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Dear Families,
A lot of Happy-New-Yearing and hugs and handshaking accompanied our return to classes this past Wednesday. It’s always fun to be back with friends! Though a short week, it was a busy one, marked by several special occasions on Thursday alone. That day, we welcomed back friends, indeed: members of our last several graduating classes, primarily those from the Class of 2023, who were catching up on the past 6 months and picking up their yearbooks. Our young alums enjoyed some pizza, and chatted among themselves and the couple dozen faculty and staff who greeted them in the cafeteria.
Schools that value relationships and take pride in caring for their students, like anxious parents, send their graduates into the world with hope -- and a prayer -- that they will do well. We hope that the seeds of academic training and moral development will grow. It’s great on a day like this past Thursday to get the affirmation from the smiling faces of our recent graduates that they’ve been well prepared and that things are generally going well for them on the newest leg of their life journey!
The second special occasion this past Thursday was our hosting of Holocaust survivor Janet Singer Applefield for an evening conversation about her World War II experiences. Thanks to arrangements made by our Dean of Community, Culture, and Equity Erga Pierrette, Mrs. Applefield joined us to share riveting stories of the atrocities to which she was witness, as well as the kindnesses that saved her. Born on June 4, 1935, in Krakow, Poland, she was 4 years old when World War II began. In 1942, she saw her mother transported to the death camp at Belzec and her father assigned to forced labor. At the end of the war, a Polish family, unaware of her Jewish identity, saved her, and she was ultimately reunited with her father, though her mother did not survive.
Janet will be publishing her oral history as a book this spring. Her story cautions us all about the horrors that hate and prejudice can unleash. It reminds us all to be active forces for “good” in our world. In an important way, too, it also affirms what we are about as a Catholic school and confirms the ongoing need to “send out” graduates with strong moral compass.
Thursday morning, we happened to start our school day with this prayer, reminding that the “work of Christmas” needs to renew itself every day:
When the carols have been stilled,
When the star-topped tree is taken down,
When family and friends are gone home,
When we are back to our schedules,
The work of Christmas begins:
To welcome the refugee,
To heal a broken planet,
To feed the hungry,
To build bridges-of-trust, not walls-of-fear,
To share our gifts,
To seek justice and peace for all people,
To bring Christ’s light to the world. Amen.
May our New Year prayer be that God grant us the wisdom and courage to carry this Christmas message with us each day! Happy New Year!
Sincerely,
Br. Thomas Puccio C.F.X., Ed.D., H'18
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