From the Desk of Rev. Charles Warren
It’s great that my bulletin board has become like a refrigerator in a home, filled with all the articles and achievements of our students! Better than those achievements are the sounds of jokes, laughter, and the students being themselves in the hallways. A Catholic school should help students have good self knowledge and awareness of their gifts. I think this can be seen in our students' comfort in our hallways.
How do we evaluate a year? When do we know we’ve lived out our purpose? What criteria do we use to look at all the important things a Catholic school should be doing?
Perhaps it sounds too clickbaity, but here’s the document that the press ignored. The Vatican released a new instruction called “The Identity of the Catholic School for a Culture of Dialogue”. An instruction is meant to provide clarification on previous laws, which means this document is meant to address current questions that real life people are asking about Catholic education. What’s fascinating is that this document meant for the universal church, speaks so well to our lived reality in our country.
It’s an excellent document to read in our communities and one we certainly will be engaging at Marian Central in order to better fulfill our mission as a Catholic school and provide renewal to all those who are called to be part of this mission.
Making all things new again. God does not create and then head off to another God-project. He’s intimately concerned with us and our happiness. So much so that next week we will recall how He even sent His Son to save us from our sin. This suffering, death, and (spoiler alert) resurrection shows the pattern of what our future holds.
Christian belief radically contradicts the idea that everything is going to heck in a handbasket. Instead, we are moving from darkness to light. On Easter, the day starts the evening before Sunday. It starts in darkness and moves into the light of day.
When we see messiness, when we see problems, when we see obstacles…there’s a temptation to think everything is falling apart. When in fact Christ’s own life was filled with great deeds, changed lives, and eventually his own suffering and death. The final word is resurrection. That human redemption is achieved and the opportunity for eternal happiness is offered to the world.
At Marian, the more we enter into the messiness together, the more we can enter into Christ’s resurrection together. A Catholic school grounded in its Catholic identity is one that is able to dialogue well with anyone, just as Christ did.
Please join me in praying for our school community and for our students to build one another up and better reflect the love of Christ.
Please join us if you can this upcoming Monday as Bishop Malloy celebrates a mass with us and Fr. Twenty comes back to preach on the new mural being installed in Landers Pavilion. It should prove to be a great way of drawing our minds toward the joy we will celebrate soon on Easter!
To the Heights, Together!
- Fr. Warren
