Page 2 - Priorities 6

Benedictine Letter
Celebrating
40
years
of Benedictine College Preparatory Education
Editor’s note: At first, the founding monks planned to re-create their European heritage here on California soil. Over time, the vision changed. Father Christopher, Headmaster, began to see Woodside Priory School as part of the American dream of a peaceful, multicultural society of the future. Following are excerpts from Father Christoper’s address to the first graduating class, the Class of 1961, at their 25th reunion in 1986.
As you look around the completed, beautiful campus ... (you) may think that the founders’ dream has become true beyond their expectations.
Yet, I have to confess that the
original vision has gone through
some fundamental changes. (The
original) cherished idea was of making this foundation a kind of bridge between the thousand- year-old mother monastery in Hungary (Pannonhalma) and the first Benedictine foundation in California. This dream turned out to be an unrealistic, wishful thought in the decades when the chilly winds of the cold war were blowing over a divided Europe.
Yet, ... a much broader and farther-reaching vision opens up before us. We realize now that (our destiny was) to become part of a greater historical process which started several hundred years ago with the very first founding fathers who came over from the Old World...
The future belongs to a new society which is capable of integrating waves of dispossessed, homeless humanity without depriving them of anything they cherished in their past and without melting them into a formless, mechanized mass of dependent people. A common culture is to be developed that respects and cherishes the same moral and intellectual values and ideals while
accepting and respecting the differences in language, race or color. Real humanism is to be embraced which acknowledges the same dignity in every fellow man notwithstanding different backgrounds.
Only such community can save humanity from self-destruction and make our shrinking globe a safe and peaceful place to live.
Isn’t it a farfetched, naive imagination that connects such grandiose vision with a seemingly insignificant enterprise, such as the founding of the Priory School? It may seem so. Yet, (our) pioneering enterprise has become a living part of perhaps the most important experiment in human history — the American vision of a new society.
So we have a well-founded reason to celebrate tonight: we are all together
co-pioneers of a continuing great American enterprise, a tiny living cell in a great social body ... If you, Priory graduates, pass this heritage on ... then, even if the times come when the Hungarian accent completely vanishes from this campus, when the names of the Founding Fathers on the memorial plaque will not call back living memories in the new graduates, the Priory School will still serve its worthwhile mission. The old Latin motto will prove true again, the one featured on the crest of the thousand-year-old Benedictine Monastery (which the founding Fathers were forced to leave by the Communist repression): ... “Succisa Virescit,” meaning “trimmed by the storm it sprouts anew.”
Father Christopher has retired to Pannonhalma Abbey in Hungary. His address is Archabbey of Pannonhalma, H-9090 Pannonhalma, Var 1. The Abbey web site can be reached through any browser.
“Our pioneering enterprise has become a living part of perhaps the most important experiment in human history — the American vision
of a new society.”
Cover: Instrumental music (including voice) has a new importance in education. Story on Page 8.
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