With prayers, blessings and fist-bumps, students, faculty and staff members at DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Maryland, celebrated its diamond anniversary on Sept. 9, 2021 with a special Mass on the same date that the all-boys Catholic school sponsored by the Trinitarian order held its first classes exactly 75 years earlier on Sept. 9, 1946.
Trinitarian Father James Day, DeMatha’s president and the main celebrant for the opening Mass for the 2021-2022 school year there, noted that due to the pandemic, it marked the first school-wide liturgy for students, faculty and staff since December 2019.
“This is a holy event, and we’re so happy to be together,” he told students just before the Mass.
He led students in saying “Happy birthday!” to their school, and said, “Seventy-five years ago, DeMatha started, and we are celebrating that.”
Wearing blue or red polo shirts – the school’s colors and the colors of the Trinitarian cross – DeMatha’s students filled the chairs and bleachers in the school’s Lt. (SEAL) Brendan Looney ’99 Convocation Center, named for a graduate who was killed in a Blackhawk helicopter crash in Afghanistan in 2010.
Looking out over the crowd of students, the priest said they reflected why DeMatha existed. Earlier that morning, he spoke about the Mass starting the school year and the anniversary celebration.
“That’s why we’re here, to help young men be faith-filled gentlemen scholars,” he said.
Before the Mass, Therman Hawkins III, a DeMatha senior and the president of its Student Government Association, referenced the coronavirus shutdown of school campuses that began in mid-March 2020 and led to months of online learning before students eventually returned to classes at the school.
“Finally after 18 long months of distance learning and hybrid classes, we’re able to come and pray together as a school community,” he said.
Moments earlier, the school offered its traditional welcome to freshmen, who were invited to stand, as fellow students applauded them. Then sophomores stood and were also greeted with applause, since the pandemic had prevented DeMatha from holding a schoolwide opening Mass last year where they would have been formally welcomed as freshmen.
DeMatha student altar servers led the opening procession for the Mass, as they walked down the center aisle carrying a large cross and candles. Behind the altar above a folded section of bleachers were banners with the words “DeMatha Today” and “DeMatha Forever.”
The four Trinitarian priests concelebrating the Mass included Father Day, marking his 25th year there; Father Damian Anuszewski of DeMatha’s Theology Department; Father Josh Warshak, who works in DeMatha’s Campus Ministry Office; and Father Binoj Mathew of the school’s Theology Department and English Department.
After the opening hymn, “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” Father Day noted, “We are here today because God has been faithful to us, and we are asked to be faithful to Him.”
He noted that morning’s Mass at the school named for the Trinitarian order’s founder, St. John de Matha, would be a time for the DeMatha school family to celebrate the gift of Catholic education offered there.
Later in his homily, the priest said when DeMatha held its first classes on Sept. 9, 1946, “75 years to this day,” 18 students assembled together in a room in what was then the monastery building, and they had fewer than five faculty members.
“Here we are 75 years later,” he said, pointing out that DeMatha now has 800 students, more than 100 faculty and staff members, and five buildings.
The Trinitarians had established a monastery in Hyattsville in the early 1930s, selecting that area because of its proximity to The Catholic University of America. They originally planned DeMatha as a minor seminary for young men studying for their order, but after parents in that area asked them to open their school to boys in that community, they expanded the school’s scope and it became a Catholic high school.
Emphasizing how important it was for the DeMatha community to gather together again that day for Mass, Father Day said, “Prayer is the very foundation of our school, and prayer needs to be the foundation of our lives.”
The school’s president noted that normally others would be invited to the opening Mass, including parents and board members, but this year’s opening Mass was for “just us” – the school’s students, faculty and staff.
“We pray together, we work together, we play together, and we look out for each other as brothers,” he said.
Then members of the senior, junior, sophomore and freshman classes took turns standing with their heads bowed and hands folded in prayer, as their classes were offered special blessings for the new school year. The prayer for seniors asked God to “continue to shape their minds and hearts, to know what you ask of them for the future.” The prayer for freshmen asked God to help guide them as DeMatha’s newest students to be men of prayer and action.
Faculty and staff members lined up to receive a special blessing and pins commemorating the anniversary year. Then the students and teachers were invited to hold their hands over their hearts as they sang the school song, “DeMatha Forever,” for their first time all together since 2019.
DeMatha’s students, teachers and staff wore face masks in accordance with COVID-19 safety guidelines for indoor gatherings, and after they prayed the Our Father together, Father Day said, “Now with a fist bump only, let us acknowledge each other with a sign of peace.”
Within the Convocation Center, the DeMatha community gathered for the Mass in the Morgan and Kathy Wootten Gymnasium, named for the school’s late Hall of Fame basketball coach and his wife, and banners there noted DeMatha’s basketball team over the years has won 22 Washington D.C. City Titles, 41 conference championships and six national championships.
The Voices of DeMatha choral group that led the singing at the Mass reflected another hallmark of the school – its nationally known music program, which 40 percent of its students participate in. DeMatha’s Wind Ensemble was named the top Catholic high school band in 18 out of 20 years by the National Catholic Bandmasters Association. DeMatha’s music program includes five concert bands, three choruses, three percussion ensembles, three string orchestras, two jazz ensembles, a pep band and a gospel choir.
Near the end of the Mass, a special 75th anniversary song for DeMatha was sung. Afterward before students headed back to classes at the school, DeMatha’s principal, Daniel McMahon, told them that the anniversary offered a special time to look back and to look forward.
The anniversary year’s events include an Oct. 24 Memorial Mass for John Moylan, who became DeMatha’s first lay principal and the first lay principal at a Catholic high school in the Archdiocese of Washington in 1968 and led the school for 32 years through a period of great expansion in its academic programs, extracurricular activities, student enrollment and facilities. Under Moylan’s leadership, DeMatha was named as a National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence by the U.S. Department of Education in 1984 and again in 1991. Moylan died on Jan. 15, 2021 at the age of 88.
Other events during DeMatha’s 75th anniversary year include homecoming on Sept. 30, an anniversary Mass celebrated by Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory on Nov. 12, and an anniversary gala on Jan. 28.
