Catholic Schools Week 2016

Tomorrow we kick off our annual celebration of Catholic Schools Week, a week set apart to celebrate our mission as a Catholic school.  As always, we have a series of events to mark this week:

February 1, 2016

Celebrating our Parents - Faculty and staff will hand out coffee and donuts to parents as they drop off their children to thank them for entrusting their children's education to us

Celebrating our Faith - Seniors will take a tour of St. Joseph Cathedral and walk through the Holy Door

February 2, 2016

Celebrating our Community - Juniors will make bologna and cheese sandwiches for the good people of New Horizons

Celebrating our Faith - Second half of seniors will take a tour of St. Joseph Cathedral and walk through the Holy Door

February 3, 2016

Celebrating our students - All students will have a dress down day and free ice cream sundaes served by faculty and staff during lunch

Celebrating our Faith - Blessing of Throats for the Feast of St. Blaise in the chapel during theology classes

February 4, 2016

Celebrating our faculty and staff - All faculty and staff will have a dress down day and will be served lunch

Celebrating our Heritage - During theology classes, students will watch the film “LV’s Ride”, a documentary about a 2011 cross country bike ride by Lasallian Volunteers

February 5, 2016

Celebrating our Faith and our Religious - We will close Catholic Schools Week with a special Mass and reception.  We have invited all local men and women religious to join us for Mass as the Church concludes the Year of Religious Life.  Many of these men and women work(ed) in Catholic schools (including Trinity High School) so it is quite fitting we honor them at this Mass.  The reception will follow the Mass.

In addition, the freshman class is composing the daily morning prayers and the sophomores are composing the daily afternoon prayers.

#FITN

The New Hampshire Primary is one week from Tuesday.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I met with every senior who is 18 or will be 18 by Primary Day and encouraged them to register to vote and to vote in the primary.  We will also be holding a mock election in theology classes on that day.

To promote the primary, we created a bulletin board with bumper stickers of all the major candidates. I visited every campaign office in Manchester earlier this week and picked up the stickers.  Martin O'Malley's office didn't have any bumper stickers so they gave me a sign instead.  Also, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum don't have campaign offices in New Hampshire so I wasn't able to get one of theirs (although they might not still be in the race after Monday).  I also posted a sample ballot of both parties and a poster that describes the candidates' experience and positions.

This is an exciting time to be working in New Hampshire and I encourage the students to make the most of it.  Most states don't get the sort of access that they do so enjoy it while it lasts!

"...to touch the face of God."

Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger explosion.  Concord High School social studies teacher Christa McAuliffe was of course on board the shuttle and died along with the six other crew members.  I was in 4th grade when this happened and vividly remember our principal coming over the intercom to tell us what happened and then leading us in a prayer.  That evening, President Reagan addressed the nation and part of that speech was our morning prayer yesterday:

We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and, perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.

There's a coincidence today. On this day three hundred and ninety years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, "He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it." Well, today, we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete.

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."

Get thee to the polls

The New Hampshire Primary is two weeks from tomorrow!  To encourage our students who are (or will be) 18 by the February 9 election, I met with them today.  We read the text of the 26th amendment which changed the voting age from 21 to 18 and explained to them how they can register to vote.  We can went a computer and looked up their polling place.  Mr. Mailloux '72 has granted a dress-down day to those who do vote on Feb. 9 and we encouraged them to take a selfie of them voting for posterity!  We have about 50 seniors who are eligible to vote and we hope they all exercise this amazing right.

On Feb. 9, we will have a mock election at the school.  We printed off the official ballots and the students will vote in their theology classes throughout the day.  We are creating special ballot boxes for them and will keep a running tally of the vote on the bulletin board outside Campus Ministry.  It will be interesting to see how our vote matches against the state.

Stay tuned!

Back home

I am a proud 1994 graduate of Boston College High School in Dorchester.  While I don't keep in touch with anyone from there, the time I spent there was so formative and memorable.  The other day, the school hosted an Alumni Day of Service and I was very excited to take part.  Alumni were invited back to campus for lunch and prayer and to then go offsite to perform some service at the Greater Boston Food Bank.  I went because of the opportunity to go back to BC High but also to get some ideas to do something similar here at Trinity High School.

I arrived at the school around 11:30am and we all went around and introduced ourselves and indicated who our favorite teacher was.  My AP French teacher was there so I joked that I should say it was him but I mentioned my chemistry and Algebra II teacher, Mr. Dempsey.  Mr. Dempsey was a legend of BC High and literally larger than life (his nickname I guess was "Fat Jack").  I prayed that I would have him as a teacher some day and as luck would have it, I had him twice my junior year as the school needed someone to teach one class of Algebra II so he took on the section in addition to teaching chemistry.  The funny thing is that I did horribly in those classes but Mr. Dempsey was so fun and such a good teacher that I consider him to be one of my favorite teachers at the school.

After introductions, we had a delicious lunch and I chatted with some guys from the classes of 1969 and 1971.  Following a brief prayer service and blessing, we headed over to the Greater Boston Food Bank.  The Food Bank is located just off 93, next to the Suffolk County Prison!  It is an 117,000 square foot facility, almost double the size of the one we have here in Manchester, and serves over 500 food pantries and agencies in Eastern Massachusetts.  Following a brief orientation, we were given our jobs.  Food is put out on a giant conveyor belt and you sort it the food into boxes by category.  After you fill a box to a certain weight, you have another person weigh the box, label it, and send it off.  In about 90 minutes, we sorted close to 6,000 pounds of food.  After this, we headed back to campus for a brief prayer in the chapel and we were on our way by 4pm.

I already have begun planning events like this for Lent - one for parents namely in early March so stay tuned.

Cancelled again

You might have heard that Washington, DC and the I-95 corridor is going to get slammed with a major snowstorm on Friday.  Unfortunately, that is also the date of the March for Life so we made the decision today to cancel this year's pilgrimage.  It wasn't an easy decision but if the forecast is correct, we would have literally been stranded there.  This is the second time in three years that weather has forced us to cancel our trip.  The last time we cancelled, some groups still went and I guess it took them 18 hours to get there.  One former youth minster jokingly told me that she was having a priest hear her confession on the bus because she was convinced they were going to die driving down!

Please do pray for all those who are still taking part in standing up for life as I'm sure many are still going.

Bombard heaven

Please keep Mr. Dick Powers '63 of our athletics office in your prayers.  Mr. Powers is in the hospital for the second time in a week and is very sick.  Please pray hard for his recovery.