We are almost there; almost through the first six weeks of school, five of which were full weeks. This Friday will be our seventh sacred liturgy of the school year. There have been three school days of perpetual adoration in our school chapel.
This is also when the day to day blends into mundane minutiae and if we are not careful enough, we can find ourselves creating blind spots. I’ve been feeling this very acutely myself, as I continue to struggle with measuring success based on outcomes and positive growth in behaviors. I even tried to pass this newsletter off to different people because I sense that communicating something authentic and edifying can be daunting after sixteen years of doing the same thing every day.
How do we prevent this from happening? How do we make sure we don’t refuse to see the good that God does in our lives every day?
I commented just this morning that leading lauds in front of students and colleagues is the most resetting reality when my internal frustrations directed towards God facilitate those blind spots. We shouldn’t overlook the wisdom of the Church when challenges emerge in our personal, professional, and communal lives. Jesus Christ has guaranteed Her existence and the Holy Spirit safeguards the Mystical Body of Christ amidst the forever turbulent times.
Mrs. Bean reminded me on the podcast today that living well should be effortless! That doesn’t mean that it won’t be hard, rather that our wills are thriving optimally when ordered towards the good. Virtue for the saints didn’t require as much effort, since they were so accustomed to practicing virtue.
If the work becomes too hard, that likely means we need to examine ourselves to see what vices need to be shunned and what virtues must be prioritized.
Mr. Bean was on the podcast last week and shared his wisdom regarding the need to teach public speaking and how to best approach classroom participation as both a student and teacher.
If we are averse to public speaking, we need not fear! We only need to be careful thinkers and charitable communicators!
We have such a talented and faithful faculty, and this has been my strongest takeaway since the start of school. We intend to invite more of them on the podcast and hope that you will follow along. The easy part of this mission is that we are relying upon the holy and intellectual titans that came before us; there is an endless source of wisdom in this tradition and we do not need to create it on our own. I am eager to discuss more of it with our teachers and share it with you! - Mr. Derek Tremblay, Headmaster