Good morning. 

Welcome to the 2024-2025 school year at St. Christopher’s School. What a glorious morning it is for us to gather as one community to officially commence a new school year together. I want to welcome all of you—students, faculty, staff, and parents—to this beautiful campus, to this joyful worship service, and to this celebration of a united Saints community, one that shares a mission to know, love, and celebrate boys—all types of boys, and especially each of the 1,018 unique ones under our care this school year.

Let’s take a moment and recognize our Senior and Kindergarten classes, the Class of 2025 and the Class of 2037, respectively, who just processed in together, following tradition while demonstrating the remarkable growth that takes place on our campus over 13 or even 14 years. Will you please join me in recognizing our Senior and Kindergarten boys and their families?

I want to thank our three chaplains and Mr. Covington for their service this morning, as well as our student leaders Bryce, Charlie, and Liam, and I want to welcome the president of Church Schools in the Diocese of Virginia, Mr. Henry Broaddus, who is here with us this morning. Will you please join me in thanking all of these individuals for their service and leadership?

Seniors, this is your year to lead the St. Christopher’s community. Some of you have been part of this community for over a decade, watching other classes lead before you, waiting for your turn, while others joined us more recently in the Middle or Upper School. Regardless of when you came to this community, it is yours now and you are a vital part of it. In many ways, you are the head and the heart of the body that is St. Christopher’s.

Over the next 10 months, seniors, I encourage you to lead this community with positivity, passion, and integrity. If you do so, this will be an outstanding year together, and your legacy as a class will be firm. Bryce, you did a great job of setting the tone this morning and conveying a powerful message to your brothers and to the entire Saints community. Well done.

Speaking of the Saints community, for all the new students, faculty, staff, and parents out there, welcome to St. Christopher’s and to our Saints Nation. It is a powerful and tight-knit collection of some 9,000 Saints students, faculty and staff, parents, grandparents, alumni, and friends.

Among those 9,000 Saints, there is a wide range of backgrounds, beliefs, races, religions, life experiences, and worldviews. Diversity—difference—in all forms, is a beautiful and powerful thing. It can make the mundane dynamic, the static effervescent. Diversity is a good thing, a great thing, in schools and in communities. We are a better and stronger Saints Nation for our many differences.

But, in naming and celebrating our wonderful differences we should not lose sight of the many things that unite us—our love of this community and our boys, in particular, but also our shared values of honor and integrity, of pursuit of excellence, and community and brotherhood. Indeed, there is far more that unites us, that makes us stronger together, than there is that divides us.

As we emerge from a tumultuous summer of historic political events, and as we enter a fall with an intense and competitive presidential election, please know these three things—

If the Saints can lead the way with this powerful but simple concept, our city, state, nation, and world will be better for it.

At this service a few years ago, when my wife, Mrs. Lecky, was serving as a substitute teacher in the Lower School, at about this point in my remarks, an intrepid 1st grader leaned over to her and said, “Mrs. Lecky, who is this guy and when is he going to stop talking?”

I think of that little guy, now in 3rd or 4th grade, every time I offer remarks at this service, so, mercifully for him and for you, I will conclude with this.

As Charlie shared in First Corinthians, “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.” I say, so it is with our Saints Nation—many parts, each different and valuable, all contributing to a greater and unified body.

As we enter a new school year committing, I pray, to respect the dignity of every human being, know that the very word “dignity” comes to us from Latin origin, meaning “worthy.” Let us respect the very dignity, the very worth, each of us brings to this community, and know that each of you, every single one, is worthy in the eyes of a loving God and as a member of this diverse and beautiful Saints community. Let’s have a great year, together. Amen.