This past weekend was jam packed with a number of great events in the United States!  Congratulations Glendale Preparatory Academy, St. Gregory’s Academy, and the newly ordained Fr. Fadi Auro!

On the left coast, I attended the first graduation of Glendale Preparatory Academy; it was incedible!  I am very proud of all of the seniors because of their growth and fearless leadership.  They have a great community of friends, as their valedictorian and salutatorian spoke of in their speeches (one focusing on their communal closeness, the other on their individuality within the community).  The Academy was graced with the presence of Dr. Eva Brann from St. John’s College in Maryland as our keynote speaker.  The faculty were all dressed up in their college hoods and gowns (I really wish that I could implement a revival of teaching in ones gown and hood).  It was a bitter-sweet ceremony, as all graduations are inevitably, because I said goodbye to the school that I have been teaching at for the last three years.  I’ll never forget the bonds of friendship that I formed there, or the students that illuminated my days.  And of course, I’ve grown up a great deal in the last three years; and no doubt in my mind it was a good thing, something that needed to happen.  I am very excited now to be going back to Dallas (where they treat you like a dirty dog).  I’ll be teaching at Founders Classical Academy in the fall, which is a Classical Liberal Arts Charter school in Lewisville, Texas; the school is supported by two amazing institutions: Responsive Education Solutions (they’re the CMO) and Hillsdale College!  I cannot believe it has been three years already out of college: I feel good about the closing of this chapter and the opening of a new one in Texas.

Mr. Fitzpatrick makes a speech at the Banshee

On the east coast, my alma mater celebrated her final graduation ceremony (under the name SGA and the guidance of the FSSP).  I have heard that the weekend was a great success.  They boys acted like true Catholic gentlemen in the face of a difficult departure.  There was a righteous celebration at the Banshee in Scranton, which I have heard was a rollicking good time.  I wish that I could have been there, to celebrate the achievements of the seniors and the school as a whole.  I am very sad to leave the property in Elmhurst, as it is so full of memories–memories that hold the key to who I am today as a man in the world.  The lesson that I have learned in this came to me in an e-mail from the former headmaster Alan Hicks (a great man indeed!) who told me:

This is the way of the world. But then our hope is not in this world, and God allows us to suffer disappointments in order to teach us that. He will sometimes take away the good things of this world in order to teach us that even the good things of this world are vanities, including St. Gregory’s. “Vanity of vanites; all is vanity.” That is a great lesson, a great truth, and we should be grateful and even joyful in the recognition of that truth in the midst of our disappointments and sufferings. As the bard said:

Heigh ho! sing, heigh ho! Unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feighning, most loving mere folly:
Then heigh ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

I have extremely high hopes for the future of the academy as it begins its new chapter as Gregory the Great Academy.

Last of all in the middle of our country there was a holy man, a friend, a teacher, an intellect who was ordained to Holy Orders in the Diocese of St. Louise.  I congratulate you, dear Fr. Auro!   I wish that I could have been there to celebrate this momentous and hallowed day.  God speed in your work, you will always remain a guiding light for me!

If you did not get a chance to go to the ordination, the Diocese has put the video up online: Watch it HERE

Here is a short piece on Fr. Fadi Auro’s ordination from the St Louis Review – “Answering God’s call to the priesthood” by Barbara Watkins on 16 May 2012:

A long journey

Priests should “foster the holiness of the laity,” explained the Rev.
Mr. Fadi Auro, 30, who was born half a world away from Deacon Dotson’s
hometown of St. Peters, in Abu-Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

His parents were Iraqi Chaldean Christians, Eastern Rite Catholics who
lived in Baghdad and came in contact with Jesuit and Dominican
missionaries of the Latin Rite. After several years living in Great
Britain for work and education, they moved to the United Arab
Emirates. During a family vacation in California in 1991, the first
Gulf War broke out in the Middle East and the Auros remained in the
United States. Fadi Auro attended Catholic schools in California,
several colleges and the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in
Rome as he discerned the vocation to the priesthood he first felt in
childhood.

As a boy in Abu-Dhabi, “our life revolved around the Church,” he said,
with the possibility of a religious vocation supported in his family.
“My mother has videos of me ‘saying Mass’ as a child.” He said being a
Catholic in California was different than among the “close-knit,
family-based, highly moral culture among the Christian families in the
United Arab Emirates.”

In elementary and high school, as his parents “only grew more holy,”
he was “intellectually unconvinced” about his faith until about age
17. “I had a real conversion then” and began, with the help of good
priests and spiritual directors, to discern his vocation. His
spiritual adviser in Rome recommended St. Louis and he met
then-Archbishop Raymond L. Burke, who later invited him to come to St.
Louis.

“St. Louis is my new home,” said Auro. He is a member of the Cathedral
Basilica Parish and “I love it,” he said. As a transitional deacon at
St. Joseph Parish in Cottleville, “the people made me feel so welcome.
It has been a joy there.” The largest parish in the archdiocese, with
more than 5,000 families, St. Joseph kept Auro busy. “I kind of thrive
in situations with a lot to do,” he said.

“People here really do like him,” said Msgr. James Callahan, pastor at
St. Joseph.

Transitional deacons from Kenrick-Glennon Seminary spend the summer
before their last year in the seminary and weekends during the school
year at their assigned parishes. “I think ministering in a parish is
the best experience a transitional deacon can have for his future as a
priest,” said Msgr. Callahan. “They are exposed to everything that
goes on in a parish.” The parishioners benefit as well, both by
experiencing “the deacon’s enthusiasm … and (the) tremendous
influence on our teens and college students when they see a young man
who will devote the rest of his life to ministry.”

Auro, who is fluent in several languages, will be a bi-ritual priest,
able to celebrate Mass in the Eastern and Latin Rites.

He advised other young men considering a vocation to the priesthood,
“What I found is a pearl of great price. When I discovered this
intimacy with the Lord, it was so much more important than anything I
left behind.”