Fr. Bill Gore, an Oblate of St. Francis de Sales, graduated in 1959. That’s 67 years ago. But when I walked around the building today, I could imagine things as if they happened yesterday. Wow, how time flies!!! The last time I was up on stage was when I was on stage crew with Bro. Art, Remember VJ Bro. Art!!! And the last time in this auditorium was for a class Mass where Fr. Ed Conlin would lead us in singing.
When I came to North Catholic from St. Hugh’s (Masher and Tioga) in 1956, there wasn’t room for most of the freshman class in the “Big House” at that time. They had two annexes. St. Ann’s down on Lehigh Avenue, where St. Joe nuns taught the freshmen classes. The other annex St. Joachim’s up on Church Street where Oblate priests and scholastics (Oblate seminarians who were doing their two-year teaching practice), I was fortunate to go there. It wasn’t until years later that I learned it wasn’t Jo Ackim but Joacim. The way a Philly boy would say. The only time we came down here to the so-called “big house” was to take part in some activity. Well, you haven’t come here to hear about me.
We are here to celebrate a100-year anniversary of a building. But not really the building, but what happened in this building. In 1926, the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales came to Philadelphia to found Northeast Catholic High School for Boys, and for 84 years that institution, our high school, hallowed these halls.
Today, we gather to celebrate a building that has stood for 100 years – and to remember the years when it was so much more than brick, mortar, windows, and classrooms. A hundred years gives us pause. It invites us to stand quietly before this building, maybe across the street where Harbison Dairy was, and remember what it once held – the hopes of the young teenage boys, the steady guidance of teachers and coaches, and all the friendships that shaped our earliest understanding of belonging to something special.
For us, it was the place where we learned our lessons, made our friendships, got into a little trouble, and occasionally wondered why we had to be there so early in the morning. A hundred years is a remarkable milestone. But perhaps the greatest tribute to this old building is that, long after the last class left, this building still brings us together.
Today, we aren’t just remembering a school. We’re remembering a piece of our lives – and the people we were when we walked through those doors (at my time here NOT the front doors).
We came here as students, carrying books, lunch bags, homework, and perhaps a few excuses for why the homework wasn’t finished. We learned our lessons, survived some of our teachers, made lifelong friends, and discovered that school days really were the good old says – even if we didn’t realize it at the time.
This building saw us at our best, our worst, and probably a few moments our teachers would rather forget. It witnessed tests, report cards, school plays, sports, friendships, and countless trips down these familiar hallways, and crowded stairwells. At that time, we could not have known that someday you and I would look back and realize how important those ordinary days had been.
Even though Northeast Catholic School no longer exists, something of its spirit remains. It lives in the memories each one of us carries, in the friendships that survived all these years, and in the stories we are still telling one another.
When I was first asked to give the homily at this Mass, I didn’t realize it was going to be on All Saints Day. I said to myself, WOW what a perfect day to celebrate North Catholic. WHY?? Well, because it’s the purpose for which the school existed.
We all know of those great Saints. St. Francis de Sales, St. Joseph, St. Michael the Archangel, and some of the modern-day ones like St. Mother Theresa, or St. John Paul II. But today the church asks us to give thanks to God for all those other unnamed men and women, like you and I, who said Yes to Jesus Christ and lived their lives to the best of their ability.
In the Old Testament, Psalm 39 “In God’s world, we are a passing guest. A pilgrim like all our ancestors.” This is important because it reminds us that we are on a journey, just passing through. It is not our home. And as it says, we are pilgrims making our way home. One with God.
I don’t know how many of you still have your school ring. On the side of the ring, you find the top V+J, French for Live Jesus, and at the bottom “Tenui Nec Dimittam” “I’ve taken hold and will not let go.”
Think of all those thousands of North Catholic graduates; what is it that they have taken hold of and not let go? Could it be that today, when we celebrate all Northeast Catholic was about, we really are celebrating so many of those who have taken hold of “Live Jesus” and today are also celebrated as unnamed saints. They may have started out here as “teenage devils,” but what this school gave them was necessary to become a saint. St. Francis de Sales believed that God has called us to this state in life to fill a special need that no one else can accomplish. Do you really believe, as St. Francis de Sales says, that each one of us has been created for a unique purpose that no one else has been? I really believe that God sees a saint within each one of us. It started when God began to form us in our mother’s womb. The beginning of our pilgrimage at Psalm 39 tells us: “In the words of St. Francis de Sales, ‘A good vocation is simply a firm, and constant will to serve Almighty God in the way and in the places to which He has called us. Let us be what we are and be it well! That is what God wills for us.
This is what makes a saint:
Doing the ordinary, like caring for family, like listening and loving one another and sharing our love together; if we do these things extraordinarily, to the best of our ability, well then, we are giving glory to God, and we truly can be considered the family of Jesus. We call them saints. St. Francis says: “Great works do not always come our way, but every moment presents us with opportunities to do little ones with excellence.” And how many of those who have gone through these halls have done all the above and more after they left here. And then there are those who gave the ultimate, their lives for the service of our country. All the unnamed saints we remember today.
Though its classrooms have fallen silent, and its purpose has changed, the grace of what happened here has not faded. The building fulfilled its vocation for 84 years, shaping generation after generation. And in God’s quiet providence, nothing given in those years was ever lost. Every lesson, every kindness, every challenge that strengthened us continues to bear fruit in the lives we have lived since. And as I said, produced many unnamed saints we also honor today.
And as Psalm 39 said, you and I are on a pilgrimage to that same place as all those unnamed saints who went through these halls.
Anniversaries like this remind us that places become holy not by designation, but by the lives transformed within them and by what happened there. This old school remains part of our story because it helped to form the people we became. As we gather, may our hearts be filled not only with nostalgia, but with gratitude – for the teachers who guided us, the friends who walked beside us, and the unseen grace that carried us forward.
May this centennial celebration be a moment of blessing: a reminder that the foundations laid here still support us, and that the community, that family born in these halls continues to bind us together in memory, affection, and hope. May God be blessed by all we do today and the rest of our lives.
Fr. Bill Gore, OSFS