LETTER TO OUR FATHER FOUNDER
Dear Father:
As you know, it is not the first time that those of us who have spent our religious life in school have turned to you.
When the winds from one side or the other were battering us, we turned to you for protection..
We liked to recall your words: “my desires, the most ardent yearnings of my soul are being fulfilled. You are already educating a good number of children…”.
“What you are doing, wherever you are, is worth more than all the sermons because you are educating women, the basis of the family and of society, and the day will come when religious teachers will be given the place that is rightfully yours”.
You founded a school for boys and girls; in it you wanted to show them a love they did not know, a particular and meticulous attention with a mother’s heart.
For us, the school has been the centre of our hopes and desires because we have felt called to evangelise the cultures of our time through education.
On many occasions we have asked the Lord for the maturity that you had to detect what was happening in the surrounding reality, the critical capacity to analyse it and to know how to take a stand based on the Gospel.
We have always been encouraged by your conviction that to evangelise is to humanise and we tried to ensure that our work in education was committed to the cause of the human being as a person.
We wanted our students to develop the ability to make free and responsible choices in life, to have deep convictions and coherent attitudes.
Aware that faith illuminates the root and goal of each person and unfolds a potential that overflows other knowledge, we joined with lay teachers and we all committed ourselves to offer the Christian message as a horizon of meaning for the fulfilment of the human being and for the improvement and humanisation of society because, through education, the person becomes aware of his or her own dignity and that of all human beings, becomes capable of responsibility and discovers the meaning of life.
The impulse of these values has always been present, even in the midst of so many changes, adaptations to the times, the search for new methods, all to update and strengthen education according to the evangelical principles.
The openness and creativity that we have seen in you, Zubieta and in M. Ascensión, have been a constancy in our life and work, as well as the integration with other people and educational entities that allow us to overcome our shortcomings and collaborate in the response that educational work requires today, according to the orientations of our charism.
Through education, our students were able to discover the treasure within them, which is rooted in the depths of their being, giving meaning to what it is to live and to live with others.
Today, on the celebration of your Centenary, we want to thank you for all that we learned from you and, with our support and prayer, to collaborate and accompany the sisters who work in this field of education so that together we may work together in the formation of a new society, responsible for the care of the “common home”, more human and fraternal, open to the mystery of God.
Community of Colegio Stella Maris –Madrid.
