As we begin a new school year at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, I feel grateful, hopeful, and renewed in purpose.
This morning, we welcomed 101 first-year students, the Class of 2030, to Cristo Rey Jesuit. Watching our newest students enter our doors is a powerful reminder of why we are here. Each young person arrives with gifts yet to be fully discovered, possibilities yet to be imagined, and a family that has entrusted us with something precious: their hopes for their child’s future.
Our schools are needed now more than ever.
Our families send us their very best, and they are counting on us for results. They expect us to prepare their children for college, careers, and lives of purpose. That responsibility is both a privilege and a sacred trust.
Yet, as a Catholic and Jesuit school, our responsibility extends beyond what our students will accomplish. We are equally concerned with who they will become. We are called to accompany young people as they discover their gifts, deepen their faith, develop their intellect, pursue justice, and discern how God may be calling them to serve others.
As I enter this school year, I am increasingly convinced that formation is essential to sustaining our mission.
Formation is not simply another program or initiative. It is how we continually remind ourselves who we are, why we exist, whom we serve, and ultimately, whose mission this is. And formation is not reserved for our students. All of us—faculty and staff, trustees, families, alumni, partners, and those entrusted with leadership—must continue to be formed by the mission we have been called to serve.
This feels particularly important as Cristo Rey Jesuit celebrates 20 years of Purpose and Impact.
We stand on the shoulders of people who had the courage to imagine something extraordinary for the young people of Baltimore. Twenty years ago, our founders responded in faith to a need and believed deeply in what was possible. Thousands of students and families later, we can see the fruits of that commitment.
But an anniversary should invite us to do more than look backward.
In the Ignatian tradition, gratitude leads to discernment. We give thanks for what has been, pay careful attention to where God is moving in the present, and courageously ask: What is being asked of us now?
That question will be important as we consider the next 20 years of Cristo Rey Jesuit.
The world our students are entering is changing rapidly. Technology, artificial intelligence, higher education, and the workplace will continue to evolve. The needs of Baltimore and our families will change. The challenges confronting young people may look different from those we faced when our school opened its doors.
Our mission, however, must remain our compass.
The next 20 years will require the same courage, imagination, faith, and willingness to discern that brought Cristo Rey Jesuit into existence. We must honor the traditions and values that have sustained us while remaining open to the new ways God may be inviting us to serve our students and families.
I enter this school year excited about our mission, confident in our team, and renewed in faith about what lies ahead. My hope is that we will continue to form one another as companions in this shared mission and recognize that every member of our community has a role in carrying it forward.
Perhaps that is one of the great invitations before us this year: not simply to know our mission, but to experience it, discern it, and allow it to form us.
St. Ignatius reminds us:
“For it is not knowing much, but realizing and relishing things interiorly, that contents and satisfies the soul.”
— St. Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises
As we begin this new school year, may we be grateful for the first 20 years, attentive to God’s movement among us today, and courageous in discerning what is possible for the next 20.
The mission continues. And together, we are being formed for what comes next.
Viva Cristo Rey!
Walter D. Reap, Sr., President
Cristo Rey Jesuit High School -Baltimore
