From the Principal's Desk 4.10

FROM THE PRINCIPAL'S DESK

Dear Friends,

In life we find that there are three conditions that must be met for success to occur:  Ability, Desire and Opportunity.   Of these, only one is God given, ability.  Either one has the ability to do something or one doesn't, and nothing can be done to change it.  This should not cause dismay, rather it should free us to concentrate our efforts where we have ability. Sporting ability generally most clearly demonstrates this principle.  There are a great number of people who play high school sports who simply cannot compete at the college level.  Each of us has ability in some area or another, we must simply find it.  It may be we are capable of being a great singer, spouse, parent, engineer, doctor etc.  What we need next is desire.

The old saying comes to mind, "You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink".   One can have all the ability in the world but unless it is channeled by the desire to succeed it will prove useless.  Every great story about overcoming odds contains a part where the hero realizes they must succeed, they find in themselves the desire to sacrifice whatever is needed to win.   Simply put, many a youth fails to succeed in their subjects because they don't want to, they lack the desire.

Finally one must have the opportunity.   A person must be in the right place at the right time. Einstein would have been just as smart if he was born to a poor family in Siberia but one doubts he would have had the chance to win a Nobel Prize.

Our school strives to help students with the two parts that we can help them with, desire and opportunity.  There is no shame in lacking ability, there is shame in lacking desire and we must provide opportunity.   For this reason we have clubs, we have excellent and challenging classes, we have a Fine and Performing Arts division that is growing and we have sporting opportunity.  

Most important of all, we also have mass offered every day.   In the end the only thing we must succeed at is becoming Saints.  And the best way to grow the desire (we have the ability) is to spend time with Christ.  

Pax et Bonum,

Timothy Gallic

Principal, Holy Family High School