Welcome Back!

I hope you all had a happy and holy Christmas! We continue to celebrate the Christmas season here. As such, you will continue to see our Christmas trees up, our Christmas lights burning and our crèche visible (with the wise men drawing ever closer) until the full 12 days of Christmas culminate with the Feast of the Epiphany―that wonderful celebration of wisdom recognizing divinity wrapped in humility and poverty.

And, Happy New Year!
 
My prayer at the beginning of each new calendar year tends to be the same, but since our life is a journey to greater wisdom (in that sense, we are indeed like the wise men on the road), my annual prayer simply becomes deeper each year.

May we all become ever more poignantly aware of the depth of God’s great Love for us! Steeped in new levels of security in that Love, may we continue to grow in the freedom to reflect God’s Beauty, Goodness and Truth through the very living of our lives.
 
As each of us travels our life’s journey, we are sure to struggle through the ups and downs that inevitably will be found along the road. Sometimes it is BECAUSE of the difficulties and challenges, our hearts are broken open (by circumstances rather than through our own choosing) and as a result of these difficult moments we end up learning more about ourselves, more about God and more about what is important and what is not important on the journey.
 
Consequently, you will notice that I am not praying for “no bumps” on the journey; I am only praying that, through the bumps, we grow in our capacity to more beautifully and more perfectly allow the incarnation to continue in us. The goal is to BECOME Christ, which means that, like Christ, we become the face and heart and hands of God’s goodness, grace and love.

So, may the growth continue and deepen on each of our journeys during 2013!

Maureen Glavin, rscj

I want to take this opportunity to tell you about our glorious Christmas Basket liturgy. There were 280 baskets which were lovingly delivered by a cadre of volunteer families and staff to agencies throughout the St. Louis and St. Charles area. The view of the baskets on the bleachers was humbling and awe-inspiring. A HUGE thank you to all families who generously and lovingly donated and helped!
 
At the conclusion of the liturgy, I shared the following quote of Janet Erskine Stuart, RSCJ as she reflected on the Christmas mystery:  
 
“It was at Christmas that our Lord, as it were, took His first plunge into the heart of our troubles, of our difficulties, of our experiences, into the heart of the life we are leading.
 
“And that, not as someone standing at a distance, but as thrown into the stream―feeling the shock, the human astonishment at what took place around Him―feeling the poverty, the pain, the isolation in which He was left.”
 
I love that image of our Lord! Mother Stuart is describing a God who IS INDEED WITH US, one of us, suffering among us. God is with us in our worry and agony (just as Jesus agonized on Holy Thursday). God is with us in the midst of our physical pain (as was Jesus on Good Friday). And God is with us in the seeming spiritual emptiness of our lives (similar to the experience of Holy Saturday).

I reminded everyone that, though our world may have bleak moments of darkness, it is IN THE VERY MIDST OF THAT darkness, we must remind ourselves that we have a LIGHT.

That light was born into human history 2000 years ago in a very unique way, but that light IS born in our hearts in the here and now.

We keep that light burning brightly when we open our hearts and allow God’s Light to fill us.

We keep that light burning when we help at places such as Santa’s Helpers wrapping gifts for children who might otherwise not have gifts, as did the Fourth and Fifth Class students.

We keep that light burning when we donate money to buy presents for Adopt-a-Family families rather than buying gifts for each other, as did our Fifth through Eighth Class students.

We keep that light burning when we put together baskets of food for families in need, as did many of you.

We keep that light burning when we come in early to carry baskets or organize baskets, as have our oldest students, our Social Justice Club members, our Student Council leaders and many of our dedicated faculty and staff.

We keep that light burning when we help deliver baskets, as did many of you, our parents.

We keep that light burning when we choose to be gentle with each other, as we are inspired to be by the child in the manger.

Thank you! Thank you for keeping the Light burning bright in our world. And, may we all continue to open our hearts, thus experiencing the ongoing birth of God’s love within us and, in doing so, may we continue to BE GOD’S HEART and God’s LIGHT in a world which so desperately needs it.

Merry Christmas to each and every one!

My heart is filled with gratitude as I sit down to write this missive.
 
I am grateful for God’s creative pouring forth of Self through the Love which became this universe and all that is in it!
 
I am grateful to God’s yearnings for re-union with us and thus reaching out to all of us as our Beloved.

I am grateful to God for the MANY ways God tries to wake us up to the height, breadth and depth of that Love, especially by BEING perfectly one of us (God-Among-Us/Emmanuel/the Christ) to SHOW us the Face of Perfect Love in Human Form.

I am so grateful for this mission, to come to know and then reveal God’s Love; a mission given to us by St. Madeleine Sophie and brought to the United States by Philippine Duchesne.

I am grateful to be partnering in this mission with parents who are so very open to living this mission in their own lives and who live lives of service and generosity which WE experience regularly here as you:

• Support the Adopt-a-Family program.
• Create baskets of food for families in need.
• Help us as drivers on our service trips and field trips.
• Donate your time regularly here at school in MULTIPLE capacities.
• Provide the funds needed to help cover expenses to make this the best school possible (for the SAKE of making this world a better place by educating MORE students in the WAYS of God’s Heart)

And, above and beyond that, you have generously given at the Silver Teas to help provide a Christmas gift/bonus to each Academy faculty and staff member!
 
Gratitude abounds. I have no words but THANK YOU!

From my heart to yours,

Maureen Glavin, rscj

As we look forward to the upcoming choral performances endearingly known as Silver Tea, I do so with some hopes.
 
My deepest hope is that you, our parents, experience the love that this gift is meant to convey. The children understand that this performance is for you. They practice harmony, memorize words, pay attention to the details of how they are presenting themselves, and patiently persist in the pursuit of perfection, all for the sake of providing you with the gift of joy that they expectantly intend for you to experience.
 
Another very deep hope I have is that, through the pure innocence of these children’s song and story, we are all reminded of the True Meaning of Christmas. Secular, commercial and cultural pressures tend to override or at least minimize the powerful message of the birth of that one sacred baby born in the Bethlehem manger. I don’t think we can say it enough: God revealed God’s Self in a unique and new way through that vulnerable, poor and needy child!
 
My third hope is that the implications of this special story hit our heart at new levels! What does this story say about the Master and Creator of the Universe? What is God trying to REVEAL by BEING so perfectly present in this human form? Do we understand our material world differently? Do we understand humanity differently? Do we understand God differently?
 
My final hope is that you ENJOY the performances! Sit back and take in this time while your children are shimmering with innocence and shining forth with heart-beauty reflective of the Face of Christ we see within their deepest and best selves. The incarnation assuredly continues as they (and we) allow God to fill our hearts and shine forth through our lives and loves.
 
United to each of you in and through the Heart that beats in each of our hearts, if only we allow our hearts to be open enough to birth Christ anew in the here, and the now!

This coming Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent. Most fundamentally Advent is the word we use to describe the four-week period of time leading up to Christmas. Most profoundly Advent is a season of heart-attentiveness, allowing for an experience of interior emptiness.

Put that way, Advent doesn’t sound too appealing, does it? Yet, it can be one of the most profound liturgical seasons. It is so because the effect of the kind of heart-attentiveness which Advent promotes is the very thing that allows for the experience of the birth of Christ’s fullness within!

How? Well, Advent is meant to be a time when we actually slow down long enough to notice, our hearts’ longings and yearnings. Many of us keep our lives busy for the very reason that we don’t LIKE experiencing our inner aches. We fill our lives with distractions as a way of avoiding or as a way of trying to fill our hearts so we aren’t aware of the ache. We fill our hearts with people, material things and thrilling experiences. In fact, we all know of people whose lives have been ruined in their desperate drive to fill that empty interior space―sometimes in destructive and unhelpful ways.

The Advent invitation is to just notice the heart-hole, notice the longing, notice the yearning and notice the ache―without filling it up! These human longings are symbolically communicated during Advent with unlighted candles on the evergreen wreath. We sense in this visual reminder that the fullness of Life and Light will be ours even if we don’t experience that fullness in the present moment.

So, in the spirit of Advent let us try NOT to fill our heart-hole with anything else. Let us consciously experience our inner yearning, knowing that we will be surprised with great JOY, when God’s Very Self, through Christ, fills our hearts to overflowing! THEN we can really celebrate Christmas!

United in prayer during this holy season,

Maureen Glavin, rscj

Happy Feast of Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne!
 
As we anticipate one of the special days of our school year, let us remind ourselves why we celebrate her with such enthusiasm. Among the reasons, I include:           

She is the foundress of our school! She arrived here before Missouri became a state, having left her home, family, country and culture, knowing full well she would never see them again given the arduous and lengthy journey.

She is the foundress of Catholic education in our Archdiocese! She opened the FIRST Catholic school in the St. Louis area, in a little log cabin on these grounds on Sept. 14, 1818.

She is the foundress of the oldest operating school in the St. Louis metropolitan area!

She is the first Religious of the Sacred Heart to open a Sacred Heart school in the United States (we can even say the first in the Western Hemisphere) and is thus considered the foundress of all our educational establishments in the current Network of Sacred Heart Schools in this country.

She is considered one of the pioneer missionaries in the growing 19th century American frontier, and is certainly one of the most famous pioneer missionaries of this Archdiocese. As such she has great historic significance. In fact, her visage is among the bronze busts on display in the Hall of Famous Missourians in the Capital in Jefferson City.

She is currently the only canonized saint in the St. Louis Metropolitan Area and in the State of Missouri!

Additionally, we celebrate our dear Mother Duchesne with such vigor because of her exemplary life. Of her many beautiful and inspirational qualities and characteristics which we celebrate, the following are among them:

Her contemplative example:  Philippine was drawn to spend hours each day in the quiet depths of her prayer. In those hours, Philippine longingly lingered with the One Whom she loved. In this context, over time, God’s Love filled her. Given the hours she spent in prayer, the Native Americans were inspired to call her The-Woman-Who-Prays-Always.

Her unflinching generosity:  Philippine beautifully and exuberantly reflected the Heart of Christ, which is the Love of God, in her work, her efforts and her actions. This is exactly what drew people TO her―especially the children! Stories abound of how the children wanted to be sent to her “when they were naughty.”

Her deep humility:  Apparently Philippine was not aware of HOW MUCH she reflected God’s Love to others. She was so focused on others or on God that she did not dwell on the good she was doing. She only saw the good she wanted to do. And if anything, this caused her heartache, an interior suffering which often came out as self recrimination or self-deprecating comments in her letters! (This is one of the reasons I rarely quote Philippine herself!)

This Academy is so very blessed to be able to claim her as our special, holy foundation stone:

We are blessed by her holy example.

We are blessed by her heavenly intercession.

We are blessed by her ongoing presence among us even to this day.

We have so much to be thankful for and so much to celebrate. May we do so, not only with the exuberance due this historic woman, but, let us celebrate by trying to live lives of prayer, generosity and humility!

Happy Feast of Philippine Duchesne, everyone!

Maureen Glavin, rscj

As I stated at the General PCC meeting, we all agree that we want our children to be kind, compassionate human beings.  We want them to be people who engage in service throughout their lives, helping to make this world a better place.

How do we do that? The BEST way to do that is to simply INVITE our children to “do” things for others. 

Recent examples of activities which have provided our students the opportunity to serve others include:

• Fourth and Fifth Class students have wrapped gifts and bagged candy for an organization called Santa’s Helpers which distributes Christmas gifts to families in need.
  
• Fifth Class students are visiting our elderly friends at Mount Carmel Home monthly.
• Sixth Class students have been going in small groups each month to Sts. Joachim and Ann food pantry.
• Sixth Class students hosted a bake sale to help purchase toys for Sts. Bridget and Theresa Parish in St Louis.
• Seventh Class students have spent a number of Saturday mornings interacting with “young athletes” from Special Olympics here at ASH. In addition, some of these same students are volunteering on additional weekends at other Special Olympics events.
• Eighth Class students have planted, nurtured and harvested their own gardens, the produce from which has been (and is being still) distributed to soup kitchens.
• Plans for Adopt-a-Family in Seventh and Eighth Classes are in progress for Christmas.
• Social Justice Committee members have stayed after school to make pillowcases for children with cancer.
• The whole school community (with the help of the Social Justice Committee) contributed to our Mater Feast Day collection of children’s items for Sts. Joachim and Ann Care Center.

Harnessing and observing the natural generous energy that most children have is supremely satisfying.

Equally satisfying is to observe our students come to the realization that it is as joy-producing to DO something for someone as it is to receive something from someone. 

May the growth continue!

Maureen Glavin, rscj

Dear Parents,

Thank you so much for all of you who attended the General Parent Coordinating Council Meeting this past Tuesday evening. And thank you for the wonderful feedback regarding the evening’s program!

Because the feedback indicated that people seemed to appreciate the presentation, I am going to post the evening’s PowerPoint on the Parent Portal, AND I am going to take the content of the comments and periodically include portions of it in upcoming Thursday Mails.

Let me begin here, today, by outlining my assumptions and my thesis.

Included among my assumptions were three points:

1. We all have common hopes and desires for our children.
2. We have common struggles in the difficult task of helping our children achieve what we hope for their lives (more so today than in previous generations).
3. But, we don’t necessarily have the skill set or the knowledge base to make the right moves at the right time to help our children navigate through childhood in a way which allows them to be the kind of adult we hope and want them to be. In fact, sometimes we do things, as parents and as educators, which we THINK will accomplish our goals for our children, but which are NOT helpful.

Why would we do something which is not helpful to the formation process?

This is my thesis: we do not want our children to suffer. We don’t want them to suffer in the short run OR the long run. But our inability to allow them to suffer in the short run, ultimately does damage to them in the long run.

Allow me to make this point in a slightly different way: we, as adults, are too quick to alleviate what we think will be uncomfortable for our children (frustration, boredom, anxiety, angst).  In doing so, we often take away the golden opportunities which help them develop the capacities and insights which will allow them to be who we ultimately hope/want them to be.

Report card time is a particularly key moment for not rescuing our children. To this point, a grade which might be disappointing can be a springboard into a wonderful, self-reflective conversation.

As you engage in these conversations you might consider the following type of questions:

• What are you most proud of?
• What are you most disappointed about?
• What surprised you? Why?
• What do you want to do differently next quarter in order to achieve your personal best?

Conversation starters which I would not recommend include, “I am so disappointed in you” or “I am so proud of you.” Why? Because when we make statements such as these, the focus is on the adult, not the child. We don’t want our children doing or not doing something BECAUSE it makes US happy or proud or sad or disappointed. A child who does things to please an adult becomes the adolescent who does things to please his or her friends (not something any of us want).

When looking at the character traits (a VERY important aspect of the report card), invite your child into a conversation with questions such as:

• Is this consistent with who you are?
• Is this consistent with who you want to be?
• If not, what do you want to do differently to be the person you want to be?

May these days of conversation, reflection and introspection be helpful in the ongoing process of growth!

Maureen Glavin, rscj

Dear Parents,

First and foremost, I want to express my deepest gratitude to each of you who supported this past weekend’s Country Fair! From our Chairs, Tim and Marguerite Stewart, and Co-Chairs, Gregg and Jodie Schneider, to the many and hard-working Committee Chairs to our Advancement Office staff, especially Jan McCosker, to every single parent who volunteered at a booth or helped to set up or stayed to clean up, I, want to earnestly, enthusiastically and wholeheartedly THANK YOU!

As I stated last week, the Academy absolutely needs the funds raised from Country Fair in order to meet our budgeted operating expenses. It is also true that all of us have come to value and appreciate the quality of communal connections which are created through our collaborative efforts working toward this common financial goal. From my humble perspective, the weekend was a HUGE success all around! Thank you, thank you, thank you for helping to make it so!

Now, a word about our special Feast Day which we will be celebrating tomorrow – the Feast of Mater Admirabilis. As most of you know, this image of Mary was painted in 1844 by a young novice in the Society of the Sacred Heart, Pauline Perdrau, who took it upon herself to produce a fresco of the Virgin Mary on a wall in the Trinita dei Monti, a Sacred Heart school in Rome. Sister Perdrau chose to paint Mary as a young woman, sitting in the temple, clothed in a rose-colored dress. Representations of Mater Admirabilis (Latin for Mother Most Admirable) can be found in Sacred Heart schools throughout the world.

But, how does this relate to our students (or to us) today? I have come to believe that Mater may provide one of the most important lessons we can teach our children. How so?

Given the circumstances in which we live, we can allow ourselves to easily be distracted with the exterior noise, chatter and potential exterior influences. Examples might include what people think, what people say, what is written or talked about in the media, and in our own social networks (virtual or personal). If we are not moving through our world with a grounded center, we can be affected by these exterior “factors” in ways that overly determine our interior attitudes, thought patterns, dispositions or emotional states.

This image of Jesus’ Mother calls us to something totally other. Mater, through her contemplative example, calls us to the depth of our own being. She calls us to our own interior space, where, when we are attentive (as she is), where, when we are silent (as she is), where, when we are focused inwardly (as she is), we discover the place in our deepest self where Christ resides WITH us, IN us and AS us. From this place, our attitudes, our thought patterns, our dispositions and our emotional states are NOT affected BY the world, as much as AFFECT the world. Living from this place within, we become Christ in the world without.

This is my deepest hope for our students: that they learn how to live life from the inside-out and affect their world AS the Face of Christ!

Happy Feast,

Maureen Glavin, rscj

Dear Academy Families,

The “buzz” around the school this week is palpably Country Fair!  From the presence of pumpkins, to Marketplace volunteers, to raffle sale conversations, to Fun Run trophy chatter, this place is being painted with a palette of excitement as we anticipate a fun-filled weekend.

It is important for me to take a moment to remind everyone that proceeds from this weekend are an essential aspect of our yearly budget. Every donation, every dollar spent and every volunteer hour given is a contribution to the Academy program. In fact, Country Fair typically brings in around $50,000 net income to the annual operating budget. So, as you have an enjoyable day with your children and friends, know that you are also making a significant contribution to the school’s ability to deliver a quality program.

An equally important aspect of Country Fair is the opportunity it provides us to build community with each other. Hopefully you will have a chance to spend time with each other, get to know each other a little more, perhaps meet a new family and enjoy one another’s company. Not only do these connections occur over a meal or a game of washers, but, they occur in the shared task of “making the day happen.” Setting up for the fair, running a booth together, and assisting in the cleanup can be as community building as a conversation over coffee.   

Come one, come all! Bring your friends and family. Enjoy the day. Enjoy the food. Enjoy the fun. And THANK YOU, from the bottom of my heart, for all you have done, are doing and will do, to make it happen.

See you at the Fair!

Maureen Glavin, rscj

Dear Parents,

What glorious days these are!  Walking through the Arcade doors by Cribbin Hall Library, out into the Ohmes Family Circle, I can’t help but want to pause and take a deep breath. The aroma of leaves… the beginning of the bursting forth of color… the feeling of the fresh, crisp air―all conspire to fill me to overflowing, with gratitude, with wonder, with awe and, well, in the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins (priest and poet of the 19th century), with a sense of God’s Grandeur. As excerpted from his poem of that name:

 
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil…
 
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things…
 
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods…with ah! bright wings.

Hopkins’s poem and my own sensibilities are echoed in our educational philosophy. One means Madeleine Sophie Barat used to raise the minds and hearts of children to God was by surrounding them with beauty.
 
I was recently listening to an NPR segment in which the interviewee was reporting on a study comparing the convalescence rates of patients. The one variable in the study was the environment in which they were recuperating. One group spent time in an ugly room with no view save a brick wall from their window. The other group convalesced in a beautiful place with a view of trees and garden with flowers. With astonishingly statistically significant results, the convalescence of those surrounded by beauty occurred at a faster rate. On an intuitive level, this is not at all surprising!
 
I hope we all allow the beauty of these days to raise our hearts and minds to God whose Very Self is Beauty. This God is the One who ‘Was’ before Creation, who resides ‘deep down’ in all that ‘Is’ (the One Who wished to be known as I-Am) and who is made manifest when creation bursts forth in all its splendor and loveliness.
 
This God, whom we have come to know in the dispositions of the Heart of the person of Jesus, not only transcends the material world but is revealed to us through the beauty of the material world.
 
May we all enjoy the Glory and Abundant Beauty of these days!

Maureen Glavin, rscj