● Mr. Ralph Martin for coaching Pioneer Baseball into another win.
General announcements to Parents
●The deadline for 2011/2012 non-refundable tuition deposits is March 21st.
●The deadline for the Senior Graduation Fee is April 1st.
●There will be a special schedule on Good Friday, April 22nd. Students will attend the Good Friday Liturgy until 4:30 p.m. There will not be an early dismissal as there normally is on Friday. Parents who need to purchase a train ticket may calculate the boys’ arrival at the train station by 5:30 p.m. Please purchase train tickets early. Email ticket confirmations to the school office before April 18th.
Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC)–Western Catholic Education Association (WCEA)
Please note that the Visiting Committee will meet with all the parents of St. Michael’s Prep on Sunday Evening, March 20, at 7:00 PM, in the modular classroom. This meeting will take no more than 1 hour. It is very important that all parents come to the meeting who can. Please remember that what we identify as our school’s best traits, Faith, Academics and Character, are also known as the school’s “Expected Schoolwide Learning Results [ESLRs]. Thank you!
This week’s photos:
Baseball, Classes during exam week, Spring On The Hilltop
●The deadline for 2011/2012 non-refundable tuition deposits is March 21st.
●The deadline for the Senior Graduation Fee is April 1st.
●There will be a special schedule on Good Friday, April 22nd. Students will attend the Good Friday Liturgy until 4:30 p.m. There will not be an early dismissal as there normally is on Friday. Parents who need to purchase a train ticket may calculate the boys’ arrival at the train station by 5:30 p.m. Please purchase train tickets early. Email ticket confirmations to the school office before April 18th.
Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC)–Western Catholic Education Association (WCEA)
Please note that the Visiting Committee will meet with all the parents of St. Michael’s Prep on Sunday Evening, March 20, at 7:00 PM, in the modular classroom. This meeting will take no more than 1 hour. It is very important that all parents come to the meeting who can. Please remember that what we identify as our school’s best traits, Faith, Academics and Character, are also known as the school’s “Expected Schoolwide Learning Results [ESLRs]. Thank you!
This week’s photos:
Baseball, Classes during exam week, Spring On The Hilltop
Parent/Student Handbook: CHAPTER 3, SECTION 5
SECTION 5: PLAGIARISM, HOMEWORK COPYING, CHEATING
Plagiarism (taking ideas, writings, etc. from someone else and presenting them as one’s own) and homework copying are placed in the same category as test cheating. Any student using material copied from an Internet source under the guise of his own name is cheating. Students have a moral responsibility to themselves and others to work honestly. The consequences for cheating and/or plagiarism are progressive. For the first offence the student receives a “0” and a letter home. The second offence adds a conference with the parents and the loss during that academic year of all co-curricular and extra-curricular privileges and positions. The third offense is sufficient reason for expulsion from school. The record of these offenses accumulate throughout the years the student attends St. Michael’s. In addition to other means, the school does use commercially available software designed to identify unreferenced sources in student work.
Etiquette Point of the Week
A gentleman always sends a written thank-you note if he has been someone’s guest on a special vacation or outing.
How To Raise A Gentleman, Kay West; Brooks Brothers Press Perennial
Athletics
Congratulations to our Pioneer baseball team for their wins Monday and Tuesday. The Pioneers remain undefeated. Come join us at one of the following games.
Tuesday: Baseball vs. San Jacinto Valley @ STM; 3:15 p.m.
Thursday: Baseball vs. Noli Indian School @ Noli; 3:15 p.m.
Birthdays This Week:
March 25 Jacob Portka
Homily preached by Fr. Justin Ramos, O.Praem.
Among other things, Fr. Justin leads our development efforts.
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” …Words of our blessed Lord.
The story of Queen Esther in today’s lesson is one of the many Old Testament illustrations that persistent asking, seeking, and knocking pay off with conquering results. More often than not however, it seems as though we’re like Moses asking, seeking and knocking at the door of the Pharaoh who refuses to fulfill our request!
That is because we have the wrong idea of who God is. We think God is more like us or Pharaoh-- stubborn, unbending and wicked. But even if we have this warped notion of our Heavenly Father, we should be encouraged to ask, seek and knock since ‘even we, who are wicked give good gifts to our children.’
The fact is that God isn’t like us. Our Heavenly Father is generous, merciful and just. So, why don’t we ask, seek and knock with the daring persistence of Queen Esther, Moses, and the saints?
We that God knows everything we need even before we ask for it—so is it worth praying for something we have no control over? Is our asking, seeking, knocking really free or out of our control? Can we really cause events to happen by our actions?
God has preordained the world to exist in a certain way—much is out of our control but we do have a role to play that causes things to happen in this world.
C.S. Lewis puts it in this way, “It is like a play in which the scene and the general outline of the story is fixed by the author, but certain minor details are left for the actors to improvise.”
In that Christmas Classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life, after George Baily sees all the events, things and people he affected during his entire life, his guardian angel Clarence remarks, “Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?” If God permits things to happen because of us so why wouldn’t He permit us to make things happen by directly asking him?
If we can effect good in others such as helping them do
well in school, assisting someone with a doubt or simply helping to change a tire, what greater things will our heavenly Father do if we ask with perseverance. There are even things which depend upon us to ask for otherwise they would not occur.St. Patrick’s prayers affected the conversion of the entire nation of Ireland to Catholicism. He relates in his "Confessio": "But after I reached Hibernia I used to pasture the flock each day and I used to pray many times a day. More and more did the Love of God, and my fear of Him and faith increase, and my spirit was moved so that in a day I said up to a hundred prayers, and in the night a like number; besides I used to stay out in the forests and on the mountain and I would wake up before daylight to pray in the snow, in icy coldness, in rain, and I used to feel neither ill nor any slothfulness, because, as I now see, the Spirit was burning in me at that time". Ireland’s conversion depended upon St. Patrick’s persistent asking, seeking and knocking.
Day in and day out we ask God in the sacred liturgy to hasten to our assistance. Our entire life and that of many others depends upon our asking, our seeking, and our knocking. Only those who ask, will receive; and those who seek will find; and those who knock, the door will be opened.
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
● The entire girls’ softball team and its coaches from Benedictine College whose bus was rear ended by a semi on their way to a competition.
●Those who are in the armed forces.
● St. Michael’s older priests and those who care for them.
● For the repose of the soul of Mr. William Brown
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