For the week of January 24, 2010

Thanks to the following families who helped this past week
• For hosting students: The Bowe family, The Thomas Nguyen family, the Murphy family, and the LeMire family

Volunteer Opportunities
• Be a guest speaker at the January 30th Open House
• Host weekenders
• Join in sponsoring a Parent Lunch in April, May, or June. If parents would like to help underwrite the cost of a Parent Lunch, standard donations with four couples participating are $75 per couple.
• Take photos of a soccer game

St. Michael’s in the news!
St. Michael’s Abbey has accepted a seminarian for the fall who is making the news. Grant Desme discusses decision to become priest and heading to St. Michael's Abbey.

Soccer games this week
Tuesday, Jan. 26th: STM @ TVT; 3:00 p.m.
Saturday, Jan. 30th STM v. Avalon. Home game. Double header starting at noon.

Admissions
• St. Michael’s Entrance Test is Saturday, January 30th at 9 am. Please contact the school office to register.
• The deadline for financial aid applications is February 1st. Financial Aid Application


Parent Education
A talk for mother: THE MASS, THE ROSARY, AND MOTHERHOOD
Friday, February 5th 2010 at 11:00 a.m. and repeated on Sunday, February 7th 2010 at 7:00 p.m.
Presenter: Mrs. Amy Zak

Annual Giving Program Underway
Annual Giving is our yearly appeal to St. Michael’s families, alumni, and friends inviting them to support the current educational program with a financial gift. This gift is distinct from the obligations of tuition and fees. By generating this additional income, the St. Michael’s is able to provide an exceptional moral and intellectual formation program which is much greater than the tuition income affords. Make a gift which reflects what you have received from God over the last 12 months; ask your company and friends to match or double your gift. (Fulfillment deadline: June 30th ) Pray for the success of the program.

Weekly Homily by Fr. Godfrey Bushmaker, O.Praem.
Among other things, Fr. Godfrey is an associate pastor in SS Peter and Paul in Wilmington, CA.

Before bottles were easily available, wineskins were used for storing and serving wine. Wineskins were bags usually made from goat hides. After the skin was removed from the animal it was tanned over a fire. Then all the openings were sewn shut except for the neck. Before the neck was sewn shut, fresh grape juice was poured in, then it was also sewn shut and stored away, and the fermentation process began.

As the new wine fermented, it expanded, and it would stretch the new wineskins quite a bit. Therefore putting new, unfermented wine in old wineskins (that were already stretched and dried out) would result in almost certain disaster. Once the fermentation process began and the wine expanded; an old, dried out skin would split open and both the wine and skin would be lost.

The gospel invites us to compare our hearts to wineskins. Are they pliable and able to conform to any growth that following the gospel may demand? As members of the faithful, we have to be watchful that we not allow our hearts to become rigid and unable to accept changes or recognize them as improvements.

We need to keep our hearts docile so the Lord can change in us those areas that need improvement. And, if we reflect on it, we shouldn’t be surprised if those areas that seem to be targeted for change by heaven are precisely those areas that we’re least inclined to change.

The new wine is nothing less than the perfection of a life lived with Christ, and it’ll stretch you to the limits, if you allow it. The new wine skins then become a new creation, or a new man, as St. Paul puts it. Our Lord won’t pour his new wine into the old man (he’d just burst and make a mess).

This would be as if our Lord came to merely put a patch on the old Jewish Law like the gospel’s patch of new cloth on an old garment. If the patch got wet, it would shrink and tear the garment, and the hole would get worse than it was to begin with. Our Lord isn’t a band-aid placed on the garment of the Old Law, he’s a whole new garment: a new way of living. In the same way, our Lord doesn’t want to be merely a patch on our garment of life, he wants to be our entire wardrobe.

We’re always being called to conversion, to change and to conform ourselves to our Lord’s image, but we often resist. For some, it’s because we feel safer with things tried and tested. But this can be used as an excuse to hide behind when we’ve settled into a nice comfortable rut that we’re too lazy to move out of. This can be especially dangerous for those of us in the sanctuary, because in the spiritual life, to stop advancing, is to fall backward.

And for the students, no doubt you have discovered that a number of preferences and habits you could indulge while living at home with a room to yourself, just aren’t possible now that you have roommates and deans. For some of you it may be the first time you’ve been forced to consider another’s needs. It’s a time of great change for you, but also an opportunity to answer the Lord’s call to advance toward perfection, to develop new habits and virtues that’ll help propel you toward a bright and successful future when you leave this hilltop.

But remember that our Lord won’t be poured into an old wineskin: stiff in its settled personality, assumptions about life, prejudices about people or inflexible plans for the future. Our Lord demands freedom to change any aspect of our lives, and in return, he’ll reward us with a degree of glory and happiness in heaven which will have us, as the saying goes, bursting at the seams.

In publishing this homily, we hope to share a portion of the spiritual treasure by which the students are enriched every day. However, this homily may not be reproduced by the parents or friends of St. Michael’s without written permission of the author.

Prayer Requests
• Mrs. Ermelinda Carino, who recently lost a lung and now struggles to afford the oxygen she needs.
• Mrs. Amber Manly for a healthy pregnancy
• Mr. Richard Nelson, grandfather of David Hall, who is battling cancer
• St. Michael’s older priests and those who care for them.
• Those affected by the earthquake in Haiti
• Those who suffer in the current economic crisis.
• Those who are in the armed forces.

For the repose of the soul of Pat Greco, great grandmother of freshman, John Michael Mikolaycik