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Mr. Glenn's Back to School Address...

The Madeleine Choir School is a Catholic School. One part of the work of the Cathedral Church, the Choir School is under the leadership of Bishop John Wester, the Ninth Bishop of Salt Lake City who serves in communion with Pope Benedict XVI. The Choir School is a community of learners comprised of Catholics and Non-Catholics, persons of other religious traditions or of no religious practice at all. Every family and individual here is a welcomed and valued member of this community.

As the Catholic Church throughout these many centuries, we have not always been at our best. It does not require probing historical scholarship to identify some pretty serious mishaps along the years. We sometimes lose our focus, forget what is most important and can get seriously off track.

Today, August 28th our church recalls a particular saint – a fourth century African by the name of Augustine. Today is St. Augustine’s day – St. Augustine is found in the great window of the west transept of the cathedral at the 6:00 position. You can’t miss him – he is a bearded saint, with the vesture of a Bishop, holding a heart; but not just any heart: Augustine is holding a burning heart.

Augustine is remembered as a passionate seeker of the truth, in a sense desperate to know the ultimate meaning and purpose for human existence, and struggling to live his life in an authentically human manner. He had a slightly overbearing Catholic mother – perhaps a fourth century power mom. He did not have particular interest in her faith, so his search began. He became an avid student of philosophy, and was quickly absorbed by the works of Plato and their exploration of metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. In the end, Plato still did not satisfy Augustine’s search for truth and happiness.

He travelled to the vast city of Carthage – a North African Las Vegas – what happened in Carthage supposedly stayed in Carthage – and Augustine sought human happiness in sensual pleasure. Again, he found that in the great pleasures of the human body ultimate answers about human life and purpose were not found.

He travelled to Milan, and there encountered the preaching of St. Ambrose about Jesus Christ. Augustine then found in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the beginning of an answer. It was in this individual who taught about mercy, forgiveness, the gift of self, and the most important human mandate: the call to love – that things began to make sense for Augustine.

Augustine, who wrote one of the great classics of western literature, The Confessions, focused the rest of his life on this mandate to love. His later teaching about morality and ethics was conveyed as the Ordo amoris or the right ordering of love.

Let’s face it, when we get things screwed up as a church, or as a school or as individuals, it is when we get our loves out of order. When we adore things or possessions, or when we adore other people rather than loving them as ourselves. Getting our loves rightly ordered is how we get this human enterprise moving in the right direction.

So what will keep our community of learners at the Choir School on the right track? The Choir School, like all human communities, is not a fantasyland. There will be hiccups, missteps, disagreements with other parents, some adversity, and more. While we strive for excellence and will always respond in the best possible way to any concerns you have, we all need to rightly order our loves as we work together on behalf of these incredible children and young people.

Let’s work to strengthen our community by kindness, by forgiveness and forbearance, by the extension of mercy and compassion, by building each other up rather than tearing each other down, by the engagement of open hearts and open minds. We are a community responsible for the formation of these young people, and we will form them well if we rightly order our loves.

How does this love manifest itself today in the learning community at the Choir School? Certainly in our teaching – in our preparation of these young people – in our expansion of their hearts and minds through the arts and literature, in their knowledge of history, in their mastery of science and mathematics, in the nobility of their souls, in their commitment to the common good, and respect for the dignity of all human life.

Our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI recently addressed the Bishops of the United States about the great work of Catholic Schools. He said this:

“In every aspect of their education, students need to be encouraged to articulate a vision of the harmony of faith and reason capable of guiding a life-long pursuit of knowledge and virtue. In a period of great cultural change and societal displacement not unlike our own, Augustine pointed to this intrinsic connection between faith and the human intellectual enterprise by appealing to Plato, who held, he says, that ‘to love wisdom is to love God’. The Christian commitment to learning, which gave birth to the medieval universities, was based upon this conviction that the one God, as the source of all truth and goodness, is likewise the source of the intellect’s passionate desire to know and the will’s yearning for fulfillment in love.”

Together with you, we are charged with forming these young people to be authentically human, to engage the culture and be agents of positive change. Through their personal character, academic skills and moral life, it is the hope of this community of learners that our graduates will be rightly ordered in their loves.

And so, by our words, our actions, our participation in school activities and in the academic and character development of these children, this small community can be the progenitor of very positive and effective change, further building a civilization of love and extending God’s rich mercy to all.

We are embarking on a great adventure – let’s do so working together, and let’s have a great year at The Madeleine Choir School.