Please Pray for our Spring Break Mission to Haiti

Hope Parks will be returning with a bunch of new students and a couple of parents to Boucan-Carre, Haiti this Sunday. Please keep their mission team in your prayers for their safe and healthy return to us. Jordan Pyda (KCHS 02) will be picking them up at the airport in Port au Prince and will help them all get busy helping on various projects down there this week. Thank you for thinking of them and praying for them this next week.

Holy Week is Upon Us...

Tomorrow, Holy Thursday, is one of the unusual times at KCHS when no mass is offered in the Holy Trinity Chapel. It is a time to head to your home parish or church to begin getting prepared for the Easter Mystery through the next few days. Properly approached, we're all about to land the plane of Lent, but before we can be filled with the joy of the risen Lord, we must first walk and pray the stations of the cross with our Lord. In reflecting deeply on his passion, death and rising again, we can come to more fully appreciate the gift of his life for us. Lord, be with us this week as we travel with you towards Jerusalem. Help us to see how your stripes are a result of our sin. Help us to take full advantage of your love and forgiveness so that our Easter can be filled with your grace, and so that we might be raised one day with you into heaven. May God Bless you all during this holiest of weeks.

DPat

Spiritual Bouquet for Bishop Designate Johnson

Today we celebrated Mass in the Holy Trinity Chapel and then offered our prayers throughout the day while adoring Jesus in the Eucharist for the intentions of our own from the Class of 1977.

Farwell to Fr. Vann...

Today was a great moment in the history of KCHS but a tough one for me personally. Fr. Vann Johnston, also known as Bishop-Elect for Southern Missouri, came and celebrated mass today with the entire school in attendance at All-Saints. Fr. Vann is one of those people you meet who you get a sense is going places. I knew him for maybe an hour and I turned to one of my then Deacon Aspirants, and said, he's not long for his current status. Fr. Vann is an unusual mixture of wisdom, confidence, scholarship, orthodoxy, athleticism, and yet he remains approachable and a guy you want to hang out with. He's a great guy, a wonderful confessor, and smart as a whip. I asked Fr. Vann to be my spiritual director a while back and he was great. He always made time for me even with his impossible schedule, and when you were with him, you felt like he was hanging right there with you, listening carefully to every word. I will miss him, and compared to many others, I hardly know him.

He really hit home our need to find God's will for our lives, and to drink deeply of the Chalice of Christ. It was a good message for our student body to hear as well as all of the teachers. Fr. Vann graduated from KCHS, and also taught here as well. Even as he moved into his position at the Chancery, he kept in close contact with the Religion Dept. and administration. He spoke briefly of his fond memories of Catholic, but mostly preached form the daily readings. He got a standing ovation a the end of mass by the student body, and talked excitedly about the three Catholic high schools in his new diocese.

Fr. Vann is one of 26 graduates of KCHS to enter religious life as a priest, sister, or brother; he is the first one to be ordained a bishop. We are intensely proud of Fr. Vann. He asked us to please pray for him on the day of his ordination and installation as well as afterwards. Please consider adding soon-to-be Bishop Johnston into your daily prayers. Last, please pray for vocations for the priesthood. We are losing a wonderful priest that brought many gifts to bear in our diocese. We need more like him to continue our growth here in East Tennessee. - Deacon Pat

While some are closing, we are growing...

On the way to work this morning, I heard a disturbing NPR program about how the Diocese of Washington D.C. is planning to close seven of its Catholic schools in order to create public “charter ”schools so as to take advantage of public funds and keep them going. While this will serve the neighborhoods in having schools stay close, all of the crucifixes will be removed from the walls, prayer before each class will cease, children will no longer have mass, and any discussion of God will cease. It was explained that the diocese had been charging $3500 per student as tuition when the per-student cost was actually $7500, hence a loss of $3000 per student. The bishop explained that they could not afford to keep the schools open and that this was the best solution to strengthen the remaining Catholic schools.

Not too long ago, many of us were present when Fr. Al came here to Schaad Hall to bless the crucifixes that are now on the walls in each of the new classrooms. How different is our experience from the people in Washington, D.C. Our life here at KCHS is vibrant, we are growing rather than dissolving, we are gaining momentum in this area, and our Catholic witness is self-evident. We have so much to be thankful for in our now seventy-five years of shaping and molding young peoples’ minds and hearts. Soon, we will have to take Fr. Vann’s photo off the wall of the A building and change his title from Fr. to Bishop. Think about that! Our school has helped to produce the first bishop from the Diocese of Knoxville. That kind of news is staggering, when taken with the bad news from Washington, D.C. We are incredibly blessed to be a part of this community. We should be thankful each day we come through the doors of this holy place. May God continue to bless our school, and may we continue to put crucifixes on the walls here rather than take them down. –dpat

KCHS Haiti Mission Trip #7

There were eight of us total who made the trip to Boucan-Carre, Haiti from Jan. 10-17th. It was a great trip, the kids were fantastic, and we had many amazing new experiences in our time there. First, we photographed over 1200 students in both the primary and secondary schools, which is our primary way to provide people with the opportunity to adopt Haitian students each year. Each student that is "adopted," receives a year's education, uniform, and in the primary school, one hot meal each day. Through the generosity of our Cathedral Parish of Sacred Heart, and many many others, our primary school is thriving. the secondary school continues to have great need as the roof blew off of it a few months ago. the secondary school students are now meeting in three different places, including inside the sanctuary of St. Michele's Catholic Church and on the grounds of the rectory. This school will be the primary focus of our fund raising at Catholic for the next few years.

The kids spent a fair amount of time with Odette, who is the woman we built a house for last year. It was great to see her living in a solid concrete home that began as a dream of Cindy Mire, Jordan Pyda, and many of our KCHS students. Seeing the finished structure created a new pride in our projects there, past and future. The students really get fired up when they see real examples of their faith put into action. The Haiti Club at KCHS continues its explosive growth under our excited and energetic moderator, Hope Parks.

The hospital is another place we visit often when we're in the village, and the kids were treated to getting to hold the hand of a tiny infant born a month before our arrival. She was about 8' long and stole all our hearts. She lay on a bed with her mother breathing on her own but under the watchful eye of the nurses in the hospital that we support. Partners in Health continue to be our valuable partner in Boucan-Carre. Any meaningful project in Haiti begins with prayer, but quickly turns to clean water, health care, and a serious look to the poverty of the country. We are all very proud indeed to have learned so much from our friends at PIH (Zamne Lasante in Creole).

Being able to bring first time students down to Haiti continues to be a font of great joy for me. Watching the kids take it in and begin the process of trying to work out what they feel in their hearts is a special gift for me personally. In just five days, we visited the sick in the hospital, visited people in jail, received food gifts from Odette (can you imagine?), and worshiped with the community as we shared communion at the Lord's table in the holy sacrifice of the Mass, etc. the gospel is something that bites you in the face in Haiti. Haiti continues to be a huge gift that brings new attention and interest in serving the poor, and causes us all to reflect on our own blessings of family, health, and life.

2007 March for Life Video

Please copy and paste the following link into your browser window to see the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0m6QF-BQP6c