Dear Friends of Jesuit High School Sacramento:

St. Ignatius Loyola’s First Principle and Foundation summarizes the goal of life and the way to achieve that goal. St. Ignatius says “that we are created to praise, reverence and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save our soul.” These Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, including this principle and foundation, are ways to re ect on our daily human experience and be practical in our desire to pray, love, and serve throughout our lives as a path toward greater spiritual freedom. Ignatian Spirituality is the foundation of Jesuit Education.

Here at Jesuit High School, we use some central ideas from Ignatian Spirituality and Jesuit Education to express our desire for our school community: To Know, Love and Serve God! This theme expresses some hallmarks of the program of education and formation for our students. We hope our students will draw closer to God in their time at Jesuit. We invite them to know God better and to love God and others so much that the desire to serve in the world—to make it more just, humane, peaceful, and faith- lled—becomes the chosen way of life for our graduates as men for and with others.

“Connections and Service” is the theme we have chosen to highlight in this magazine issue. Life is all about relationships, and we have seen our students emerge from the last couple of years by once again putting their faith and relationships into action through service days, the JSN Ignatian Family Teach-In for Justice, the Summit on Human Dignity, and our Immersion Program. Our Visual and Performing Arts program has many talented students who connect with their audiences and excel through the creation of images, music, and performance. The coaches in our Athletic program connect not only to their student-athletes but to our entire community as they give countless hours to serve Jesuit. And, of course, the daily connection of our students and teachers in the classroom provides the capstone experience of learning and growing.

The broader Jesuit High School community reunited joyfully at our 50th Auction Gala. Parents of current students, Alumni, Alumni parents, and many faithful benefactors of Jesuit gave generously at a record-breaking level in support of our school. In late May, we celebrated 247 outstanding graduating seniors who now join the ranks of over 11,000 alumni, becoming part of a network that thrives on relationships and connections. We continue our efforts to connect with alumni and invite them back to campus and back to life at Jesuit. We especially encourage them to participate in our new Class Level Scholarship Program to help us meet the goal of doubling our Scholarship Endowment by 2028 to provide more financial assistance to more students in the future.

And finally, in this issue, as you see on the cover, we celebrate the connection of Alumni Chaplain Fr. Ed Harris, S.J., to Class of 1981 alumnus Tim Jeffries, his wife Mary Frances, and Tim’s beloved mother, Joyce. Fr. Harris and I recently visited the Jeffries family at their home in Scottsdale, Arizona. We celebrated these connections and relationships and acknowledged and thanked the Jeffries family for the incredible generosity over many years to the Scholarship Endowment.

We strive to help our students achieve these goals—to know, love, and serve—through our structured, creative, rigorous academic, co-curricular, spiritual, and religious programs. This program is rooted in the solid foundation of Catholic faith and education and the spirituality and educational philosophy of St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order and the primary architect of the 500-year-old tradition of Jesuit Education in schools and colleges throughout the world.

May God bless us all on our journey at Jesuit Sacramento. Together we renew our lives and our efforts “to know, love and serve” God and our fellow human beings in ways that call us deeper into faith, gratitude, respect, kindness, and generosity.

Rev. John P. McGarry, S.J., President