The Source and Foundation

Sts. Peter and Paul School efficaciously lives its motto — “May the Holy Cross Be My Light” — through the spirituality inherited from its Parish-led Norbertine Fathers, who carry forward the same reforming and renewing vision that St. Norbert of Xanten, himself deeply inspired by our school’s patron St. Paul, entrusted to his Order nine centuries ago.

At the heart of that vision, and at the heart of this motto, is a single, irreplaceable reality: the Holy Eucharist. The “heartbeat” of the Norbertine Order has always been fervent devotion to the Eucharistic presence of Christ — and this devotion is not incidental to the school’s identity, but its very center. To pray “May the Holy Cross be my light” is, in the Norbertine tradition, to stand before the altar, for it is there that the sacrifice of the Cross is made present, and the light of Christ is given to the world.

The Cross and the Eucharist are one mystery: the same self-offering of Christ, perpetuated — not repeated — at every Mass. The Mass does not add to the Cross, nor does it replace it. It makes the Cross present — sacramentally, really, and efficaciously — so that each generation may enter into the very drama of Christ’s Passion and receive its saving fruits. Whenever the Mass is celebrated, the redemption won on Calvary reaches across time and touches us here and now. At every Mass, the work of our salvation is renewed.

Crux Sacra sit mihi lux asks that this mystery become the light by which students see and navigate reality. Devotion to the Holy Eucharist, “the source and summit of the Christian life” [CCC 1324], lies at the core of school culture at Sts. Peter and Paul School.

1. The Eucharist as the Summit of School Life

Like their Norbertine Father role models, the school motto calls students to: to hold up the light of the Cross — most fully encountered in the Eucharist — over the confusion and suffering of their world. Every student learns how to live centered on Jesus Christ present in the Blessed Sacrament, attentive to their need to become more Christlike; to cooperate with God’s grace working through them enabling them to practice virtue and the works of mercy.

Every school Mass is approached as the community gathering at the foot of the Cross — the moment when the light of Christ is not merely spoken of but made present and received. Students are formed to understand the Mass not as a fraternal banquet alone, but as a true sacrifice: the one historical sacrifice of Christ perpetuated in time, offering each person the grace of the Passion. Holy Communion is a personal encounter with the Crucified and Risen Lord, the source of all wisdom.

Eucharistic life, rightly understood, is never self-enclosed. What is received at the altar is meant to be carried outward — a light borne to those in need — made visible in the works of mercy that flow naturally from the school’s liturgical life.

2. Ordering the Day Through Prayer

A central part of Norbertine spirituality is organized according to the prayer of the Church: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours. This rhythm of life — the same monastic pattern that gave rise to Europe's first universities — is the soil from which authentic classical liberal arts education was born. This charism is central to the school’s motto; the day itself becomes a liturgical act — each hour consecrated to God, each transition marked by prayer.

At Sts. Peter and Paul, the shape of the school day is formed by this same sacred rhythm. In addition to daily Mass, students pray the Liturgy of the Hours, pause at noon for the Angelus, mark each hour with a decade of the Rosary, and gather in prayer at the beginning and end of the day and before and after meals — not as interruptions to learning, but as the very rhythm within which learning unfolds. 

Weekly confessions offered by the Norbertine priests on campus ensure that students are not merely formed in prayer but regularly restored to the grace from which authentic formation flows. The Psalms, saturating the Hours with cross-and-light imagery, gradually form in students a vocabulary of faith that becomes instinctive — a native tongue of praise and attention to God.

3. The Canonical Life — Monastic and Apostolic United

The school is not merely a place of academic instruction, but a canonical community led by its Norbertine rector — a place of common life, liturgical prayer, and apostolic service, all held together. This is the Vita Apostolica — the apostolic life as St. Norbert and St. Augustine lived and proposed it: “to have one heart and one mind on the way to God; to hold all things in common; to persevere in the teaching of the Apostles; to have the Eucharist as the center of all life.” Such canonical monastic communities formed some of the world’s first universities, such as those at Oxford and Paris, creating the ideal conditions for history’s greatest scholars. This model forms the ideal school culture, where students are efficaciously disposed to grow in virtue, according to God’s grace.

The entire school community — parish leaders, families, teachers, staff — is called to a special communio: to be shaped by the Cross and illumined by it, journeying together toward the Triune God. All apostolic ministry — including the education of youth, which is a primary Norbertine apostolate — finds its source in this common life of prayer and fraternal charity.

4. Formation Through the Cross: Conversio Morum

In Norbertine spirituality, Conversio Morum — Latin for “Conversion of Ways” — fosters a commitment to changing one’s habits so they are like those of Christ; an effort to think and act as Christ did.

This is where the school’s motto is made into a rule of life. “Let the Holy Cross be my light” is not a passive slogan — it is a vow of conversio: to be continually reshaped, reoriented, and illumined by the mystery of the Cross.

For students, conversio morum takes concrete form: in the daily examination of conscience undertaken in the light of the Cross; in virtue formation understood as a gradual brightening — becoming, through grace, bearers of Christ’s light to others; and in the recognition that suffering, academic struggle, and service are not obstacles to meaning but participation in the mystery of the Cross itself. To flee the cross is to find it heavier; to embrace it in union with Christ is to discover that it is, in fact, light. The school forms students to carry the duties of their state in life with magnanimity — and to accompany one another in doing so, as those who are, before all else, members of one Body, the Church.

The School Motto in Light of Classical Education

This interior transformation — the gradual conformation of mind and will to Christ — finds its natural expression in the classical liberal arts tradition, which has always understood education not as the mere acquisition of knowledge, but as the formation of the whole person ordered toward truth, goodness, and ultimately toward God Himself.

Central to the classical liberal arts education offered at Sts. Peter and Paul is the formation of the whole person ordered toward the perfection of intellect and will and ultimately toward union with Him who is Truth and Goodness itself. This formation encourages students to dispose themselves toward receiving God’s grace to grow in virtue — theological, moral, and intellectual — each illumined by the light of the Cross at the center of the school’s motto.

The theological virtues orient the student directly toward God: faith trusts that the Cross is light even in the deepest darkness; hope presses forward by that light when the path is uncertain; and charity radiates it outward, making each student a bearer of Christ’s light to others.

The cardinal virtues show how that same light is lived in the concrete choices of daily life. Prudence is the virtue of seeing clearly — of reading every situation, every decision, and every relationship in the light of the Cross, discerning what is true and good. Justice moves the student to render to God and neighbor what is rightly owed, recognizing in every person the dignity of one for whom Christ suffered. Fortitude is the courage to carry the Cross without turning away — to endure difficulty, resist what is wrong, and remain faithful when faithfulness costs something. Temperance orders the appetites and passions so that nothing dims the light within; it is the discipline that keeps the soul clear and recollected before God.

The intellectual virtues draw the student deeper still into the mystery the motto proclaims. Understanding penetrates beyond the surface of things to grasp their deeper truth in the light of faith. Knowledge reads the created world rightly — as gift, as sign, as testimony to the God who redeemed it from the Cross. Wisdom, the highest of the intellectual virtues, contemplates all of reality from its highest cause, seeing history, suffering, beauty, and love as St. Thomas saw them: ordered toward God, and made fully intelligible only in the light of the Cross.

Together, these virtues form not merely a well-rounded student, but what the Norbertine tradition has always sought to produce: a person who thinks, chooses, and lives by the light that the Cross alone can give.