Brotherly visit

This past Wednesday, our good friends Bros. John McMahon, FSC and Edward Shields, FSC made their semi-annual visit to Trinity High School.  Bro. John taught here from 1967-1972 and taught Mr. Mailloux '72 and Mr. Maurier '72.  When we celebrated our school's 40th anniversary in 2010, we reconnected with Bro. John who helped us with our idea to reassociate with the Lasallian Christian Brothers, a process that is moving along.  He and Bro. Edward visit about twice a year to check-in with us and to spend time with the school community, we always look forward to it.  Bro. John works at De La Salle Hall in Lyncroft, NJ, a nursing facility for older brothers and Bro. Edward is involved in vocation work for the brothers and lives at La Salle Academy in New York City.

The brothers arrived around 11am and we treated them to lunch.  Bro. John then led Advent prayer services during the last two periods of the day in our chapel and for our faculty after school.  Bro. John introduce himself each time saying he was a Pioneer!  The focus of the prayer service was Mary and her faith and zeal, especially in agreeing to become the Mother of God and then going right away to share that news.  Her faith, Bro. John pointed out, wasn't something that she could keep to herself, she needed to share it right away.  Those two components - faith and zeal - are hallmarks of Lasallian spirituality and Bro. John encouraged the students and faculty to do the same as Mary.

Following the faculty prayer service and meeting, the brothers and I spent some time chatting in Campus Ministry and then met up with Mr. Mailloux for dinner at the Athens Restaurant here in Manchester.  This was my first time there and was blown away by the lamb, you need to try it!  We all then returned to the school for our Christmas Concert by our choir and band.  The freshmen art students also had a display of their iconography.  The music was amazing and the Christmas singalong got everyone in the spirit of the season.  The artwork, too, was well done and was all done from hand, no tracing at all.

It was a lovely day and I am always grateful to Bros. John and Edward for making the trip and for continuing to help us dig deeper into Lasallian spirituality and pedagogy.