Following the lead of the Commission on Research and Development of the Jesuit Secondary Education Association, McQuaid Jesuit also understands that living its mission will produce graduates with clearly identifiable characteristics. These are described in McQuaid Jesuit ’s “Profile of the Graduate:”

Intellectually Competent

The McQuaid Jesuit graduate is highly educated in a wide spectrum of academic disciplines to meet the intellectual challenges of the future. He is trained in powers of reasoning, imagination, expression, freedom of choice and value formation, and sensitive and appreciative of aesthetics. With this background, he is beginning to become both confident of success in the world around him and, more important, capable as a leader in service to others.

Loving

The graduate, having attained a higher level of personal and social growth, begins to direct his life to a Christ-like giving of self to others and a more thoughtful stewardship of the created universe to be shared in common by all. His relationships deepen as he accepts and cherishes other people, and he begins to integrate his concerns, feelings and sexuality into his whole personality.

Religious

Influenced by the religious tone of the school and by his own insights and experiences including those from formal course work, the graduate should be on his way to becoming a faith-filled person. He is motivated by love of God and others in such a way that his decisions in life are being made more for the glory of God and service to his community that for his own perceived needs.

Open to Growth

Although he sees the importance of learning, the graduate also understands the Jesuit credo that it is more important to learn how to learn, to desire to go on learning through life, and to come to a deeper appreciation of the richness of God and his creation. Consequently, he strives for an ongoing development of imagination, feelings, conscience and intellect, and he recognizes new experiences as opportunities to further his growth.

Committed to Justice

Finally, the McQuaid Jesuit graduate is also coming to understand that Jesuit education teaches that the ultimate goal in developing one’s talents - the gifts from God - is not self-gain but the good of the human community. In light of this realization, he is developing the attitude of mind that sees service to others as more self-fulfilling than success or prosperity. All members of the educational community collaborate in this work.

Philosophy

McQuaid is a Jesuit high school and as such has both academic and religious dimensions which merge into a single purpose, that of forming young men to be “men for others.”

The impetus for McQuaid Jesuit’s philosophy is the gospel of Jesus Christ with its commands to love God and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. As a Jesuit school, these commands are further specified by the vision of St. Ignatius Loyola for whom God is Creator and Lord, Supreme Goodness, and the one reality that is absolute, with all other reality coming from God and having value only insofar as it leads us to God. Our function, to the best of our ability, is to lead young men to use all of reality to achieve the greatest fulfillment of their lives within this context of a God-centered universe.

Jesus Christ is at one and the same time both the manifestation of God, who shows himself to be radically in favor of humanity, and the perfect human response, through service to others, to that love of God for humanity. Jesus shows us an “Abba” - Father - who knows and loves each man and woman personally, and who invites a response which, to be authentically human, must be an expression of radical freedom. The purpose of the McQuaid Jesuit community is to enable young men to make this response. Moreover, such radical freedom presupposes a freedom to give of oneself, while accepting the consequence of one’s actions, and a freedom to work in faith toward that true happiness which is the purpose of life and which results from laboring with others in the service of the Kingdom of God for the healing of creation.

Jesus Christ comes also as Savior. The McQuaid Jesuit community is called to engage in an ongoing struggle to recognize and work against the obstacles that block or limit freedom including the effects of sinfulness, while developing in young men capacities such as self-discipline and discernment, that are necessary for the exercise of true freedom. Such freedom requires a genuine knowledge, love, and acceptance of self combined with a resolve to be rid of excessive attachment to wealth, fame, health, power or even life itself. It would also include freedom from distorted perceptions of reality, warped values, rigid attitudes, or surrender to narrow ideologies. Consequently, to work toward true freedom, one must learn to recognize and deal with the influences that can promote and limit freedom - both those arising from within oneself and those resulting from the dynamics of history, social structures and culture.

The loving response required in “men for others” is one that cannot remain theoretical or speculative, but must rather manifest itself through decisive action: “love is shown in deeds.” McQuaid Jesuit, in all that it does as an institution and a community, strives to aid young men to attain the genuine freedom required for a loving response to God’s loving invitation through service to God and humanity.