January 2025 Message
Happy New Year!
The start of a new year is an excellent time to remind ourselves of important intentions. At Edmonton Catholic Schools, one such intention is to bring students closer to God through truth, beauty, and goodness. To reinforce this intention for 2025, we recently had large canvas prints of the following graphic made for each of our 94 schools:
By hanging this print in each school, we hope students and staff will see mountain climbing as a powerful metaphor for Catholic education. In this case, each student’s goal is to reach the top of the mountain, where God awaits. The mountain has three distinct sides, or faces, each representing one of the transcendentals: truth, goodness, and beauty.
At Edmonton Catholic Schools, we are called to help each student discover their unique path up the mountain. Different students are drawn to different transcendentals, and will therefore choose paths that climb different faces of the mountain – but thankfully all paths up this mountain lead to God. Indeed, if students open their hearts through love and prayer, then the Holy Spirit will illuminate their path according to God’s unique plan for them. It is therefore important for the entire ECSD community to do everything we can to help our students keep climbing, especially during times when their path becomes steep and rocky.
Having emphasized the importance of truth, beauty, and goodness, the rest of this January Message will highlight a few important events through the lenses of these three transcendentals.
TRUTH. January provides an excellent opportunity to evaluate student understanding of knowledge and truth, with each student receiving a progress report at the end of the month.
BEAUTY. January is also a good time to be grateful to God for the beautiful gifts we received from Him last year. In the upcoming months we could also try to become a better version of ourselves, as God intended.
GOODNESS. It is also time to think about next steps in our educational journeys. For families with a child entering kindergarten or transitioning to a new school in the fall, Edmonton Catholic Schools has so much goodness to offer. You can visit ecsd.net to learn about program offerings and to find dates for Open Houses, which are excellent opportunities to explore a school and meet the staff. Please note that school registration opens on February 3, 2025.
As mentioned in the December Message, Pope Francis officially began Jubilee 2025 on Christmas Eve by opening the Holy Doors at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. In the upcoming weeks, students and staff will receive a prayer card for this special Jubilee Year. We created this unique prayer card by combining the official Pilgrims of Hope logo with ECSD’s mountain climbing graphic described above. The card also includes Pope Francis’ special Jubilee Prayer, which encourages us to keep climbing the mountain towards God during this year’s exciting “Pilgrimage of Hope”.
I wish you all a wonderful pilgrimage and a hope-filled 2025!
Sincerely,
Lynnette Anderson
Chief Superintendent
- To see our upcoming Division events, visit ecsd.net/calendar.
- Read Epiphany, Theophany written by Father Julian Bilyj, ECSD Chaplain