Page 11 - Priorities #17 2001-October

From the Benedictine Community
For the monks of the Priory, watching our school thrive and grow and change is a special joy. This school is our life’s work. Its security is important to us and we care about its future.
The promise of the Golden Jubilee campaign is to preserve the quality of education we cherish with support that will be felt immediately and for the next fifty years. This promise is exciting and real. The Priory Benedictine community enthusiastically supports this campaign. Abbot Matthew, head of our parent abbey, St. Anselm, and Father William, whom many of you will remember as our dynamic Prior, now Prior at St. A’s, have also been enthusiastically supportive from the beginning. We all have been in touch with the planning process, and Brother Edward is a member of the Campaign Leadership Team.
I can speak for us all in saying the campaign volunteers have our hopes and prayers for success. I hope that once you learn about the campaign you will offer your prayers, too.
It was exciting to see the way student creativity blossomed when we expanded the fine arts building a few years ago. Kids who had never tried art before signed up for a class or just dropped in. The synergy of these students at work is wonderful! It looks like art class but they call on the skills from all their other classes, and they develop their problem-solving skills without even knowing it. And while their hands are busy, they are sharing thoughts with each other, under the excellent guidance of the Easley sisters, who quietly teach more than art. I think we will see our performing arts, after-school activities and campus ministry blossom in the same way when we provide the space.
In the 27 years I have been at the Priory, the “in” hair styles and the cool slang kids use come and go, but the guiding values of their educational experience have not changed. They never will.
This is important because Benedictine communities are becoming a rare breed. I think we are preserving something—a philosophy worth knowing. Each student leaves the Priory carrying with him or her that philosophy, which will influence his or her adult life and hopefully influence others by example.
I look forward to a great school year ahead and I want to invite you now to join the Benedictine community at the Priory’s Golden Jubilee party in 2007. We are anticipating a great celebration!
Sincerely,
Father Martin Mager, OSB
Superior of the Benedictine Community
The campaign volunteers have our hopes and prayers for success...
We are anticipating a great celebration!
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