This Sunday, September 18th, 7:00 p.m., there is a Parent Gala Meeting in the student dining room. All parents working at the Gala next week must be present for this important meeting.
Thanks to those parents and friends who have helped this week:
For hosting weekenders: the Dang Family; the Porretta Family; Sagliett
o FamilyFor bringing refreshments to the football game: the Schardt Family
For taking pictures for the school at the football game: Mr. Jesus Gomez
Student-led Parent Teacher Conferences, September 25th: a face-to-face meeting between parents, their son, and the teachers.
Time: Freshmen 6:30 pm; Sophomores 6:50 pm; Juniors 7:15 pm; Seniors 7:40 pm.
Begin: in the parking lot near the library where Fr. Gabriel will distribute
name tags,
Continue: the yellow classroom and the recreation room.
End: Behind the school for a reception.
Note: Three minute timeframe. If parents have more than one student
attending, the conference is "private" and the other son should wait
for his turn to lead his presentation about his learning.
The objective is to help your sons accept more of the responsibility and ownership for their learning. To demonstrate to what degree you son has accomplished this objective, he has prepared a sampling of his classwork to show you. During your meeting with the various teachers, your son will succinctly:
·Introduce you to his teacher;
·Tell you the basic academic habits (note taking, summarizing reading, using complete sentences) that he is good at;
·Tell you the specific things (knowledge, skills, abilities) in each class that he is good at;
·Tell you the things he is going to improve in (growth areas);
·Tell you the strategies/steps to achieve his goals;Tell you how you, his parents, can assist him to achieve his goals.
Your role as a parent is to
· Look at your son’s online grades before coming to the conference. This is easy when you log in at http://www.teacherease.com/
· Listen to son when he speaks about his strengths/weaknesses
and goals for each of his classes;· Briefly confirm (or correct) your son’s self-identified strengths/weaknesses and goals. Don’t plan on saying anything more than a few words – not more than one or two sentences
· Send a note to your son during the week which summarizes your view of the conference. Praise. Encourage. Exhort. Love.
Having a caring audience for learning gives students a powerful reason to continue to learn and to work hard. It gives extra value their efforts at school. Listening well is the most important role of parents at the conferences. We’ll see you on September 25th !
September High School Information Nights
St. Michael’s will be represented at the following high school information nights. If you have a child or know someone who has a child who will be entering 9th grade or above next year, come to one of these informative events.
Tuesday, Sept. 27th: Our Lady of the Assumption, 611 West Bonita Ave., Claremont, CA 91711; 7:00 p.m.
Sports
● Congratulations to our football team on its recent victory over Noli. Our team’s record is now 2-0!
● Friday, Sept. 23rd football vs. Big Pine @ STM, 3:30 p.m.
This Week’s Photos: student life; cross country team
This Week’s Birthdays
St. Michael’s will be represented at the following high school information nights. If you have a child or know someone who has a child who will be entering 9th grade or above next year, come to one of these informative events.
Tuesday, Sept. 27th: Our Lady of the Assumption, 611 West Bonita Ave., Claremont, CA 91711; 7:00 p.m.
Sports
● Congratulations to our football team on its recent victory over Noli. Our team’s record is now 2-0!
● Friday, Sept. 23rd football vs. Big Pine @ STM, 3:30 p.m.
This Week’s Photos: student life; cross country team
This Week’s Birthdays
9/22 John Michael Mikolaycik
Weekly Homily by Fr. John Henry Hanson 
Among other things, Fr. John Henry is the school’s College Counselor and teaches English.
“Accompanying him were the Twelve and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities,… and many others who provided for them out of their resources.” The implication is that these women were “accompanying” our Lord because they had received healing from Him. They had been “cured” of evil spirits and infirmities of body and mind--which probably means, moral problems and physical or emotional ills. Then began their time of recovery.
After we have encountered the Lord in this way, and have decided to surrender ourselves to Him, our lives are in a state of recovery. Our resources become His resources. We put ourselves in His hands totally and completely. Blessed Columba Marmion even uses the expression with both eyes closed, or blindfolded. And from that time on, everything we have, every resource of mind and body, is His. Our past is His just as much as our future.
In Christianity, recovery has to mean conversion. And conversion must mean Christ reclaiming us for His own. Our resources become His resources. This process is one of complete submission of ourselves to Christ. He says, “Take my yoke upon you.” It can be very hard and painful to submit to His love when our poor, wounded selves want to have some say over how our resources are used. Gradually we must learn that this cannot be. Our healer must be the Lord and Master of all we are and have.
To speak of recovery means that we are recovering from something. We are passing from an old life to a new, from an old frame of mind to a renewed mentality--an extremely important change for us to undergo. What is more important than receiving physical healing is how our perspective changes on everything. If we still have physical or emotional problems, we can begin to see something we could never see before: God has a purpose for this. Converted people can go from asking “Why me? Why these inconvenient and painful troubles?” to seeing that maybe my acceptance of these things plays a crucial role in m
y spiritual and moral recovery.
St Paul’s example sheds light on the experience of every Christian: “…to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me…. Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me; but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” St Paul accepted that and then learned to rejoice in it.
Our frame of mind must change like that, so that we can belong entirely to the Lord and confidently submit ourselves to His care for a lifetime. As Scripture says, “let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.” That is how we see all things now--including the hardest thing to accept: our sins.
The women who accompanied Jesus needed to be forgiven. And as they traveled with Him and the Apostles, they probably remembered their sins, and felt shame, as they heard Jesus speak and interacted with Him. And very often they were probably astonished that He was accepting their help, using their resources--the resources of former unconverted sinners. Now they were converted and would still need the Lord’s forgiveness, though maybe not in the same ways. What was Jesus saying to them and what is He saying to us, about their recovery and ours?
We have to see how the failures of a moment or the accumulated failures of a lifetime cannot keep us back from God. A bad moment we may have had within the last hour, cannot be an excuse for present inertia. We will have our bad moments, and we have to be responsible enough to accept the unpleasant consequences when we have been thoughtless, impulsive, or unmortified. But our recovery cannot come to a standstill because we see something wrong in ourselves. The same Jesus who helped us once is still helping us now. He saved us from one kind of problem then, He can save us from other kinds of problems now. There was something in me that Jesus healed. There is still more that needs to be healed.
Our perspective needs to change: From the time we commit our lives to Jesus Christ, everything we have, every resource of mind and body, is now His. Our past is His just as much as our future. We can claim nothing for ourselves. Mother Teresa once said, “I have given Him everything, even my sins.” What do we have left to give? Today, is there something, some part of us, some resource, that we are hesitating to put at His service? And are we using our sins as a barrier or an excuse against being generous?
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 without written permission of the author.
Prayer Requests
● Mrs. Marge DeClue, past parent-league president, who has declining health.
● John Ramsey, who struggles with health issues.
● Mrs. Beverly Schaefgen, whose thyroid cancer has returned after having been in remission
● 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 Donna Beckman
● For the repose of the soul of Florence Lussi.
Among other things, Fr. John Henry is the school’s College Counselor and teaches English.
“Accompanying him were the Twelve and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities,… and many others who provided for them out of their resources.” The implication is that these women were “accompanying” our Lord because they had received healing from Him. They had been “cured” of evil spirits and infirmities of body and mind--which probably means, moral problems and physical or emotional ills. Then began their time of recovery.
After we have encountered the Lord in this way, and have decided to surrender ourselves to Him, our lives are in a state of recovery. Our resources become His resources. We put ourselves in His hands totally and completely. Blessed Columba Marmion even uses the expression with both eyes closed, or blindfolded. And from that time on, everything we have, every resource of mind and body, is His. Our past is His just as much as our future.
In Christianity, recovery has to mean conversion. And conversion must mean Christ reclaiming us for His own. Our resources become His resources. This process is one of complete submission of ourselves to Christ. He says, “Take my yoke upon you.” It can be very hard and painful to submit to His love when our poor, wounded selves want to have some say over how our resources are used. Gradually we must learn that this cannot be. Our healer must be the Lord and Master of all we are and have.
To speak of recovery means that we are recovering from something. We are passing from an old life to a new, from an old frame of mind to a renewed mentality--an extremely important change for us to undergo. What is more important than receiving physical healing is how our perspective changes on everything. If we still have physical or emotional problems, we can begin to see something we could never see before: God has a purpose for this. Converted people can go from asking “Why me? Why these inconvenient and painful troubles?” to seeing that maybe my acceptance of these things plays a crucial role in m
y spiritual and moral recovery.St Paul’s example sheds light on the experience of every Christian: “…to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me…. Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me; but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” St Paul accepted that and then learned to rejoice in it.
Our frame of mind must change like that, so that we can belong entirely to the Lord and confidently submit ourselves to His care for a lifetime. As Scripture says, “let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.” That is how we see all things now--including the hardest thing to accept: our sins.
The women who accompanied Jesus needed to be forgiven. And as they traveled with Him and the Apostles, they probably remembered their sins, and felt shame, as they heard Jesus speak and interacted with Him. And very often they were probably astonished that He was accepting their help, using their resources--the resources of former unconverted sinners. Now they were converted and would still need the Lord’s forgiveness, though maybe not in the same ways. What was Jesus saying to them and what is He saying to us, about their recovery and ours?
We have to see how the failures of a moment or the accumulated failures of a lifetime cannot keep us back from God. A bad moment we may have had within the last hour, cannot be an excuse for present inertia. We will have our bad moments, and we have to be responsible enough to accept the unpleasant consequences when we have been thoughtless, impulsive, or unmortified. But our recovery cannot come to a standstill because we see something wrong in ourselves. The same Jesus who helped us once is still helping us now. He saved us from one kind of problem then, He can save us from other kinds of problems now. There was something in me that Jesus healed. There is still more that needs to be healed.
Our perspective needs to change: From the time we commit our lives to Jesus Christ, everything we have, every resource of mind and body, is now His. Our past is His just as much as our future. We can claim nothing for ourselves. Mother Teresa once said, “I have given Him everything, even my sins.” What do we have left to give? Today, is there something, some part of us, some resource, that we are hesitating to put at His service? And are we using our sins as a barrier or an excuse against being generous?
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 without written permission of the author.
Prayer Requests
● Mrs. Marge DeClue, past parent-league president, who has declining health.
● John Ramsey, who struggles with health issues.
● Mrs. Beverly Schaefgen, whose thyroid cancer has returned after having been in remission
● 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 Donna Beckman
● For the repose of the soul of Florence Lussi.
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