#catholic school

Sorry for being gone was too busy thinking about how twilight revealed more about sex to me than my school.

Student 1: I have a pickup line.

Student 2: What is it?

Student 1: “I go to [adjacent boys’ school].”

“My brother wants to open a bar and call it “Your Mom’s” so that on weekends he can say, ‘I’m going to Your Mom’s.’”

-CS

Student 1: Why couldn’t Helen Keller drive? Because she was a woman.

Student 2: That’s racist.

Lipstick in Catholic School

According to a news report, a certain private Catholic school was recently faced with a unique problem. A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, provided it was of a natural or neutral skin tone, but after they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints.

Every night the maintenance man would remove them and the next day the girls would put them back. Finally the principal, Sister Mary, decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night (you can just imagine the yawns from the little princesses).

To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, Sister Paschal asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required. He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it. Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.

There are teachers….. And then there are educators!!!

– St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)

“In her very person as a Jewish girl become the mother of the Messiah, Mary binds together, in a living and indissoluble way, the old and the new People of God, Israel and Christianity, synagogue and church. She is, as it were, the connecting link without which the Faith (as is happening today) runs the risk of losing its balance by either forsaking the New Testament for the Old or dispensing with the Old. In her, instead, we can live the unity of sacred Scripture in its entirety.

To use the very formulations of Vatican II, Mary is ‘figure,’ ‘image’ and ‘model’ of the Church. Beholding her the Church is shielded against the aforementioned masculinized model that views her as an instrument for a program of social–political action. In Mary, as figure and archetype, the Church again finds her own visage as Mother and cannot degenerate into the complexity of a party, an organization or a pressure group in the service of human interests, even the noblest. If Mary no longer finds a place in many theologies and ecclesiologies, the reason is obvious: they have reduced faith to an abstraction. And an abstraction does not need a Mother.”

Excerpted from Rapporto Sulla Fede, a series of 1985 interviews given by Pope Benedict XVI to Vittorio Messori. Recently, I found this book in my archives from high school and this excerpt—Women, a Woman—summates the beauty and truth of our veneration of Mary. ♥

Often, both consciously and subconsciously, we take blessings for granted in this life. Reflection has the serendipitous capability to instill both sobering and invigorating feels. Lately I’ve been thinking how fortunate, how so very blessed, I am to have been nurtured in a devoutly faith-filled home, one with an abundance of sacrifice and unconditional love. How beautiful, too, for those same morals and values to permeate the education that my siblings and I received, that my parents sacrificed for as ensuring both home and school taught us to live faith, hope, and love trumped all.

When I was a child, I was truly a child in my thoughts and reasoning: shallow, selfish, and unable to fathom the clerics’ extreme sacrifice in devoting their lives to educating my classmates and I. Fourteen years of Catholic education followed by an incredible college experience, I thank God for all that they instilled in me. And I hope that I’m going out and living it every day.

Saint Paul, beautiful human, wrote:

Brothers and sisters:
Put on, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved,
heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience,
bearing with one another and forgiving one another,
if one has a grievance against another;
as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do.
And over all these put on love,
that is, the bond of perfection.
And let the peace of Christ control your hearts,
the peace into which you were also called in one body.
And be thankful.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,
as in all wisdom you teach and admonish one another,
singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs
with gratitude in your hearts to God.
And whatever you do, in word or in deed,
do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,
giving thanks to God the Father through him.

For today’s children and tomorrow’s future, I support Catholic Strong.