ.’ It is a meeting place of faith, courage, heart and mind, and it allows people to grow in faith despite life’s difficulties,” she said.
Moments earlier, Tom Campbell, Good Counsel’s principal who is a 1993 graduate of the coeducational Catholic high school, noted that students gather there during the school year for pep rallies, assemblies, presentations and sporting events, “but there is no greater purpose for us to gather in this space than to celebrate the liturgy, to celebrate the Eucharist.”
That point was underscored in Magyar’s remarks to her fellow students. She said the Mass offered an opportunity for Catholic students and those of other faiths to praise and thank God.
“Our diversity is our strength and to come together at Mass is our greatest opportunity to give thanks and grow together as a community,” she said.
The Good Counsel senior added, “For me, Mass is a time of reflection and it is when I am reminded I am not alone in my life journey, but that I am also part of something so much greater than myself.”
The bracelets they wore offer a reminder “we are better together and the only way we will build our community and grow in our faith is to lean into one another, trusting and faithful,” Magyar said.
Before the Mass, Cardinal Gregory was given one of the bracelets to wear. As the student choir led the singing of the gathering song, “All are Welcome,” the cardinal processed to the altar following Conventual Franciscan Father Tom Lavin, the school’s chaplain who concelebrated the Mass.
“We gather at the beginning of the new school year filled with hope, with joy and with some trepidation, but also with great confidence and trust in God’s mercy and His love,” Cardinal Gregory said.
In his homily, the cardinal reflected on Jesus’s parable of the talents in the reading from the Gospel of Matthew at that Mass. Cardinal Gregory said some students may use their talents to shine in the classroom or to star in sports, or simply to offer a spirit of joy and trust to their community, or to make fellow students feel welcome.
He noted, “You at the beginning of the school year have to figure out, ‘What am I going to do with the talents that God gave me?... Am I going to use them for others?’”
Wearing red vestments for the Mass of the Holy Spirit, the cardinal concluded his homily by encouraging students to “ask the Holy Spirit to guide us in the use of the gifts we have been given.”
Moments later, the intentions offered included a prayer “for a good school year filled with blessings.” The cardinal prayed, “Loving Father, bless this new school year, may it bring us closer to you.”
Cardinal Gregory also offered a special blessing for the “Trust” bracelets worn by the Good Counsel students, teachers and staff. The bracelets were handmade by artisans in a village in El Salvador, where Good Counsel seniors have been making service trips for the past 15 years.
The Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion at the Mass included teachers and also Tom Campbell, the school’s principal, and John Ciccone, the president of Our Lady of Good Counsel.
In remarks after Communion, Ciccone highlighted the example of Blessed Carlo Acutis, an Italian teenager who liked to play soccer, the saxophone, and video games like Halo and Super Mario. Blessed Carlo Acutis – who was skilled at creating websites and using digital media and was devoted to Eucharistic Adoration and the Mass – died in 2006 at the age of 15. Pope Francis recently approved a second miraculous healing attributed to the intercession of Blessed Carlo Acutis, paving the way for his canonization, possibly next year.
“Carlo will become the saint who lived his life closest to ours… and he will be the first saint from the millennial generation,” Ciccone said. “…Some already refer to him as the patron saint of the Internet.”
Noting how Blessed Carlo Acutis integrated his faith with his talent in technology, Good Counsel’s president encouraged students to follow his example with their faith and talents.
“Carlo used his talents to share his faith and inspire others,” Ciccone said. He also emphasized how the future saint trusted in God, which is the Xaverian value that Good Counsel is focusing on this year.
Ciccone noted, “Carlo trusted in God from a young age and through his illness. This school year, (think about) how can you place your trust in God each day.”
The Good Counsel president also pointed out how Blessed Carlo Acutis showed care and compassion to others, bringing sleeping bags and meals to the homeless, but also using digital media to show care to people in far away locations.
“This school year, who can you use technology and social media to show compassion and care for others?” Ciccone asked the students.
Near the conclusion of his remarks, the school’s president noted, “We are all called to be saints.” Saints through history “learned to be holy in their own unique way… To be a saint, you need to be the best and the truest expression of who you are and who God calls you to be,” he said.
As the Mass ended, the student choir led the congregation in singing the “Xaverian Values Song,” as students sang and clapped along to the words that included, “It’s all about simplicity, humility, compassion, zeal and trust. We must remember, God has a plan for us.”
Afterward, several Our Lady of Good Counsel seniors who are Xaverian Brothers Sponsored Schools (XBSS) student leaders there were asked about what they thought about Cardinal Gregory’s message about using their talents, and also what it meant to them to start the school year by praying together as a school community.
Senior Noah Onyewu said that for him, a takeaway from the Mass was “you have to have confidence in your abilities to grow your talents and grow as a person, and use them (your talents) to help the world.”
Izzy Magyar, the student who had offered remarks before the Mass, said she appreciated the cardinal encouraging them to draw upon their talents and to give back to the community. The opening school Mass, she said, helped underscore that “we’re all here for one another.”
Several of those Good Counsel seniors reflected on the Xaverian value of trust that was emphasized at the Mass as that year’s guiding principle for their school, and was the word etched into leather on the center of the bracelets that they wore.
Jordan Hardie noted, “It is so important to have trust in one another and in God as you’re going through life.”
That point was echoed by Gabrielle Grayton, who said, “Putting faith in others and also putting trust in God is very important and serves as a lesson for me. It inspires me to carry out that value.”
Their classmate Sandyn Solozano added, “I’m excited trust is our value this year. I want to prioritize that, putting my trust in God and fulfilling that every day as a senior.”
After the Mass ended, Good Counsel’s seniors, juniors, sophomores and freshmen dispersed to their classes, returning to their academic work. Before the Mass started, Steven Strazza, who teaches computer science there, told the Catholic Standard that he will be teaching two new courses there this year, a class this fall on video game design, and a class in the spring on cyber security. A goal he has for students, he said, is that they “come out of my classroom knowing something they didn’t know when they walked in.”
