It is the motto of Xavier High School, passed down from generation to generation like a prized possession from grandfather to grandson. Plastered on the walls, adorning posters, and attached to every conceivable piece of official correspondence, you cannot avoid it. Repeated over and over in everything from the sacrosanct scripture of the academic dean’s pre-year speech to the occasional closing prayer of the day, it becomes a mantra to live by and maxim forcibly imprinted in one’s consciousness. Standing small beneath the imposing portraits of headmaster’s long past or passing in the hall under the watchful eye of alumni whose pictures adorn the wall, one can almost here the whispered legacy of Xavier High School. Listen! All around you! “Be a man”— Hear it?—- “Be a man” they whisper…. “Be a man, a man like Christ…..”

Be a man. A man like Christ. If you learn nothing else at Xavier High School in your four years as a student (a hard achievement indeed), you will learn the phrase “Be a man. A man like Christ.” One of the driving principles behind all the extraordinary successes on the field, in the classroom, and in the wider scholastic community that Xavier students have enjoyed, this phrase is both the motto and mission of Xavier High School. But what exactly does it really mean to “Be a man. A man like Christ?” To find the answer to this question, I decided to meet with the members of the Ryken Service Society, a group of young men who put this motto into practice and turn an oft-repeated maxim into a mission worthy of Theodore James Ryken himself.

The scene is crowded, chaotic, and noisy. People come and go into a room even more cluttered than the typical bedroom of the average American teenager. Yet out of this chaos emerges order and purpose, driven partly by the focus of the hive and partly by the crisp directions of the young man standing on a chair near the center of the room. Meet Matthew Massaro, President of Ryken Service Society, heir to the throne of Mike Massaro, and the rock upon which Ryken is built. It is a lazy Friday afternoon and I’m standing in the basement of the Brother’s Residence at Xavier. The pool is closed and the lifeguard is busy upstairs tutoring another hapless First Year Latin student. Today everyone is all business, with club members constantly rushing in and out of the room with arms full of precious cargo collected from around the building. As everyone at school knows, Friday is Ryken’s monthly can drive, the day to “Be a Man” and “bring a can.” From morning announcements, to flyers plastered in the halls, to the plastic buckets ubiquitous to almost every classroom, the can drive is a fact of life at Xavier High School. Today’s, the first one of the year, was a good haul; piled in bins and on tables around the room is every imaginable variety of can. After being counted, they are carried bin by bin to the parking lot behind the Brother’s Residence where they await the final trip to the Amazing Grace Food Pantry in Middletown CT. Its a lot of work even for a once-a-month event, yet the members of Ryken work diligently as a team, driven by a calling that has its origins more than two decades ago.

As a Xaverian Brother’s Sponsored school, Xavier High School is invited to participate in the Xaverian Brother’s Sponsored Schools Junior Retreat held every year. A gathering of students from across the United States who attend schools run by the Xaverian Brothers, this retreat fosters a sense of mission, duty, and purpose in the lives of countless young men and women every year. Coming together as strangers, those chosen students grow and strengthen as a Xaverian community before they are sent forth to their respective schools to spread the ideals and mission of the Xaverian Brothers. At one particular XBSS Retreat in the late 90s, this sense of mission and purpose was particularly strong; after attending this retreat as a student, Mr. Brian Fitzgerald (Class of 99′ and now teacher and Head Soccer Coach at Xavier) was inspired to lay the foundations for the organization that became known as Ryken Service Society. Seeking to live out the five Xaverian Values of humility, zeal, compassion, simplicity, and trust, he and a few like minded students formulated the mission and bylaws which Ryken lives out to this day. Though members have come and gone, with the club growing and shrinking year to year, the fundamental challenge to “BE A MAN. A MAN LIKE CHRIST” is still as central to Ryken as it was from day one.

Over the years, Ryken Service Society has added to its repertoire many new activities and functions that contribute to its mission of service and community outreach. Though the monthly Can Drive is perhaps the most enduring and visible symbol of the Society’s work in the community, there are many other projects that are just as important. Taking place in the early spring, the March Madness Can Drive takes advantage of the competitive spirit of Xavier High School while seeking to promote greater awareness of the community at large. Modeled on the annual NCAA Basketball Championships, the “can drive on steroids” (as Can Drive Coordinator Larry Bourland ’15 puts it) creates a bracket system in which rival homerooms compete to bring in the most cans in a given amount of time. While it serves as a great way for the Xavier community to let out some steam after a long winter, Can Madness is also vital to replenishing the stores of Amazing Grace Soup Kitchen whose stockpile of nonperishables often runs dangerously low at the end of the winter months. In addition to collecting cans for the hungry, Ryken also raises money for the numerous overseas missions of the Xaverian Brothers. From feeding the poor in Central Africa to educating youth in South America, the Xaverian Brothers maintain a large presence around the globe- a presence that could not exist without the dedicated efforts of Ryken Service Society and its like across the United States.

As important as service is to Ryken Service Society, there is another component to its mission that is often overlooked. It is a sad but inescapable fact that the number of men and women taking on a religious vocation is growing smaller every year. And, in the words of Vice President Pete Drabinski, “The Xaverian Brothers are no exception to that rule.” When Xavier was founded in 1963 almost all the faculty members were members of the C.F.X; today, less than five Brothers still hold official roles at the school and that number is predicted to decrease in the coming decades. Yet thanks to the example and mission of Theodore James Ryken and his Congregation, Xavier High School remains as much a part of the Xaverian tradition as when it was founded. According to Club Secretary Anthony Plochoki, this is due in no small part to the “five Xaverian Values of humility, zeal, compassion, simplicity, and trust that challenge us each and every day to be men like Christ.” Indeed. For just as service is the core of Ryken Service Society, so carrying on the legacy of the Xaverian Brothers is its mantle.

Responsible for planning some of the school’s prayer services, the Society also organizes Founder’s Week, a period of increased awareness about the ethos and mission of the Xaverian Brothers. Concurrent with similar activities taking place in the rest of the XBSS community, this celebration of the creation of the Congregation includes presentations on the global work of the Brothers, school-wide spirit activities, and an in depth focus on each of the specific Xaverian values. In addition to these major efforts, Ryken also runs a monthly community night known as Falconspire. A relatively new venture, these “mini-retreats” involving pizza, prayer, and fraternity bring together any interested member of the student body for a night of Christian fellowship and deeper personal involvement in the Xavier community. But perhaps the greatest way that Ryken Service Society carries on the tradition of the Xaverian Brothers is also its simplest. By serving daily the greater Xavier community, and by truly being MEN LIKE CHRIST, the members of Ryken Service Society are worthy heirs to the mission started by Theodore James Ryken so many years ago.

At the end of the day, what makes any organization tick is the members that comprise it. Therefore, as an exemplar of service, leadership, and purpose, it is no surprise that Ryken Service Society has some pretty exemplary students as its members. In the words of Mr. James Tyrol, its faculty moderator, “Ryken Service is a worthy cause made up of a great group of young men who care about the community.” From club officers like Membership Recruitment Leader Jeremy Isenberg who was attracted to Ryken after “being selected to experience the life-changing mission of the Xaverian Brothers at the XBSS Junior Retreat” to dedicated members like David Wholmuth who joined Ryken because he “didn’t like seeing people in pain and just wanted to do something to help,” the calling that brings Ryken members together varies from person to person.

While it is officially a Catholic service organization, Ryken is open to all those who hear the call to help those in need. “Though I’m not Catholic,” says Treasurer Numad Cheema, “this call to serve, this call to be something more, this call to lead a life dedicated to others- it’s really something universal- and something deeply important to me.” No matter their background, extracurricular commitments, or “typical” schedule, you can be sure that every member of Ryken will be out there together on the first Friday of every month hauling cans and (in the sage words of Mr. Tyrol) “meeting the needs of the world in the common, ordinary, unspectacular flow of everyday life.”

So, what does the future hold for this group of young men that go above and beyond the already high bar of community outreach already set by Xavier High School? For Second Vice President Ethan Pitney, that future is “taking the values and principles that the Xaverian Brothers have established out into the wider world, to college, the workplace and beyond.” For Nicholas Grasso, a senior coming to the end of four years of service in Ryken, that future is “Making a difference in the world and more importantly, making a difference in the lives of everyone I meet.”

And as for Matthew Massaro, the President of Ryken Service Society who inspires the best in those he leads as all great leaders are wont to do? “I honestly don’t know,” he says with a smile. “Life’s life, and who am I to know what the day after tomorrow will hold?” Laughing, I press him for an answer, any answer. “What else can I do,” he says, “but continue this legacy that I am now a part of? What else can I do, but bring humility, zeal, compassion, simplicity, and trust to everything I do?” Looking around, he sees a couple of freshmen struggling with a dangerously overloaded bucket of cans, and with that my interview is over. Leaping up, that rock of Ryken rushes over to prevent a certain calamity, leaving me to mull over his final words. Indeed. At the end of the day, what else can we do?