StJP Principal Newsletter
March 4, 2016
Congratulations to our Students of the Month for Sharing the Virtue of Love
Congratulations to our Helping Hand's Recipients
Update on Drop Off and Pick Up Procedures
Parent Survey
Dear Parents of an Archdiocesan Catholic School Student:
Over the course of my first two years as Secretary for Education in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, I have listened carefully to our parents across the five counties who sacrifice each and every day to assure their children of a quality Catholic education in our schools. And it has been my priority to make sure that Catholic identity and excellence in education remain at the forefront of our mission to equip saints for life in this world and the next.
As we reach the midway point of the school year, I am requesting that each parent across our archdiocese consider offering me feedback on how we are doing in delivering what we promise. In partnership with the Institute for Excellence and Ethics we have designed a “Schools Continuous Improvement Survey”. With 40 total items this survey will take you less than 20 minutes to complete and it is available online for your convenience. Please follow these directions to access this very important document that will help guide us in the future: To access this survey simply go to : http://ieesurveys.org/s/aops-pf/ Click the “START SURVEY” link
Choose School Level, then County/ School.
Submit your confidential feedback for your school
You may be asked to answer school specific questions at the end of the survey which will be provided for
you by your President/Principal
At the end of the survey please remember to click SUBMIT and close your browser to assure that your survey has been sent.
If you have children in more than one school in the archdiocese (i.e. elementary and high school), you will complete separate surveys and will receive separate letters from your schools.
Finally, this survey will only be available until March 15th , so please take advantage of this opportunity to help guide the future of our schools. I assure you that all data will remain confidential and these anonymous results will be shared with the local presidents, pastors, principals and school boards as a tool for growth.
Thank you once again for all that you do to support Catholic education. We are grateful that you have chosen to share the gift of your child with us!
Peace and all good things,
Christopher Mominey Secretary for Education
Christopher Mominey
Chief Operating Officer and Secretary for Education Office of Catholic Education 222 North 17th Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 Office Phone: 215.587.3718 | Fax: 215.587.2414 cmominey@archphila.org AOPCatholicSchools.org
A Story for Your Lenten Journey
"The Ragman"
Walter Wangerin, Jr.
I saw a strange sight. I stumbled upon a story most strange, like nothing my life, my street sense, my sly tongue had ever prepared me for.
Hush, child. Hush, now, and I will tell it to you.
Even before the dawn one Friday morning I noticed a young man, handsome and strong, walking the alleys of our City. He was pulling an old cart filled with clothes both bright and new, and he was calling in a clear, tenor voice: “Rags!” Ah, the air was foul and the first light filthy to be crossed by such sweet music.
“Rags! New rags for old! I take your tired rags! Rags!”
“Now, this is a wonder,” I thought to myself, for the man stood six-feet-four, and his arms were like tree limbs, hard and muscular, and his eyes flashed intelligence. Could he find no better job than this, to be a ragman in the inner city?
I followed him. My curiosity drove me. And I wasn’t disappointed.
Soon the Ragman saw a woman sitting on her back porch. She was sobbing into a handkerchief, sighing, and shedding a thousand tears. Her knees and elbows made a sad X. Her shoulders shook. Her heart was breaking.
The Ragman stopped his cart. Quietly, he walked to the woman, stepping round tin cans, dead toys, and Pampers.
“Give me your rag,” he said so gently, “and I’ll give you another.”
He slipped the handkerchief from her eyes. She looked up, and he laid across her palm a linen cloth so clean and new that it shined. She blinked from the gift to the giver.
Then, as he began to pull his cart again, the Ragman did a strange thing: he put her stained handkerchief to his own face; and then HE began to weep, to sob as grievously as she had done, his shoulders shaking. Yet she was left without a tear.
“This IS a wonder,” I breathed to myself, and I followed the sobbing Ragman like a child who cannot turn away from mystery.
“Rags! Rags! New rags for old!”
In a little while, when the sky showed grey behind the rooftops and I could see the shredded curtains hanging out black windows, the Ragman came upon a girl whose head was wrapped in a bandage, whose eyes were empty. Blood soaked her bandage. A single line of blood ran down her cheek.
Now the tall Ragman looked upon this child with pity, and he drew a lovely yellow bonnet from his cart.
“Give me your rag,” he said, tracing his own line on her cheek, “and I’ll give you mine.”
The child could only gaze at him while he loosened the bandage, removed it, and tied it to his own head. The bonnet he set on hers. And I gasped at what I saw: for with the bandage went the wound! Against his brow it ran a darker, more substantial blood – his own!
“Rags! Rags! I take old rags!” cried the sobbing, bleeding, strong, intelligent Ragman.
The sun hurt both the sky, now, and my eyes; the Ragman seemed more and more to hurry.
“Are you going to work?” he asked a man who leaned against a telephone pole. The man shook his head.
The Ragman pressed him: “Do you have a job?”
“Are you crazy?” sneered the other. He pulled away from the pole, revealing the right sleeve of his jacket – flat, the cuff stuffed into the pocket. He had no arm.
“So,” said the Ragman. “Give me your jacket, and I’ll give you mine.”
Such quiet authority in his voice!
The one-armed man took off his jacket. So did the Ragman – and I trembled at what I saw: for the Ragman’s arm stayed in its sleeve, and when the other put it on he had two good arms, thick as tree limbs; but the Ragman had only one.
“Go to work,” he said.
After that he found a drunk, lying unconscious beneath an army blanket, and old man, hunched, wizened, and sick. He took that blanket and wrapped it round himself, but for the drunk he left new clothes.
And now I had to run to keep up with the Ragman. Though he was weeping uncontrollably, and bleeding freely at the forehead, pulling his cart with one arm, stumbling for drunkenness, falling again and again, exhausted, old, old, and sick, yet he went with terrible speed. On spider’s legs he skittered through the alleys of the City, this mile and the next, until he came to its limits, and then he rushed beyond.
I wept to see the change in this man. I hurt to see his sorrow. And yet I needed to see where he was going in such haste, perhaps to know what drove him so.
The little old Ragman – he came to a landfill. He came to the garbage pits. And then I wanted to help him in what he did, but I hung back, hiding. He climbed a hill. With tormented labor he cleared a little space on that hill. Then he sighed. He lay down. He pillowed his head on a handkerchief and a jacket. He covered his bones with an army blanket. And he died.
Oh, how I cried to witness that death! I slumped in a junked car and wailed and mourned as one who has no hope – because I had come to love the Ragman. Every other face had faded in the wonder of this man, and I cherished him; but he died. I sobbed myself to sleep.
I did not know – how could I know? – that I slept through Friday night and Saturday and its night, too.
But then, on Sunday morning, I was wakened by a violence.
Light – pure, hard, demanding light – slammed against my sour face, and I blinked, and I looked, and I saw the last and the first wonder of all. There was the Ragman, folding the blanket most carefully, a scar on his forehead, but alive! And, besides that, healthy! There was no sign of sorrow nor of age, and all the rags that he had gathered shined for cleanliness.
Well, then I lowered my head and trembling for all that I had seen, I myself walked up to the Ragman. I told him my name with shame, for I was a sorry figure next to him. Then I took off all my clothes in that place, and I said to him with dear yearning in my voice: “Dress me.”
He dressed me. My Lord, he put new rags on me, and I am a wonder beside him. The Ragman, the Ragman, the Christ!
Read more: http://www.inspirationalarchive.com/573/ragman/#ixzz41thHaSNF