Dear Mater Christi Families,

The end of the 2016-17 school year is upon us!  It is hard to believe today we dismissed school for the final time for this academic year and the lazy days of summer are finally here!

We have enjoyed a wonderful year with your children. Thank you for sharing your greatest gift with us and allowing us to be your partner in helping to shape their minds and hearts.  Mater Christi School is blessed with amazing students who are kind, generous, inquisitive, and thoughtful! 

As your school’s president and head of school this past year, it has been an honor and a privilege to work alongside you and our dedicated and talented faculty and staff and witness your children respond so positively to a loving and caring school environment provided by our committed teachers.

As we complete this school year, I want to share one of my favorite prayers that was written to honor Archbishop Oscar Romero.  This prayer is entitled The Long View and I shared it with our faculty and staff when I first arrived at Mater Christi.  In many ways, I believe The Long View captures our work as Catholic educators.

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent

enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of

saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings perfection.

No pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an

opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.

Although my time at Mater Christi has been brief, I am so very glad that my life journey involved this community.  I am grateful for the Mater Christi Board of Trustees’ faith in me, and our school’s faculty for their unwavering support this past year.  I’ve learned much this past year, and I hope that all of you have also learned about and truly appreciate the many gifts the teachers of Mater Christi share with your children each day.  I hope that the seeds that were planted this past year will continue to be watered so they can grow in order to advance the mission and ministry of Mater Christi and continue to build on the foundation that was laid by the Sisters of Mercy over 130 years ago.

As I prepare to move home to Minnesota in two short weeks, please know that the Mater Christi community will continue to be in my prayers. I wish abundant blessings and good fortune to each of you and this school community in the years to come.

Thank you for a very positive year!

Gratefully,

Patrick A. Lofton, Ed.S

President/Head of School