Together, We Are St. Ed's.
“How good and how pleasant it is, when brothers and sisters dwell together as one!” Psalm 133:1
At St. Edward High School, our call to form a supportive community is at the very heart of our identity as a Catholic school in the Holy Cross tradition. The Constitutions of the Congregation of Holy Cross state, “It is essential to our mission that we strive to abide so attentively together that people will observe: ‘See how they love one another.’” As we begin the 2016-17 school year, our commitment to building positive relationships, one of the pillars of our mission, takes center stage as our community-wide theme “Together - We Are St. Ed’s” urges us all to care for each other, to look out for one another, and to provide a witness to those around us of a truly loving and supportive community. Together, we will strive to live up to the words of the Holy Cross Constitutions, seeking to “be a sign in an alienated world: men and women who have, for love of their Lord, become closest neighbors, trustworthy friends, brothers and sisters.”
For generations of Eagles, “We Are St. Ed’s” is the familiar rallying call of our student section cheering on one of our athletic teams to victory. The image of countless St. Edward students representing all four class years (along with Eagle parents and alumni) urging on their classmates is a powerful and visible sign of our community coming together as one. However, there are so many more ways that our community joins together, so many ways that We Are St. Ed’s. We are St. Ed’s when our Edwardian Players and Stage Crew put on another show-stopping performance or our Marching Eagles earn another superior rating. We are St. Ed’s every time the students in our outstanding and award-winning co-curricular programs, such as our Mock Trial, Robotics and Model UN teams, or our Flight literary magazine and our Trash Talkers percussion group, come together to share their gifts and talents with others. We are St. Ed’s when our students, faculty, parents and alumni come together to serve at our monthly Community Meal or participate in Eagles on Foot, our annual fundraiser for Basil Moreau School in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. We are St. Ed’s when we come together in prayer at each of our monthly all-school liturgies.
The Book of Proverbs reminds us that “as iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.” Our Holy Cross commitment to building positive relationships means that we cannot truly be St. Ed’s unless we are working together. Looking across our campusone can easily find numerous examples of members of our community working to help and serve others; from our Eagles Study peer tutoring program where students provide homework help to their fellow Edsmen, to the Student Minsters leading class retreats and caring for the spiritual needs of our community. And it’s not just our students, as the dedicated faculty and staff members of St. Edward High School work tirelessly to provide for the needs of each and every one of our students, and our Mothers Club, Fathers Club and Alumni Association members are ever-present volunteering at numerous events throughout the year. Blessed Father Basil Moreau, C.S.C., the founder of the Congregation of Holy Cross, modeled this association of priests, brothers and sisters on the Holy Family. The importance of family and positive relationships remains central to our Holy Cross identity today. And we are reminded by Moreau’s words that our community must seek to care for one another for the ultimate purpose of serving others. “We must never lose sight of the fact,” writes Moreau, “that strength of numbers joined with the unity of aim and action, is the greatest of all strengths and is limited only by the bounds of the possible.” Together we seek to support and strengthen one another. Together, we seek to serve one other and the world around us. Together, We Are St. Ed’s.
