Letter from the Pastor
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January 28, 2022Welcome to Catholic Schools Week 2022! National Catholic Schools Week is an annual celebration of Catholic education in the United States. This year is the 48th anniversary; Catholic School Week has been held the last week in January.
This year’s theme is Catholic Schools: Faith. Excellence. Service.
Catholic schools have a specific purpose: first and foremost to form students to love God, to know Christ and to live out Christian values, to be good citizens of the world, to love our neighbor and to enrich society with the truth of the Gospel and by living out the faith.
Catholic education is also known for its academic excellence. The hallmark of Catholic education is directed to the development of the whole person – mind, body and soul.
The third important aspect of Catholic education is service. It is fundamental to Catholic education and the core of Catholic discipleship. Service is intended to help people not only be witnesses to Catholic social teaching, but also active participants through social learning. We help and love one another, because we love God first.
The Catholic school is a family, not a building or an institution. As a family striving to be holy, the principal, teachers, staff as well as the students all work together to bring the joy of being a child of God to this world.
Our school has a wonderful history. St. Margaret’s School began in 1953 and expanded in 1959 by the Dominican Sisters of Blauvelt. Our school is still doing very well spiritually, academically and in population. We are so grateful to Mrs. Maldonado our Principal, and the wonderful and dedicated faculty and staff of our school. It is hard to imagine, unless you witness it yourself, what dedication and love our principal, faculty and staff have shown these past two years during the pandemic: all the extra work, the patience and willing to adapt and change, learning new technologies and even newer methods of teaching. We owe so much to them and the staff especially our maintenance people, who spent long hours cleaning and disinfecting every desk and area of the classrooms, the cafeteria, and the gym, the nurse and staff who kept our students safe from the virus. A special word of deep gratitude to our principal who kept everyone and everything together, the personalities of the parents, the staff and students, the many, many hours of reports for the Department of Health, State and the Archdiocese. Don’t know how she did it, but glad she did!
We kept our Catholic Schools open during the pandemic, and one day our children will appreciate what everyone did for them and will be ever so grateful. That’s what we do for love. Love makes sacrifice easy, perfect love makes it a joy!
So, we have so much to celebrate in our Catholic Schools, we should be proud and happy to support the great work of the Church in our schools. My only regret is that we have to have such high tuition, and that our schools are not free, as they ought to be. However, there is a growing movement in our country for school choice; where your tax money follows the student into whatever school the family chooses. If that were the choice, we would have to build more schools.
We need to celebrate Catholic education, past, present and the future. Thank you to those who sacrifice much to send their children to our schools, for our benefactors and supporters, and to you our parishioners who always show great interest in St. Margaret’s School.
