2025 Catholic Schools Week Supplement
A question and a challenge are shared as archbishop connects with seniors at Mass
A choir composed of seniors from Catholic high schools across the archdiocese sings during a Mass with Archbishop Charles C. Thompson at St. Malachy Church in Brownsburg on Dec. 4. (Photo by John Shaughnessy)
By John Shaughnessy
Archbishop Charles C. Thompson began with a question—and a hint of a challenge—as he shared his homily with 1,200 Catholic high school students from across the archdiocese.
The question concerned two points: how their senior year is going, and whether the younger students at their schools are listening to them and following their direction.
“The reason I ask that question is I’ve been a high school chaplain in three different high schools, and I was the pastor of large parishes that had grade schools,” the archbishop said during his Mass with the seniors at
St. Malachy Church in Brownsburg on Dec. 4. “And I’m convinced that the school year goes according to the upper class.
“If it’s grade school, it’s the eighth-grade class. If it’s high school, it’s the senior class. That class sets the tone of the year—not the principal, not the president, not the teachers, not the priest, not the chaplain, not the coaches. The senior class always sets the tone for that year. So, if you’re having a good year, it’s a good sign of your leadership. And if its’s not such a good year, you might ask yourself, ‘What could I do better to be a part of that?’ ”
Archbishop Thompson then tied the students’ experience in their senior year to the Gospel for that day, the miracle of the loaves and fishes on a mountain setting (Mt 15:29-37).
“Great things happen on mountains. Your senior year is kind of a mountain top. Soon you will have prom and graduation,” he told the seniors. “You seniors set the tone in your mountain moments. What graces and gifts are given by you? It’s not what we get, but what we give. Jesus made that very clear to the Apostles.”
Before the miracle of the loaves and fishes happened, the Apostles saw the problem of trying to feed all the people, but Jesus saw that moment as an opportunity, the archbishop noted.
“He sees an opportunity to show even more fully how God breaks into the human condition, into our lives. Not only does Jesus see an opportunity for the people, he sees an opportunity for the disciples. Jesus doesn’t perform this miracle on his own. He has the disciples participate. Have them be seated. Pass out the food. It’s a very eucharistic theme here. He took the bread, blessed it and broke it and gave it to them.
“To give of ourselves, in his name, in service to others. Jesus wants us to participate in the moment, in the event.”
To follow that call of Jesus, the archbishop told the seniors they have to come down from the mountaintop moments of life and bring the everyday blessings of life to the people that God puts in their lives.
“You can’t sit on the sidelines,” he said. “In your schools, in your communities, in your families, in your churches and parishes—how do we participate in the miracles that continue to happen in our midst today? How do we continue to recognize and see not how the world sees but how God sees?
“Not to see problems but opportunities. Not to see someone to despise, fear or reject, but how to see an opportunity for dialogue, for listening? If it doesn’t come from you, where does your school get that leadership, that opportunity to show others how to live and be in a Christ-like way?”
Noting that Pope Francis has designated 2025 as a jubilee year with the theme of encouraging people to be “pilgrims of hope,” Archbishop Thompson encouraged the seniors to embrace that call in their lives.
“As pilgrims of hope, let us help others be led to that mountain top experience of encounter with the sacred, with the divine,” he said. “[Let’s] open ourselves to being his disciples, his pilgrims, being leaders not just when we’re seniors, not just when we’re on the top, but day in and day out—by simply being true to our values, to our character, to our virtues, to what it means to be Christ-centered people, people of God.”
The archbishop ended his homily with this request to the seniors, “Never take for granted the miracles that God can work in your lives.”
The homily resonated with seniors. So did the opportunity to share the Mass with the archbishop and their fellow seniors from across the archdiocese.
“We’re sharing the same experience together,” said Dionte Greathouse, a senior at Father Thomas Scecina Memorial High School in Indianapolis. “And it’s amazing to have the archbishop here. He’s pretty high up. Having someone like that being able to come and show us grace, I feel that’s very loving and important.”
Stella Huber was among the seniors from Our Lady of Providence High School in Clarksville who made the two-hour bus trip both ways to participate in the Mass.
“We’re so blessed to be with all the other seniors in the archdiocese and unite for the Mass, which is our greatest form of prayer,” said Stella, a member of St. Mary-of-the-Knobs Parish in Floyd County. “I think it makes it even more special that the archbishop is here.
“For me, he confirmed all of us. And he’s our leader. So for us, as we’re going from high school to college, we’re so blessed to be in communion with each other and have this send-off for us.” †
