Viking Voice

A Message from Our Principal

Dear Families,

1) As many of you probably know, we have a television screen mounted in the gym hallway. We use this screen to display words and images that relate in some significant way to our school mission. 

This past week, we displayed an image of St. Carlo Acutis, one of the Church's newest saints. In his short life, Acutis demonstrated a kind of mature godliness rarely associated with teenagers. Only 15 years old when he died in 2006, Acutis lived a life of deeply intentional missionary discipleship. His primary devotion was to the Eucharist, which he famously described as a "highway to heaven." He commented that only God himself "could hide in a little piece of bread."

At yesterday's Confirmation Retreat for 8th graders in our St. Stephen family of parishes, one of the small-group discussion questions was this: Do you believe that the Eucharist is the Real Presence of Jesus? Most students agreed, but a couple admitted to having occasional doubts. 

This is not surprising, as the Real Presence is a difficult teaching, much like the Trinity. God in a piece if bread?! God as three persons in one?! 

But, as Carlo Acutis would have surely agreed, there are certain beautiful mysteries about our faith that our feeble human minds cannot comprehend. God's ways are not our ways.

To be continued....

2) The target date for the unveiling of the new school website is January 15th--roughly that time when reenrollment begins. At Curriculum Night, I talked about our goal to make the website a much-improved resource for parents. I mentioned it again at the PTC meeting on Wednesday.

3) You are officially invited to Monster Mash on Friday, October 30th, in the Kyle Barth gymnasium. The festivities will kick off after lunch around 12:45. (It is not necessary to be SafeParish-trained for this event since you will be a spectator and not a school volunteer.)

4) Special thanks to Nikki Hering and Autumn Stapf for transporting our paper recyclables to Hanover Park. We talked to our students this past week about Pope Francis' 2015 encyclical Laudatio Si, which called for Catholics to embrace the moral responsibility of caring for our common home. Recycling paper is far from the only way to respond to this call, but it is one way! And since we generate a decent amount of paper waste (like most schools), it is also an important and meaningful way.

5) On Wednesday, November 11th, we will celebrate Veterans Day. We invite all parent, grandparent, and sibling veterans of the Armed Services to join us in the morning. Active duty military are also welcome. More details to come, but for planning purposes we are looking at roughly 7:30 to 8:00 a.m.

6) THANK YOU to all those who donated coats, games, scarves, etc., to our St. Vincent de Paul collection this past week. It took multiple people to carry all the donations over to church!

Christ in Self. Christ in Other.

Josh

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