He is Risen! Greetings from the Headmaster.

Friends,

Happy Easter! He is Risen! I pray that the Lord’s resurrection gives you peace and strength amidst this crazy year.

It’s been wonderful to speak with a few of you since I’ve been hired. There is an incredible amount of energy and excitement around our school and I’m looking forward to building a vibrant community in the Metro area! As many of you have asked about my background and story, I thought I would share a little bit about myself in this post. Hopefully, I will see some of you at the upcoming ‘Coffee with the Headmaster’ this Saturday (4/10) at The Roasterie Woodside Café! (10-11:30am at 2250 W 47th Pl, Westwood, KS 66205)

My story begins in a small town in rural Eastern, Oregon. With only a thousand people, the town of Heppner revolves around high school sports and survives on wheat farming and cattle ranching. Like many other young Catholics, my days were filled with serving at mass, working on my grandparents farm, and playing sports. While my family were solid Catholics and I excelled at school, sports unfortunately became my idol and the center of my life. This led me to take a basketball scholarship to a small university in western Oregon. There, I was shocked to experience a culture completely different from anything I’d ever known. The aggressively secular environment challenged me at every level, from the immoral ‘locker-room’ culture to the atheist professor ridiculing my faith in the classroom. Thankfully, God provided me with a friend who introduced me to GK Chesterton (seriously!) and his Everlasting Man and Orthodoxy provided me with the intellectual confidence to remain Catholic and persevere in my faith. I was also blessed by a Church being right across the street from my dorm and their adoration chapel quickly became my sanctuary. It was not long before I realized I was not in the right place and, since our diocese needed priests, I decided to enter the seminary to see if the Lord was calling me to the priesthood.

This post would be too long if I detailed the long journey through seminary (I was there almost three years), but suffice it to say that while I discerned I was called to marriage and the lay vocation, I knew I was still called to teach and spread the Gospel. So after spending a year driving combine and working on ‘the ranch,’ I left for Steubenville to get a Masters in Theology and study with Scott Hahn. From there, the Lord has opened doors and led me on an incredible adventure! From introducing me to my beautiful wife Katie, to adopting our eldest daughter, living in sunny south Florida, to moving to Belgium and traveling Europe.

Through all my experiences and travels, one thing has become clear to me: we must prepare our children better for the culture that awaits them. The environment that will confront our sons and daughters is incredibly hostile, much more so than when I was younger, just ten to fifteen years ago. And after my experience at KU, I am convinced that we need to be laying firmer foundations at an earlier age. We must reach our children in junior high and high school and provide the ‘solid food’ of our intellectual heritage, as Bishop Barron is constantly saying. Grace builds on nature. You cannot trust in God, or have faith, if you do not know that God exists. Without a firmer foundation in the Catholic faith and worldview, many young people are at risk for being swept away amidst the confusion and false charms of the world.

I do not mean to come off as a crazy alarmist shouting that the sky is falling. God is still in control and there are many positive signs of life in the Church. Yet the reality is that young people are leaving the Church in droves and something has to be done. I am convinced that the Chesterton Academy model, grounded in the classical tradition and permeated with the Catholic faith, is part of the solution. I am confident that this approach will help prepare our children not just for admission to college and career success, but for their ultimate destiny to become the joyful saints God created them to be.

I look forward to meeting you all in the coming weeks and months!

In the joy of the Risen Christ,

Dr. Luke Murray