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Alumnus Awarded Spot on YBCA100

February 24, 2021 | Alumni News, Media

Darryl Ratcliff 04

Cistercian alumnus Darryl Ratcliff ’04 has been awarded a spot on the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 100, an annual list that celebrates the everyday heroes—artists, activists, and community leaders—for their extraordinary commitment to building sustainable, equitable, and regenerative communities! These recipients are the provocateurs and innovators who are boldly making a difference in the health and well-being of their communities, working tirelessly in pursuit of racial equity, and using art and activism to heal and bring us together in spirit when we need it most.

The YBCA100 honorees will be celebrated on Saturday, April 3, 2021, in San Francisco.

Thank you, Darryl, for your strong and hopeful vision.

Hawk Happenings

We have a pope!

It’s not every day a new Pope is chosen. Students gathered in the lunchroom to watch the announcement of Pope Leo XIV. Habemus Papam!

Prom

The 2025 Junior-Senior Prom was held at the Westin Downtown Dallas. Thank you to everyone who helped make the evening a success.

Senior Seminar Night

At Senior Seminar Night, all Cistercian seniors presented the culmination of a year’s research across philosophy, science, political theory, the arts, and more. Topics ranged from Alzheimer’s disease to American foreign policy, NBA championship predictions, and the...

Experience Cistercian

Publications

Thy Kingdom Come

The more I reflect on the petitions of the Our Father, the more I’m convinced that I have no idea what I’m praying when I mumble those words multiple times every day.

The current object of my loving mystification is “Thy kingdom come.” In an effort to be slightly less intimidated by this vast and marvelous petition, I will arrange my musings as responses to the time-honored journalistic questions.

Lessons learned in a monastery

One of the most important rooms in a monastery, after the church, is the chapter room. This is the place where monks meet to do various things as a community: hear an exhortation from their abbot; listen to a spiritual reading (often a chapter from “The Rule of St. Benedict”); deliberate and vote on the important material and spiritual questions that arise in a monastery, such as who should be the abbot, whether to welcome a young monk as a permanent member of the community through solemn profession, and how best to structure their lives to promote God’s purpose.

Calling upon the hallowed name of the Lord

Jesus poses a problem when He instructs us to pray to the Father with the words “hallowed be Thy name” (Matthew 6:9). Many Psalms exhort the faithful to praise or call upon the name of the LORD (Psalm 113:1; 116:13; 148:13), and others assert that “Our help is in the name of the LORD” (Psalm 124:8). But how can human beings hallow — that is, make holy — the name of the LORD (in Hebrew, YHWH), Who is already, always, and automatically holy, utterly beyond our ability to add to or subtract from, to influence or change?