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Cistercian “adopts a spot” with Keep Irving Beautiful

October 4, 2018 | Community Service, Media

This September some high school students used their activities period to pick up trash on Tom Braniff Drive, a spot that Cistercian “adopted” through Keep Irving Beautiful. On the first day out the students hauled in seven bags of trash! Thanks to a grant from Keep Irving Beautiful, students were able to pick up trash using vests, gloves and specialized trash pickers. Over the course of the year the Community Service Council will organize teams to pick up trash on Tom Braniff Drive at least once a month during activities period. Students can sign up through MobileServe in order to participate. The goal is simple: to clean up the road and the adjacent trails on the west side of the road and in this way to improve our environment and help keep Irving beautiful.

Hawk Happenings

Summer Programs at Cistercian

Summer Programs at Cistercian are more than books and sports; it’s also board games with monks. Fr. Philip joins the fun in “Board (not Bored) Games,” one of many classes offered June 9–27. Math, rec camp, and more still open for registration

Quiz Bowl

Cistercian’s Middle School Quiz Bowl team traveled to Chicago for the National Quiz Bowl Championship and finished tied for 13 out of 160 teams. Congratulations Hawks!

Athletic Awards

Our Upper School Athletics Awards Ceremony honored this year’s many achievements in sports. Kudos especially to all of our senior athletes, the five Hawk Award recipients who lettered in three (or more) varsity sports, and to this year’s Tom Hillary Award recipient.

Experience Cistercian

Publications

Thy Kingdom Come

The more I reflect on the petitions of the Our Father, the more I’m convinced that I have no idea what I’m praying when I mumble those words multiple times every day.

The current object of my loving mystification is “Thy kingdom come.” In an effort to be slightly less intimidated by this vast and marvelous petition, I will arrange my musings as responses to the time-honored journalistic questions.

Lessons learned in a monastery

One of the most important rooms in a monastery, after the church, is the chapter room. This is the place where monks meet to do various things as a community: hear an exhortation from their abbot; listen to a spiritual reading (often a chapter from “The Rule of St. Benedict”); deliberate and vote on the important material and spiritual questions that arise in a monastery, such as who should be the abbot, whether to welcome a young monk as a permanent member of the community through solemn profession, and how best to structure their lives to promote God’s purpose.

Calling upon the hallowed name of the Lord

Jesus poses a problem when He instructs us to pray to the Father with the words “hallowed be Thy name” (Matthew 6:9). Many Psalms exhort the faithful to praise or call upon the name of the LORD (Psalm 113:1; 116:13; 148:13), and others assert that “Our help is in the name of the LORD” (Psalm 124:8). But how can human beings hallow — that is, make holy — the name of the LORD (in Hebrew, YHWH), Who is already, always, and automatically holy, utterly beyond our ability to add to or subtract from, to influence or change?