Building Genuine Connection

McNicholas Students Work,

and Love During Glenmary ServiceLearning Retreat in Appalachia

BY ANNE JONES

During a six-day service immersion retreat, 12 seniors from Archbishop McNicholas High School visited eastern Tennessee to serve the rural poor and build a community both among themselves and with the people in the Appalachian Mountains.

This marks the 41st year that McNicholas traveled to Appalachian areas in conjunction with Glenmary Home Missioners, a Catholic organization dedicated to serving the poor and establishing a Catholic presence in rural areas of the United States.

Retreat leader and McNicholas Director of Mission & Ministry, Jeff HutchinsonSmyth, said, “It was so powerful to be back at Joppa Mountain and to introduce our young people to the amazing work of Glenmary. It is a joy and a privilege to help them to witness the face of our Church in a context that’s very different from what many McNick students experience daily, even though we’re only two states away.”

Managers live and work with volunteer groups at the Glenmary House on Joppa Mountain. During their week on “Toppa Joppa,” students worked hard, chopping and delivering firewood to neighbors in need; cleaning and landscaping at the two mission parishes in Grainger and Union counties; playing with children, painting, and powerwashing at Kingswood Children’s Home; maintaining trails and prayer spaces at Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center; and completing multiple renovation and maintenance tasks for community members.

Senior Bella Mastruserio felt a unique joy and peace in actively serving the community, “Encouraging one another while working on the more difficult tasks, doing a small chore around the house when no one else is looking and getting to know the members of the community we had the opportunity to serve were just a few ways that I saw this group bonded together during this special time in our lives.”

“It was especially powerful for me to witness key moments during which the seniors present took a genuine ownership of their faith,” Hutchinson-Smyth said. “Being with those 12 seniors helped to renew my sense of hope for what is to come in our school and in our Church.”

First offered to McNicholas seniors in 1981, the experience was started by now-retired theology teacher Mr. John Norman. Kay Clear Jabin ‘82, mother of senior Maria Jabin, attended the first Appalachian Retreat to the Glenmary Farm in Vanceburg, KY.

Mrs. Jabin said, “I have very fond memories of my trip back in 1981…I think many of us were humbled by the resilience of the families we met and how content they were despite their poverty. It was also an opportunity to spend time with classmates that I didn’t know very well and to see a side to them that wasn’t always visible during school hours.”

Mastruserio left the mountain with a profound sense of calm and connection with her surroundings. “This time served as a great reminder that true fulfillment only comes with disconnection from the fast-paced environment of everyday life, and instead allowing yourself to reconnect with nature and build genuine human connection,” she said. “After being back home for a little over a week, I now see the moments in life where it’s important to slow down and find the space to feel deep gratitude for your surroundings.”

Hutchison-Smyth is grateful for the opportunity to lead students on such a powerful faith experience. “This retreat epitomizes the commitment to compassionate leadership that our students come to embrace over the course of their time at McNick. Spending a week with grounded, salt-ofthe-earth people who wake up each day and put their faith and their love into action in humble, yet powerful, ways is inspiring to me.”

Mastruserio added, “I have felt the light of Christ in the love from my classmates who went with me on this retreat, who I know will continue to spread that love and joy that comes from serving one another with the rest of the McNick community.”

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CATHOLIC SCHOOLS Transforming

HEARTS & SOULS

BY ALLEGRA THATCHER

Jacob Schmiesing

“I was six years old when I first wrote, ‘I want to be a priest,’ in the same sentence as ‘I want to be a fighter pilot or a dump truck driver,’” said II Theology seminarian Jacob Schmiesing.

It wasn’t until years later, after experiencing the liturgy and sacraments at Lehman Catholic High School in Sidney, that Schmiesing realized the priestly vocation might actually be his. He was home-schooled before attending Lehman.

“My time at Lehman definitely influenced a major range of my later activities: soccer, chemistry, priests, close friends … it set me up for the next several years in a positive way in every regard,” he said. And it was chaplain Father Jim Riehle’s daily presence that inspired his vocation.

“More so than anything else, it was seeing Father Riehle there, day in and day out, getting to know a diocesan priest on a personal level, and the example he set… He showed all the good sides of what a diocesan priest in a high school setting should be.”

Schmiesing began praying the Liturgy of the Hours regularly in the school chapel from a book his grandparents gave him. It was there that he experienced consistent adoration of the Blessed Sacrament for the first time. “I was pretty aware at the time that it was a really good place to be, and the good things it was doing for me,” he said.

During his senior year of high school, Father Riehl gifted Schmiesing the book To Save a Thousand Souls, which, paired with a visit to Bishop Simon Brute College Seminary in Indianapolis, solidified the priesthood as a real option for him.

He first detoured to Franciscan University in Steubenville where he earned a chemistry degree, pouring himself into his craft—and studying philosophy. He says he learned valuable lessons and grew abundantly while there, returned to daily Liturgy of the Hours while studying abroad as a junior and determined shortly before graduation that God was calling him to discern priesthood at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary.

Tony Sanitato

Tony Sanitato, a III Theology seminarian who will be ordained to the transitional diaconate in spring 2023, also found the path to priesthood through influence from his earlier education. He attended St. Ursula Villa from Kindergarten through eighth grade. Some earliest memories of his faith center on altar serving during those school years and the joy he experienced at serving beside a priest. Similar to Schmiesing, he was inspired by his school chaplain’s consistency.

“Altar serving is a fertile ground in which the Lord plants seeds,” he said. “The Lord might give you many fond memories to look back on based on enjoying serving, especially if you’re gifted with a priest that you see over the course of your time at the school.”

Sanitato also attributes to a junior high religion teacher a consistent and “transformational” role in his path: “He was a tangible witness of faith meaning something to the point of the legitimacy of the truth—just by the passion he brought to the classroom each day.”

This influenced Sanitato’s perspective of his faith. He went on to attend St. Xavier High School, where a heart for service is key and the motto is “Be a man for others.” “We reflected upon the faith challenging you to a way of life … it’s not just an activity, and therefore the demands are going to be all the more that which affects your daily life,” he said.

The camaraderie he experienced from the community of brothers set him up well for the seminary life of community prayer, study and recreation. He reflected on what a gift it is to currently have an abundance of prayer time and community life, which was tendered in his younger days and has now come full circle. Although Sanitato attended a public university for supply chain management and marketing, he eventually found a call to seminary and priesthood.

He described the interlocking between his two Catholic school experiences as a “gift from God.”

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