When Ignatius Birdsall first heard about Christendom College, he was more than 2,000 miles away in California—and he was not yet convinced it was the college for him. Now, more than two years later, Birdsall has found himself transformed by the school, becoming one of the students helping build the very community that drew him to Christendom in the first place.
Birdsall, who was raised in California, first learned about Christendom while attending Chesterton Academy of Sacramento. Greta Munsill, a teacher and mentor who had helped him start his high school newspaper, encouraged him to consider Christendom after sending her own daughter to the school.
Birdsall explored plenty of other options, including other Catholic colleges. When Christendom Admissions Director Sam Phillips visited his school during the fall of his senior year, Birdsall decided to apply, but he did not visit campus until March.
“I did not have many expectations for Christendom when I came and visited,” recalls Birdsall. “I was completely undecided on where I was going to go.”
That uncertainty did not last long.
“When I showed up on campus, I immediately fell in love with the culture at Christendom and the wide variety of people on campus, who are at the same time seeking the same goal—Heaven,” says Birdsall.
At the time, Birdsall struggled to fully explain what had captured his attention. He simply knew there was “something in the air at Christendom” and sensed in the College “a mission for the formation of the whole person.”
Birdsall arrived at the school in the fall of 2024 already self-motivated and willing to take initiative. What he did not anticipate was how much genuine leadership would require him to invest in other people.
That lesson began almost immediately. Arriving from California knowing only one person on campus, Birdsall nevertheless decided on a whim to run for freshman class president—and won. Since then, he has continued to take on responsibilities across campus, including serving in student government, working as a resident assistant, working in the college’s kitchen, and taking on leadership roles with the College’s Best Week Ever high school summer program.
For him, all these opportunities to take on leadership have helped him come to understand leadership as something rooted in forming relationships with others.
“Before I came to Christendom, I was self-motivated, but I was not super well-rounded as a man,” says Birdsall. “I didn’t realize how important interpersonal relationships are for leadership, nor how to develop them well.”
Few experiences have demonstrated that lesson more clearly than the Best Week Ever. Birdsall first served as a counselor before eventually becoming a Head Counselor, placing him in the position of introducing prospective students to the same College community he had once encountered as an uncertain high school senior.
At the end of his first week as a counselor, Birdsall found himself standing around the final bonfire with the students he had spent the week serving. Looking around, he realized how much his role at Christendom had changed him for the better.
“There was a point at the end of my first week as a counselor, where I got to experience the Best Week Ever for the first time, and almost like a participant myself, where I looked around our final bonfire and realized how awesome my job was,” says Birdsall. “I had just helped a group of high school students who felt lost and confused find a place where they can be genuinely and joyfully Catholic, which is an experience they will treasure for life, even if they don’t come to Christendom.”
For Birdsall, that experience brought his own journey full circle. He had arrived at Christendom uncertain whether he belonged. Now, he was helping other young people discover for themselves the community that had convinced him to stay.
Birdsall’s growing understanding of leadership has been accompanied by a deeper appreciation for the College’s spiritual life as well.
During his freshman year, Birdsall attended a retreat hosted by the Band of Brothers Stronghold. During Eucharistic adoration, he began thinking about starting a Stronghold of his own. He later discovered that two friends had experienced the same inspiration. Together, they founded the Knights of the Mystical Rose, where Christendom men meet weekly to pursue friendship, virtue, and deeper spiritual formation.
The group has since become a place where Birdsall and other students with different backgrounds and interests can speak candidly about their faith and the challenges they face.
“There was a point when the group of us, coming from very different backgrounds and interests on campus, were having a conversation about struggles we all had,” says Birdsall. “It was a very profound thing since it gave me both a deep insight into what it means to be a man as well as consolation that I am not alone.”
That experience has reinforced something Birdsall first noticed when he arrived at Christendom: faith is not merely one part of campus life but something that gives the community its center.
“The whole campus revolves around the Eucharist,” he says. “Everything that happens here is ultimately ordered to the formation of the soul.”
That formation has extended into the classroom as well.
A philosophy major, Birdsall quickly became fascinated by the discipline and its willingness to question assumptions about reality that can otherwise go unexamined.
“Philosophy takes one deep into the framework of reality, asking questions about things you just take for granted, and then brings you back into reality with a deeper appreciation of the whole,” says Birdsall.
His interest crystallized in philosophy professor Dr. Mark Wunsch’s Philosophy of Human Nature course, where Birdsall studied Aristotle’s understanding of human nature and the human soul. This semester, he is continuing those studies in fellow philosophy professor Dr. Daniel McInerny’s Philosophy of Technology course, examining questions surrounding the neutrality of technology and whether technological development has ultimately benefited humanity.
For Birdsall, such questions do not remain confined to the classroom. His study of human nature has complemented the questions he encounters through his friendships, leadership responsibilities, and even his work onstage. This fall, Birdsall is taking on one of his most demanding challenges yet, one that tackles human nature head-on: the title role in Shakespeare’s tragedy of Macbeth, put on by the Christendom Players.
Birdsall acted before coming to Christendom, but the College’s size and community have allowed him to continue developing as an actor without making theater the sole focus of his college experience.
“Christendom has been a wonderful place for me to grow as an actor, as the smaller size has given me opportunities that would have never come to me elsewhere,” says Birdsall. “In other schools, to act, and especially to have title roles, the theater must be your life. I am someone who deeply appreciates and loves the theater, but I am not a ‘theater kid’ and love to do other things beyond the theater.”
Playing Macbeth has nevertheless demanded a significant commitment. Birdsall has 715 lines to memorize and spends at least six hours each week in rehearsal. At the same time, inhabiting one of Shakespeare’s most complex characters has given the philosophy major another avenue for contemplating questions about human nature.
“In Macbeth in particular, it has been an amazing experience growing as an actor and growing in my understanding of Shakespeare, and thus human nature,” says Birdsall.
Following graduation, Birdsall currently plans to attend law school and is preparing to take the LSAT in February. Before then, however, he still has more of Christendom to experience, including the College’s Semester in Rome, where he will study next semester.
It will be the latest chapter in a college experience he could hardly have imagined when he first traveled east from California. In less than three years, Birdsall has gone from arriving on campus knowing almost no one to serving as a class president and RA; from never having held a job to leading the Best Week Ever counselors; and from acting in high school productions to taking the stage as Macbeth.
Through it all, he has discovered that the teacher who first encouraged him to consider Christendom saw something he could not yet see himself.
Birdsall still thinks about the quality he sensed almost immediately upon arriving at Christendom—the “something in the air” that initially made Christendom different from the other colleges he was considering. He is still not certain it can be completely defined. But after years of studying, leading, serving, praying, performing, and building friendships within the community, he has come closer to understanding it.
“I am not sure I have figured out exactly what the ‘something in the air’ at Christendom is,” says Birdsall. “But the best I can tell is that it is that the entire community is genuinely seeking Heaven and knows that everyone else is as well. It is a communal trust and a genuine seeking of the true, the good, and the beautiful.”