The Rev. Jim Michalski, left, the founding president of Jesuit Middle School, with a former principal, Tony Connelly, center, and the new president of what is now Jesuit Academy, the Rev. Tom Neitzke. Photo Credit: Omaha World-Herald

By late last week, the Jesuit Father Jim Michalski had worked his way down to his last few stacks of files.

He’s been working out of the library, having already turned over his office at Jesuit Academy to the school’s new president, the Jesuit Father Tom Neitzke.

But these few pieces of paper were it, the last of what he’s accumulated over his 15 years at the school, known until recently as Jesuit Middle School.

Michalski founded the boys school, which opened in 1996 at a renovated YMCA near 22nd and Lake Streets, after asking 115 leaders in north Omaha what the community needed. Too many young black males are being lost to the streets, they said. Education, they told him, was the answer.

But now, said Michalski, 69, it’s time for someone else to head the school, which last year enrolled 63 boys in fourth through eighth grades. He officially retired July 1 and will wrap up by the end of the week.

“Certainly I’ll miss the contact with the people,” he said. “But the day to day — it’s time.”

Looking back, Michalski and Tony Connelly, the school’s principal for six years, ticked off a list of things they’re proud of, signs that the school is working.

At the top? Ninety-eight percent of the school’s graduates finish high school on time. The past two classes, in fact, have hit 100 percent. Nationwide, 47 percent of black males graduate from high school. And all of Jesuit’s graduates have gone on to some kind of post-high school education or to the military.

“The fact that so many are finishing high school is the big thing,” said Connelly, who retired as principal a year ago. He has continued working at the school, recruiting new students and supporting graduates. He will continue in those roles as vice president of student affairs.

At the same time, students are living up to the school’s teachings about citizenship and service, as well as to its motto: “Advancing the hearts and minds of young men.”

A recently added initiative is a mentoring program that Michalski long had wanted and that Connelly started last year.

Michalski said the aim is to match incoming eighth-graders with mentors who will commit to them through high school. The school already has a full slate of mentors for next year, and some are reading books with the boys over the summer.

The program, he said, goes to the Jesuit principle of cura personalis, or working with people as individuals.

“Everybody deserves individual attention,” Michalski said, “not just those who can afford to have it.”

[Omaha World-Herald]

Jesuit Father Tom Neitzke, recently ordained in June, spent a summer two years ago in China working at a leprosarium. The journey to the remote Chinese village to stay among those suffering with leprosy and to understand their subsequent shunning by their community, Fr. Neitzke understood that there is much to learn from those among us who have the least. His reflections on the experience of being in China are below.

In the summer of 2008 I went to China with a group of Jesuits to learn about and experience Chinese history and culture. After spending a few weeks in Beijing, three of us were sent to a remote village in southwestern China to live and work with a community of lepers. As I prepared for the trip I was both excited and frightened as I had no idea what to expect.

I had never seen anyone with leprosy, and I had only heard about it from stories in the gospels or from the work of Mother Teresa. In the days before I left, I looked up Hansen’s Disease, as it is officially called, and read that I would not contract leprosy if I washed my hands, as it is spread in a similar way as the common cold. With that news I immediately put myself in charge of bringing the hand sanitizer.

As the group left Beijing and we began our long journey through mountainous and muddy roads I thought of all the ways to keep my hands in my pockets and avoid touching anyone at all costs, and I had sanitizer ready to go when needed. I was set! But if I have learned anything in my eleven years of formation it is that the best made plans usually fall apart and that God has a sense of humor!

As soon as we arrived at the leprosarium an elderly man, seeing me from a distance, walked out of the gate and grinning from ear to ear reached out his hand—a hand that was missing fingers and scarred and twisted from leprosy—with a joy in his eyes that I have rarely seen. Instinctively I reached out my hand and as we exchanged greetings in my limited Chinese I forgot about all the sprays, gels, and wipes, and experienced the touch of a man who would later tell us that he had been forced out of his village and shunned from his wife and children who he had not seen in thirty years. This man—a father, a brother, a son, and soon to be my new friend—left an incredible impression on me.

The people that lived at that leprosarium were not allowed to touch other people; society had taught them to stay far away from others and to avoid human contact. They were reminded of this daily as they went to get supplies and the nearby village children would throw stones at them as they walked down the road. This group of people had been taught never to approach or touch another human being, but for some reason when they saw us the first thing they did was reach out and embrace us.

It was during my time in China that my vocation as a Jesuit priest deepened, and I understood the call to go to the frontiers to help reconcile the world to Christ and especially to those who struggle the most in our fragmented world. This call for me, as a Jesuit priest, is to imitate Christ as one who is both pilgrim and laborer, and also as one who is missioned to be with people in order to share the light of the Gospel with them. I am humbled by the love and care that I have received by so many along the way, and I was fortunate enough to have someone show me how to imitate Christ in the man I met in China. In that moment, without him even knowing it, he exemplified the true meaning of priesthood and of Christ’s love by reaching out with affection and without fear in order to embrace my shaky and over-sanitized hand.