Students With Grateful Hearts

Dear Parents,

(I am addressing this letter to your children but I am entrusting it to you so that they will read it in its entirety.  Please encourage them to really take this message to heart.  Please keep in mind that the figures in this letter are not exact due to the variety of individual and parish situations.  They are not intended to be exact but are intended to support the point being made.)

Dear Students,

Grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you!

At the beginning of this Advent season my thoughts turn to you and the great blessing that each of you are.  I have often said that it is my greatest privilege to serve as the Chaplain of BCCHS.  The reason why is because of how awesome each of you are.  I tried to show each of you this earlier this year when I gave you a religious medal blessed by the Pope.  I know that it was a very small gift but I wanted each of you to have something tangible to show my appreciation for you.  I care for you deeply and I pray for you daily that we may all experience the joy of faith and life.

            My purpose in writing you this letter is to convince you that many people consider each of you precious and wonderful.  So many people care about you!  Yet, more often then not we go through the day without realizing the truth of this statement.

            Do you remember at our last all school Thanksgiving Mass that I stressed having an attitude of gratitude for the great gift of being educated?  One of the things that I said (and, yes, I know I said a lot!  I’m a blabbermouth like thatJ!) was, “You invest in what is important to you.”  I encouraged you to realize how important your Catholic education is to you.  Then in realizing this importance I asked you to invest yourselves more intensely in your studies and activities at school. 

You invest in what is important to you.  This is pretty much a universal fact.  For example, if this Christmas you received a new Wii, I would have no doubt that you would invest a lot of time and energy in learning to master the game.  Or if you received a new i-Pod with expanded memory, I would bet that you would invest a lot of time and effort into filling up with your favorite music and the latest hits.  It really is a no brainer – you invest in what is important to you.  You do it really without counting the hours or being concerned with the amount of effort it takes.  Why?  Because you realize that it is important to you.  You see, the time and effort you invest in a gift, is actually an act of gratitude for that gift.  If you didn’t like the Wii you wouldn’t play.  If you didn’t like the i-Pod, it would just set in your drawer.  But since you invest in what is important to you, the time and effort you invest are acts of gratitude and thanksgiving.

The reason why I am bringing this up to you is this:  you are precious.  You are valuable.  How do you know this?  Because literally hundreds of men and women are investing huge amounts of time and effort on your behalf.  I want to explain how much time and effort and how many people are investing into you.  Among these people are the faculty and staff at BCCHS, your pastor, and your parishioners.  Now, please, don’t shut me out right now.  I’m not trying to bore you but if you really take a minute and consider what I am about to say, you will see that people really consider you important:  important enough to make serious sacrifices on your behalf.

Have you ever stopped to consider why the faculty and staff at Bishop Carroll work at a Catholic School?  That may sound like a weird question but here are the facts.  Teachers who work at Bishop Carroll make considerably less a year than a teacher in the public school system and they also get fewer benefits.  Not only do they sacrifice their salary but they also give generously of their time.  Each teacher teachers six class hours a day, has somewhere between sixty and one hundred and thirty students and only one planning period a day.  That planning period rarely uninterrupted and isn’t even close to being enough time for grading papers, developing lesson plans or fulfilling their professional development.  So when does all of this get done?  You got it…at night, at their homes.  This means that they have to sacrifice a considerable amount of time they could spend with family or friends.

Yet their sacrifice goes even further!  Did you know that there are more extracurricular activities at BCCHS than there are teachers to sponsor them?  That means that every teacher is not only asked to make less money and work more hours at home, but they are each asked to volunteer their time for multiple extracurricular activities.  I said volunteer because many of the positions are unpaid and those that are paid may receive something like dollar an hour when it is all said and done.  Think about it.  How much time outside of school do coaches put into the sporting season?  Or how many hours does it take to produce a play or to host a tournament?  And why do they do it?  For money?  Obviously not, because they could have chosen a career outside of Catholic education. 

Consider also the countless volunteers that make this school function.  Every extracurricular activity has volunteers who receive no payment and who generously sacrifice hundreds of hours of their time.  These volunteers sit on committees such as the School Council, the BC Parents Organization, or they work on painting the football field, selling tickets for plays, working in the concession stands, or arranging the trash-bag sale.

Consider still the fact that you are going to school FOR FREE.  Consider this…one year in a Catholic school costs nearly five thousand dollars.  If you have been in a Catholic school your whole life, that means that your total education will cost about sixty thousand dollars by the time you graduate!  Could you imagine if I gave you a sixty thousand dollar corvette for Christmas?  You would go nuts.  Or if I gave you a sixty thousand dollar scholarship to go to college?  You would be flabbergasted!  But the fact is you have been given a sixty thousand dollar scholarship to school!

So where did the money come from?  Who coughed up the sixty thousand G’s for your education? -- your fellow parishioners and your pastor.  Who pays for your education? -- the people in your parish and your family’s stewardship.  Every Sunday you pass a basket of money in front of you.  Every Sunday one hundred and forty of those dollars go to pay your education each week.  Where does that money come from?  Well, it comes from parish high school subsidies and from your Pastor who runs a parish that has huge costs and expenses.  It also comes from your fellow parishioners who often times make serious sacrifices to contribute their time, talent, and treasure on behalf of the parish.

Think about it.  If your parish sends fifty students to BCCHS that means your Pastor writes a check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, which comes from stewardship and parish subsidies!  Some parishes have over two hundred and fifty students going to Bishop Carroll.  Figure the costs out on that one!  Do not pretend that this doesn’t cause your pastor and parish stress or anxiety.  Each week they have bills to pay and it all depends on the generosity of the parishioners.  Neither can we ignore the far more important daily effort and anxiety that your Pastors experience for the salvation of your soul.

So why do they do this?  What possible reason is there that a teacher would take smaller pay and sacrifice countless hours of free time to grade papers, plan classes and sponsor activities?  Why on earth would hundreds of volunteers spend countless hours to ensure that school activities go smoothly?  Why do pastors suffer so much anxiety and parishioners, including your parents, sacrifice so much time, talent and treasure to support this school?

The only reason is you.  You are the only reason because they know that a Catholic education is the best education that you can have…and you deserve the best.  I do not believe that it is a lie to say that Bishop Carroll is one of the best high schools in the city of Wichita and even in the state of Kansas.  And you receive this education for free!  Why?  Because people you may not even know believe in you.   Parishioners you only see in passing believe that a Catholic Education makes a difference.

Why do teachers stay here, knowing full well that they are getting less compensation?  Teaching you is a greater reward to them than free time or money.  Spending time with you and sharing their life of faith with you is more important then a bigger paycheck and better benefits.  Teachers stay at Bishop Carroll precisely because it is Catholic OUTLOUD and because it helps them enrich their own life of faith each day.  Teachers stay here because the faith of this school makes you a more disciplined person and increases their ability to teach you more effectively.

You see, you invest in what is important to you.  Literally millions of dollars and thousands of hours are invested in you by thousands of people.  Why do they do this?  People invest in what is important to them.  Because of this, your teachers, your parishioners, your pastors, your volunteers invest in you -- because YOU are important.  YOU are valuable.  YOU are loved.

I am saying all of this so that you know that you are important and valuable.  Many people love you and they have proven it to you because they have invested in you.  This is what it means to be part of the Catholic Stewardship community.  All the time, talent, and treasure happens because people invest in what is important.  Their parish is important, their faith is important, their families are important and their fellow parishioners are important… and you are their fellow parishioner.

So now what?  Why is this important for me to tell you?  Because you need to know that you are important and loved, but also to ask you to say, “Thank you.”  How could you ever repay all of this?  Do you have sixty thousand dollars to give back to your parish?  Do you have thousands of hours of your own time to volunteer for them?  The only way you can repay this is by sincerely and knowingly saying, “Thank you.”  I am not asking you to be fake.  A forced or insincere thank you is an insult.  I am asking you to seriously consider what I have written in this letter.  Really ask yourself, “Why do the faculty, staff, pastors and parishioners do this for me?”  You will see that the only true answer is that you are valuable.  You are precious.  They desire to give you the gift of a fruitful Catholic education and to inspire you with the art of true living.

I am concretely asking each of you to write a sincere (not forced) thank you letter to each of your teachers.  Make it personal, arising out of the knowledge of the many sacrifices they make on your behalf.  Also remember that you invest in what is important to you.  Invest in their class realizing the amount of time they have invested into you.  Return kindness for kindness and show appreciation through your renewed effort.  Their sacrifice of time and money prove that you are important to them.  Show them how much you appreciate their sacrifices and dedication.

But how can you say thank you to your Pastor for his financial and spiritual effort and anxiety on your behalf?  Or how would you say thank you to all the parishioners? You could write your Pastor a thank you note, which he would appreciate.  But there is no way you could write a thank you note to all of the parishioners who contributed to your education.  Rather than a thank you note, I believe that the greatest thanks that you can give your Pastor and parishioners is your active and visible presence in the life of your parish.  I am not trying to be clever in saying this either!  You invest in what is important to you.  If you are really grateful for the great gift that you have received from your parish, then you would invest right back into your parish.  Do not be ungrateful, but be grateful.  Show your gratefulness by being visible and active in your parish.  You spend time with people you appreciate, so spend time with your parish to show them that you appreciate their sacrifice on your behalf.  This is why we call the Mass a Eucharist – it is an act of Thanksgiving to God and to your parish as well.

You have received an amazing gift!  You have received the gift of perhaps the best education in the state of Kansas. You have received it because people have invested their time, talent and treasure in you.  You have been given a gift.  Therefore, be grateful for that gift and say, “Thank you.”

YOU ARE LOVED. 

So when you counting your blessings this Christmas don’t forget the gift of your Catholic education.  How could a Wii or an i-Pod ever be better than that?   You might have those for a few years, but your Catholic education can give you your faith and livelihood for the rest of your life into eternity…that is, if you are aware of it and are grateful for it.

In Christ,

Rev. C. Jarrod Lies

BCCHS Chaplain