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Catholic Schools Office

Friday, January 10, 2025Culture

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How wonderful for this, my first year as superintendent, to coincide with the church's Jubilee Year.

As a lifelong educator, I've always had multiple opportunities to celebrate the New Year -- once in September with the launch of the school year and again in January when the calendar shifted.
I remember fondly that the return from Christmas break would also be the day on which Mount Alvernia High School's front office manager would bring me the first draft of the school calendar for the subsequent year. As we began the new calendar year and the second half of the school year, we also simultaneously began planning for the school year yet to be. It was a wonderful dizzying process where you lived in the present and the future. The aspirational thinking that goes into planning for an upcoming school year energized and reoriented us to our goals and priorities for the school year we were living in.
How wonderful for this, my first year as superintendent, to coincide with the church's Jubilee Year. This ''event of great spiritual, ecclesial, and social significance in the life of the Church" calls us to be ''Pilgrims of Hope."

Pope Francis stated in his February 2022 letter announcing the Jubilee 2025: "We must fan the flame of hope that has been given us and help everyone to gain new strength and certainty by looking to the future with an open spirit, a trusting heart and far-sighted vision. The forthcoming Jubilee can contribute greatly to restoring a climate of hope and trust as a prelude to the renewal and rebirth that we so urgently desire . . ."
My old habit of planning for the next school year at the start of the new calendar year is hard to shake. I am grateful for the opportunity to do so as a Pilgrim of Hope. A pilgrimage is representative of a journey, alone or in a group. It is a journey that is directed towards a specific destination. Along the path of the pilgrimage, there might be special rituals, objects, or architecture that the pilgrim might encounter in such a way that allows her to know Christ's presence. While the pilgrimage is about a specific, often sacred, destination, ultimately, it is about returning home renewed in our sense of discipleship, so that our lives might be lived more intentionally.
I've given a lot of thought to what this parallel invites me to imagine and consider. What does it mean if the work that I do is that of a pilgrimage? What does it imply if it is a pilgrimage inspired by and driven by hope? It invites me to think about each bit of work along the way as a stop along the pilgrim's way. I see each Catholic school leader, teacher, student, or family as a companion on the journey. Each school I visit, whose halls I walk and name I speak, is an opportunity for me to encounter Christ in the very setting of our archdiocese. They are opportunities for me to know God's presence in our midst.
In Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical ''Spe salvi,'' he references the way in which so many of Paul's letters to early Christian communities inextricably, and sometimes interchangeably, use hope to identify faith. Pope Benedict declares that "The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life." Pope Francis' call to the Jubilee Year invites all of us to live the upcoming year as Pilgrims of Hope. How will that call allow you to live differently and be granted the gift of a new life?

- Eileen McLaughlin is superintendent of Catholic Schools of the Archdiocese of Boston.