Thanksgiving and More Wedding Photos
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
G.K. Chesterton says that "gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder." What a gift to be lost in wonder, love, and praise.
Gratitude is a longing in the heart to give our selves back to the Giver. Thank God for the Christian faith, which gives shape to our longing, a vocabulary and direction for our gratitude.
Here are a few of things multiplying our wonder and gratitude this year:
We are grateful that Casey and John Gillenkirk got married last weekend. Casey teaches literature and theology at Martin Saints. John is an excellent fellow and very fortunate.
Casey and John are the third Martin Saints faculty wedding of 2025, and there's another coming in 2026. We're grateful that we have a school culture where the teachers who discern marriage invite our students into their joy.
A philosopher once said that "education is a side-effect of interacting with children." In other words, every time a teacher stands in front of a class, he or she models a way of being in the world. "If you follow my path, each teacher is always speechlessly saying, this is who you may become."
We're grateful that our teachers stand in front of our students in a way that is fully alive: faithful, smart, joyful, attentive to beauty, respectful of tradition, literate, active, virtuous, hopeful, open to life. Our faculty teach their subjects, but more importantly, they teach themselves. Thank you, teachers, and especially thank you to Mr. and Mrs. Gillenkirk, for sharing your big day.
We are also grateful for our students. We're proud of your young men and women. They have invested themselves to create and grow a new Catholic classical high school. Wow! What courage and gumption! They are studying the classics, honing their minds, souls, and interior lives. Their academic education - discussions, reading, writing, thinking - is the heart of our daily task. Plus prayer, camping, craftmanship, Frassati Friday, sports, drama, music...and just passing encounters in the hallway. It's all grace and gift, and we're privileged to receive these gifts together. We thank the students for embracing their education and collaborating. May God bless you, and we thank you!
We are also grateful for our parents. There would be no school without them. They are the first and primary educators of their children. They share their sons and daughters with us, collaborating to create a unified Christian culture at home and school. Their good cheer, commitment, sacrifices, ideas, prayers, and practical support build and grow Martin Saints, not only for their own families, but as a gift and beacon for the wider community as well. May God bless you, and we thank you!
We are grateful for our donors and prayer partners. You saw a need for a school like this in our Church. You have stepped up generously to support other families and enable an oasis. These are tough times in our world and in our church, but there are rumors of revival, and your generosity brings more students and families aboard the lifeboat. You are evangelizing, you are creating a new model for Catholic education and renewing the Church in our era. May God bless you, and we thank you!
Now let's bask in the grace and enjoy a few more wedding photos, shall we? These photos were taken, by the way, by our good friends at Merciful Love Photography. This husband and wife team have photographed all this year's Martin Saints weddings. One of the many great things about them is that they are devout Catholics, which means they are reverent and not intrusive when they photograph a Mass. Their work also shows rare appreciation for the beauty of the Mass, for they understand and love what they photograph.
In conclusion: if gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder, let's take a deep breath and allow ourselves to be happy, to savor the wonder. Martin Saints is a community of people who love the Giver and who are trying to be faithful. This is a school with bright young Catholic teachers, the kind of people who marry and start families, and they are mentoring the next generation of teenagers to rise up and do likewise. Let's all of us find a way to give thanks - and to give our whole selves - back to the Giver. Amen!
