Back to School

Last Monday, the school staff—teachers, instructional assistants, administrators, and other staff members—returned to our school campus to begin a week of meetings and other activities to prepare for the school year. Appropriately, the first thing on their agenda was to participate in our 8:15 morning Mass. It was wonderful to see all of them, and I am truly grateful that our school is staffed by such well-qualified, dedicated, and inspiring people.

This Monday, August 22, the students will begin the new school year. It will be nice to hear them from my office window, and I look forward to Friday morning Masses with the students participating. Before long, I hope to begin visiting the classrooms, where I always feel so welcome and I am so impressed and inspired by the quality Catholic education our parish provides.

Every year, the faculty and staff choose a Scriptural theme which becomes the focus of the entire school year. This year the theme is Romans 12:12 – “Let your hope keep you joyful, be patient in your troubles, and pray at all times.” Hope, joy, patience, and prayer: what a great “formula” for our students and for all of us, during this school year and throughout our lives! Please join me in praying for a good, grace-filled school year.

Gratefully yours,

Assumption

On Monday, August 15, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Because it falls on a Monday this year, the solemnity is not a holy day of obligation; but it remains an important celebration. We celebrate the fact that, at the end of her earthly life, the Blessed Virgin Mary was taken, body and soul, into heaven. As the Preface for this day states, “Rightly you would not allow her to see the corruption of the tomb, since from her own body she marvelously brought forth your incarnate Son, the Author of all life.”

The Preface also calls the Assumption of Mary “a sign of sure hope and comfort to your pilgrim people.” The Assumption is a sign of hope because it foreshadows the destiny towards which we are striving: to share in the glory of the Lord’s Resurrection.The Assumption is a call for us to renew in our hearts the virtue of hope. The secret of being hopeful is found in the Collect of the Mass for this day: “Grant, we pray, that, always attentive to the things that are above, we may merit to be sharers of her glory.”

Let’s always be “attentive to the things that are above,” so that we never lose our focus on what is most important in this life. It’s so easy to be distracted by lesser things, but we were created for something much greater than the things around us.With eternal glory as our goal, why should we settle for anything less?

Gratefully yours,

Saints Alive

This week we come to another stage of preparation to use our new Pastoral Center and Knight Hall. The building will contain (among other things) thirteen rooms that will be available for ministry meetings and activities. The rooms will all be numbered for easy reference and location, but we want to identify the rooms in another, more meaningful way as well. We want to name each room after a saint!

This is where you come in. You, the parishioners of St. Edward the Confessor and San Felipe de Jesús, are invited to submit the names of five saints you would like to have represented in our naming of the rooms. Each household may submit up to five saints’ names, and on August 21st we will tally up how many “votes” each saint gets. In this way we will determine the thirteen most popular saints; their names will go on the thirteen rooms we have available.

This is a good time for you to discuss with your family the possible saints whose names you will submit. I can imagine great conversations in which people discuss their favorite saints and the reasons why they are favorites. The internet is filled with good sites that give the lives of the saints, so there is no lack of reference material. Please submit your list of saints to Rosy Stock, our Parish Services Manager, at rstock@stedward.com. Rosy will keep track of all submissions, and I am really looking forward to August 21st, when we will be able to give meaningful names to the rooms you will be using for many years to come.

Gratefully yours,