President’s Message

Message from the President, 11/17/08

Dear Ursuline Family,

This coming week, seventh and eighth grade girls in Catholic elementary schools make their choices for high school in the first step of the Archdiocesan high school application process. Here at Ursuline, our seventh graders are also completing high school applications. Some of the girls include a paragraph indicating their reasons for choosing Ursuline Academy’s high school. The following paragraph was submitted by one of our former seventh grade students:

‘It is very hard to write a paragraph on why I chose Ursuline for high school. I feel like Ursuline chose me. I know that I am wanted and welcomed here. I call Ursuline a second home. The teachers and my classmates are my family. They care what happens to me. The historic buildings and long history make me proud to be an Ursuline student. I chose Ursuline to achieve my goals of becoming a lawyer and a concert pianist. I dream of one day having my picture on the wall of distinguished graduates.’

What a wonderful endorsement of Ursuline education! I think we can all be very proud of our school and the terrific young ladies we’re helping to grow into the persons God intended them to be.

As Thanksgiving approaches, we are keenly aware of the many things to be done; groceries to be purchased, guests to be invited, travel arrangements to be confirmed, determining when to put the bird in the oven-before we sit down to share a Thanksgiving supper. But as Christians we must ask, what might be the deeper meaning of this holiday?

To give thanks is to take up the adversities in our lives and present them to God come what may. Thanksgiving involves an act of the will. It’s not a question of pretending that everything is bright and beautiful when you know it is not. To give thanks is to stand up in the face of adversity and declare that life is worth living. To give thanks is to assert that the whole of creation is one great act of God’s love. May we give thanks this Thanksgiving, not because all things are good or easy, but simply because we know that this troubled world with all its evil and all its good is cradled in the arms of a loving God.

On behalf of Ursuline Academy, please accept my warmest wishes for the happiest of Thanksgiving holidays.

Yours in Christ,
Gretchen Zibilich Kane

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