Sanctorum Communio

Written by David Woods, English Faculty

Do we acquire wisdom only from personal experience? Are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes, fall into the same temptations, be surprised and distracted by the same Scylla and Charybdis as our forebears because wisdom only comes through trial-and-error?

At Pacifica, we have made a wager that genuine wisdom can be acquired by reflecting on the ideas and experiences of others—both the living and the dead. We believe, for example, that the lives of the men and women in scripture—righteous and unrighteous—are viable modes of imitation and warning we can incorporate in our own lives. This is what the writer of Hebrews means when he says “we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.”

But to receive wisdom from a cloud of such witnesses requires trust, which is another word for faith (pistis in the Greek). The church father, St. Anselm of Canterbury, described the Christian life as faith seeking understanding, a way of hearing, seeing, and living in
the world that was willing to trust the Spirit’s direction, through scripture and the guidance of Christian mentors.

When Pacifica was small, this kind of trust formed quickly with staff who regularly broke bread and shared their stories with students at lunch. As we have grown larger as a school, this is one thing our alumni beg us not to lose.

Teenagers, it turns out, want to know how to grow up, how to prepare for what is next before they are thrust into it. And though they may not always show it, they deeply desire to be mentored by adults they respect. At Pacifica, we know our teachers and staff have something profound to offer beyond their subject expertise: They have lives of genuine Christian faith. They are fellow travelers and can share honestly from their experiences about the challenges of responsibility and the joys of living lives with hope.

To make good on the sacred trust we built around the lunch table in Pacifica’s founding years, this year we introduced Mentor Lunches, where every student is given a staff or faculty mentor who will commit to breaking bread with them all year.

Mentoring senior boys this year meant I had the chance to reflect with them on their growth over the last four years—things they handled well, things they wished they handled better, risks they took, risks they wished they would have taken. We talked about the importance of spending time with their parents before they leave for college, what to look for in a spouse, what makes a man a good father, how to manage time responsibly, why it can be so difficult to trust in Christ’s forgiveness, and why Shohei Ohtani wearing Dodger Blue is proof of the sovereignty of God. We laughed, cried, and laughed some more. And we have committed to praying for each other and sharing new stories long after the graduation caps have flown.

None of us are meant to walk this life alone, and peer groups often share the same anxieties and blind spots, but the Lord in his wisdom has provided us a great cloud of witnesses from other times, places, and seasons of life, to see what we cannot see, to aspire to forms of life we have not yet lived. This is the Lord’s great kindness, a communion of saints, a treasury of witnesses that we ourselves can add to by living honest lives of faith before one another, spurring one another on for Christ and His Kingdom.