Last Saturday, Gregory the Great Academy celebrated its annual banquet in honor of the great Scottish poet Robbie Burns. The night was filled with great food, song, and much merriment. Here are some photos of the evening, crowned by the procession of the Haggis and the Immortal Memory address which is here excerpted:

“There are holy feasts and there are hamely feasts, and it is part of a good education, a lively education, to know one from the other and how they relate to one another. Take these feasts we as a school observe, and construct a pyramid with them, or a spire, and you will discover a definite direction, or even a divine pedagogy, in our celebrations. At the apex we have Our Lady, below her, in the heavenly choirs, are the saints with Gregory and Don Bosco given special prominence, and below them, we have Robert Burns turning up the furrows of the earth that feeds us all. These are the realities, the hierarchies, the spheres, which frame our consciousness and our faith, informing and affecting our education, our lives, and our poetry—drawing us, leading our hearts on through beauty beyond the earth to higher, more beautiful places; but it is on earth and with earthly beauties that the work and even the experience of heaven must begin—on earth, as it is in heaven.”