Sacred Heart School Uvalde, Texas

Did you know that many children present at school that day in Uvalde have been taken in by the local Catholic school?

Sacred Heart School

Uvalde, Texas

These parents had a choice to transfer their children to Sacred Heart due to the generosity of donors.

I was called to share this message by a small miracle that descended on me just tonight.

As I was about to turn in I said my good nights to Pat and Andy then headed through the livingroom to my sleeping quarters at the other end of the house. Having just completed a kitchen renovation that took a year, things being in disarray are thankfully becoming less frequent.

But tonight an odd thing was in disarray.

It was over on the far wall of the livingroom where on shelves built for the purpose rest some of our family’s most beloved life mementos.

An old school book.

Family bibles.

My great grandfather’s rosary.

My grandmother’s St Joseph Missal.

My mother’s St Joseph Missal.

Each Missal still has the holy cards placed there by Johanna and Carolyn whom you know mostly as Nanny and Peaches.

But what was this?

Stacked on top of the two missals was a smaller book turned around from the wall. It was as if positioned to catch my eye. A book’s binding and title must be visible, not the other side of the book, title not visible. Naturally I could not go to bed with that bit of disorder on the shelves.

I reached for the book to reposition it, and out from the book dropped a funeral card. It was the funeral card of little Rosemary Hoff, Room 4, All Hallows Parish School, whose entry to heaven was for us at 1963 All Hallows our first experience of death. And the one passing was one of us.

I have never forgotten Rosemary Hoff, or her siblings or her parents, bonded to them in mind and heart from that day on.

My mother herself having lost a child knew the burden and tragic longing of that loss, and so on about that day in October 1963 she put Rosemary’s funeral card in her “Blessed be God” (copyright 1959) prayer book, there to remain until miraculously 59 years later it should attract my attention when I noticed a book out of order on a living-room shelf.

As all Catholic funeral cards do, this one depicts a Saint. Saint Teresa of Jesus, known to most of us as Saint Teresa of Avila, usually depicted in her Carmelite habit holding red roses and a crucifix. She has long been my special patron, a sort of silent partner through life, her 16th century vocation spent battling church degradation and horror, my own very personal inspiration.

And this particular holy card of her resting all those 59 years in that little prayer book of my mother’s, she being the only holy card still there? The prayer book itself being a book of devotions that used to occupy us all, their beauty residing in their vibrant simplicity, but mostly now forgotten by a new age that believes in its new ways forward that no longer involve St Teresa or her God?

That was moment enough. Rosemary. St Teresa. My mother’s prayer book. But there was about to be more.

The book now properly placed on the shelf I headed to bed.

My nighttime reading this night was on Facebook, about a “Sacred Heart School” in Uvalde, a school now operating as Catholic schools over the centuries and millennia have operated - as refuges where the People of God may find their way. Like me. Like my mother. Like my grandmother. Like the Hoffs.

You are now about to learn what I just learned about Sacred Heart School, Uvalde Texas.

The Sister who speaks to us from the school?

She is a Teresian Sister.

Did you know of such an order? Me neither.

It was founded in memory of St Teresa of Avila.

My St Teresa.

Rosemary’s St Teresa.

“Dozens of children in Uvalde who survived the shooting this past May have been able to transfer to Sacred Heart Catholic School thanks to your donations to our tuition scholarship fund. Sister Mary Lou Aldape, STJ, talked about the children’s first day of school and the importance of helping them feel safety and happiness.

“You can continue to support our tuition scholarship fund for Uvalde children attending Sacred Heart here: catholicextension.org/sacredheart ”