On “Pro-Life Day” in early October each year, St. Joseph Academy (SJA) in San Marco, California, a San Diego-area classical school, becomes especially abuzz with activity. 

After some of the school’s roughly 375 kindergarten-through-12th-grade students — many wearing red “lifeguard” T-shirts and calling themselves “Crusaders for Life” — help assemble and hang over the school a 110-foot helium balloon “rosary,” they place pro-life sayings all over lockers and floors. 

Along with prayer and other activities at the school on Pro-Life Day, which the school started about 10 years ago, Andrea Limpin, 17, who is entering her senior year at the academy that she has attended since first grade, joins roughly 100 high-school students, following three waves of middle-school students, to conclude the school’s “relay” of Rosaries for life. This witness prompts mixed reactions from passersby. 

“I see obviously there are the people that will kind of brush us off or give us a side-eye and not really support what we’re doing,” Limpin said. “But then there are also a lot of people that I love seeing, the people who see us praying, and they feel inspired, and you can see like a look of hope in them. They just appreciate, I guess, the younger generations still putting in the effort in the care for the unborn.”

St. Joseph Academy’s pro-life activities are an important part, but they’re not the only service the school offers, as it teaches students about the corporal and spiritual works of mercy academically and also through hands-on experiences with their classmates and teachers in the broader community. 

Starting this fall, SJA is launching its “Crusader Flex” program through which it will welcome home-schooled middle- and high-school students in the area to take part, not only in some of the academic offerings but also in service projects.

The school, founded by two Catholic mothers in 1995, seeks to prepare students for heaven, which is preparation to love and will the good of others, and giving students opportunities to serve others in concrete actions is a way to incarnate the Gospel and all they learn in class about love and the virtues, said Mark Kalpakgian, who begins his first full term as SJA president this fall. 

Students’ intellectual formation in the virtues and learning about saints, and the spiritual preparation of prayer, are the underpinnings of successful ministry of outward service, he said.

“Serving the poor and the needy is just a core tenet of Christian living,” Kalpakgian said. “From the Gospels, you love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and after that love your neighbor as yourself. It’s from Christ’s command to love our neighbors, if you’re trying to faithfully follow the Gospel. That is a natural fruit of a school or any organization that is mission-driven and Christ-centered.” 

Serving Together

As part of her education at SJA, Limpin has not only learned about corporal and spiritual works of mercy, but she has had a chance to serve the community with her classmates. She and SJA students have plentiful opportunities to live out Christian charity, including providing meals for unhoused persons through local organizations, visiting the elderly, building and furnishing homes for poor families, helping with anti-human-trafficking work and attending the Walk for Life in San Francisco each year. 

They also pray as a school for the poor souls in purgatory and help organize retreats for themselves and other students. Through her service experience, including with retreats, Limpin plans to attend a public university where she hopes to serve as a Catholic missionary. 

Emphasizing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy in SJA’s curriculum and service in some of the school’s many outreach projects required for graduation literally puts faith into action, Christa Breen said, who has taught middle- and high-school theology at the school for 12 years.

“We live in Southern California,” she said. “It’s beautiful. There’s a lot of wealth, but there’s also a lot of poverty, and we’re very close to Mexico, where there’s a tremendous amount of poverty. … We pass homeless people on the way to school every day.”

Collan McMahon, 18, who graduated this spring from SJA, helped build two houses for poor families in Tijuana, Mexico, with about 30 SJA students, parents and faculty members — an annual project at the school. 

Provided with a concrete slab, the SJA teams construct the frame and walls of the simple small homes, along with painting and furnishing them, through Project Mercy Baja. The teams aren’t able to hook the homes up to electricity or water, but the new residents are very happy, said McMahon, who will study at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, this fall.

“You feel like you’re really doing something good for someone else, and laying down yourself for someone else is just such an important thing,” said McMahon, who has worked with his father in building other homes for the poor outside of his school projects.

“When you’re laying down your time and your effort for those kids and those families [who will live in the houses], and you’re seeing the joy it’s bringing them, it’s all worth it,” he added.

From the youngest students (transitional kindergarteners, between preschool and traditional kindergarten) to high-school students, serving others starts with the student’s closest circle — loving, caring and serving classmates with dignity — and moves outward as they get older, Kalpakgian said. 

SJA inspires students to love and care for those around them, Limpin said. “We support each other in whatever way we need, and we pray for each other, and we’re there for each other … mentally, spiritually, wherever we need to talk.”

One way students serve each other is at the “Beloved Dinner,” held around St. Valentine’s Day; the high-school young men plan, prepare and serve a dinner for the high-school young women and provide entertainment, said Johann Schoenfeld, who teaches middle-school science and high school biology and leads the school’s campus ministry.

The school will provide high school students with two new ways to develop service-related skills. Along with offering a course on ministry team leadership, it is adapting an economics course to include entrepreneurial service knowledge. The school aims to foster openness to service, problem solving and risk taking, Kalpakgian said.

Teaching Disciples of Christ

In the new course teaching students about leading campus ministry, students will learn to develop their own interior life, as well as leadership, service and evangelization skills, said Lan Parsons, the course’s instructor who has taught at the school full time for two years. Parsons will also help lead the school’s campus ministry and will coordinate its Crusader Flex program. 

“First and foremost, we have to understand as ministers ourselves or disciples that we need to work on our own interior life and our own relationship with Christ before we can even attempt to minister to other people,” she said. 

The training will equip students not only to lead service projects on campus but also in the broader community, Parsons said. 

The school’s classical education teaches students to ask questions and seek answers, said Barbara De La Torre, who has worked at the school since 1995, founded its pro-life outreach and has worked with students on many works-of-mercy projects. 

Students are seeking a Christ-centered cause, she said. “They want to stand for something, and how do we teach them?” she asked. “How do we expose them and teach them how to stand up for their cause in a way that is persuasive and is professional and done correctly? That is our goal here.”

Lasting Impact

SJA’s commitment to including service in its classical academic curriculum and culture has made an impact on the schools’ alumni, said Breen, whose two sons are graduates and are now in college. Along with loving their faith, she said they see the need to love their faith by acting in virtue toward their neighbor in service.

“God, in his mercy, gives us opportunities to serve,” Breen said. “It’s a gift from God to us to be able to make up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.” 

That gift is ingrained in the students because, as Limpkin expressed, “We’re brothers and sisters in Christ.”