All Saints Weekend at the Academy
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Meeting With Our New Chaplain
Dear Friends,
Patience is said to be a virtue, and good things supposedly come to those who wait. We at Gregory the Great Academy now find proof in these maxims as we see them come true in our midst.
As many of you know, after over a year of searching for a chaplain, we found a willing priest who was able to secure permission from his superiors. I would like to share with you my initial impressions and introduce you to the man, Fr. Michael Salnicky. Father is a man of great faith and experience, and our school is immensely blessed to have him taking on our spiritual needs for this upcoming year.
Last Thursday I traveled with Mr.’s Fitzpatrick, Culley, Smith, and Prezzia to St. Nicholas Church in Pocono Summit for a meeting with our new chaplain. Even though I had been told what to expect, I didn’t entirely realize what was in store. After reciting the Angelus in front of the church, we made our way to the door and were greeted by a short and jolly looking priest. He met us with a big smile and hearty handshakes all around. It was a good first impression.
Fr. Michael introduced himself and then asked to each of us to talk a little about our backgrounds and academic subjects. As we went around the table talking about our individual places in the GGA program, it was immediately apparent that he was conversant in nearly every course we teach, and in complete agreement with our focus and goals. The education that a Classical Liberal Arts school in the Catholic tradition can bring was clearly as important to him as it is to our community. He also discussed his own academic and vocational background, which was peppered with interesting tales of sail boating and safaris.
Upon learning I was the music teacher, Father immediately jumped up and ran into a back room. He returned with a copy of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and cheerfully presented it to me. The book contains much of the music to be used in the Liturgy and is a great resource for me to use as we integrate it into the Sacred Music Program. As it turns out, he and one of his parishioners are heavily involved with the Eparchy’s cantor school and are quite willing to help us become familiarized with the Divine Liturgy. Father also expressed his support for Byzantine Znamenny Chant and singing in Church Slavonic. This is an incredible blessing that will allow the Academy to really explore the musical riches of the Christian East! (To those who wonder if this means we will no longer study Gregorian Chant, Sacred Polyphony, and traditional western hymnody, let me appease those fears. They will continue alongside this new music in the same vein our community has come to know and love.)
After our meeting, we all made our way to the Carpathian Village, an Eparchial retreat center where Father makes his residence, which is about fifteen minutes from the Church and ten from Chestnut Grove Resort. The Village is an eighty acre retreat center and Shrine with potential to host a myriad of activities. It has has plenty of camping areas, cabins, an industrial kitchen and pavilion, and outdoor shrine. It also hosts several of Father’s big game trophies from his many hunting and safari trips! It is possible that we will be making use of these facilities from time to time thanks to Father’s generosity and enthusiasm. God is good.
I think I speak for all my fellows when I say that this meeting left me incredibly excited about the elements Fr. Michael and his parish will bring to the liturgical life of the Academy. The truth is, while many of us are familiar with the traditions of Eastern Christianity, we aren’t at home in it. That may be changing. We have been blessed, friends, and are ready to traverse the Carpathian Mountains together!
Of course while we are incredibly excited at all of the new opportunities before us, we need your help to keep this project going. Even small donations of $20 a month, for example, can help pay the gas money needed to send the Highlanders to special Masses and musical performances throughout the region. It will help us provide the best equipment for the sports program, materials for our classes, and so much more. Please consider a monthly donation today, no matter how small, by visiting our website. We are very grateful for the support and faith of our community of friends. Be assured of our prayers for you all!
Fraternally in Christ,
Matthew Williams
Photos from our visit.
The Way of St. Francis
On the way I will see all I can of men and things; for anything great and worthy is but an ordinary thing transfigured, and if I am about to venerate a humanity absorbed into the divine, so it behoves me on my journey to it to enter into and delight in the divine which is hidden in everything.
– “The Idea of a Pilgrimage” by Hilaire Belloc
Dear Friends,
We were one day from our destination – Rome. We had been walking for three weeks starting out in the beautiful mountaintop village of Cortona, passing through Gubbio, Assisi, Spoleto, Rieti, and countless other cities, towns and villages, on paths through forests, mountains, and pastures. We were nearing the end of the Cammino di San Francesco or ‘Way of Saint Francis’, a path retracing the journey made by the Saint when he walked from Assisi to Rome to gain approval from the Pope for his fledgling order.
Our plan had been to go another 15 kilometers before stopping but the path led us to a huge open field and then simply abandoned us. There was no indication of where to go next and it was about 10:30 at night and getting dark, so we flagged down a car to help us find the path. After explaining our predicament to the kind Italian lady who stopped to help us, she looked at us for a while in astonishment and then exclaimed, “We don’t do this here! We don’t walk 500 kilometers without money! We don’t sleep by the side of the road! We don’t do this here!” I laughed because her words – both a rebuke and a declaration of wonder – were not far from the sort of words I would put to myself at some point in every one of these pilgrimages. What the heck are we doing here? This is crazy! Why do we do this every year?
This year I was fortunate to come across an essay by Hilaire Belloc in Hills and the Sea called ‘The Idea of a Pilgrimage’ that helped me come to a better articulation of what our pilgrimage is and perhaps why we do it. In one extraordinary sentence, he writes: Thus I may go upon a pilgrimage with no pack and nothing but a stick and my clothes, but I must get myself into the frame of mind that carries an invisible burden, an eye for happiness and suffering, humor, gladness at the beauty of the world, a readiness for the raising of the heart at the vastness of a wide view, and especially a readiness to give multitudinous praise to God; for a man that goes on pilgrimage does best if he starts out (I say it of his temporal object only) with the heart of a wanderer, eager for the world as it is, forgetful of maps and descriptions, but hungry for real colors and men and the seeming of things.
A pilgrimage is an adventure in the true sense of the word. As Hilaire Belloc explains, it is a coming toward (ad-ventus) or coming into contact with that which we often fail to see. Faith in God begins with the experience of the wonder of creation – the curious forms of our fellow man and of every natural thing. We carry no money with us so that we can experience a bit of hardship, a bit of hunger, so that in our bit of emptiness we can taste the miracles of bread and meat and cheese. Not having and then having, being poor and then being rich, we begin to feel and know that God is the giver of all good things. We learn for the first time the taste of cheese.
Our particular pilgrimage is built on two pillars both planted on earth and reaching like giant trees into heaven. The first is the divine liturgy offered every day no matter what our condition or situation by our indomitable pilgrim-priest Father Christopher Manuele. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all things shall be added unto you. The second springs from the first: it is the particular gift that we as a troupe composed of teachers and students from Saint Gregory’s Academy know how to bring forth with a vengeance – a juggling show rollicking, roaring, bounding with song. I was delighted every day, playing before Him at all times, playing in the world: and my delights were to be with the children of men. We begin each day knowing only these two things: that we shall offer ourselves and all things to God in the celebration of the divine liturgy and that we will offer ourselves again with all that we are to each other and to our fellow man in a juggling show – and probably in several. We come into each town large or small and set up quickly because, pious though we are and filled with the desire to explode with joyous song on the unsuspecting Italians going about their business, we also strongly intend to eat.
After the show in Rieti – a recording of which (not the real thing) we have included in this missive – the man behind the recording asked what we would like to call our show so that we could find it when he posted it on YouTube. As we stood there for a few moments trying to think of something clever and appropriate, Michael Schiller, one of our seniors, suggested something more than clever and appropriate: “Clowns of God in Rieti.” I hope we are not being too bold in thinking ourselves worthy of the title, Clowns of God. We know that we are not singular men, not heroes, not the measure of Achilles or Charlemagne, certainly not of Saint Francis or any of his merry band that he called the jongleurs de Dieu. We are clowns and fools though, who know – because we have experienced it – that we can do something truly great and beautiful, something that transcends and transfigures our ordinary selves. We can walk with God in poverty and complete confidence and we can juggle and sing to friends and strangers with near perfect abandon. The experience of joy our show brings forth is testament to the presence of God in our midst. We are clowns of God and jugglers of God because truly our juggling, our music, our clowning really does present God on each market place and street corner.
This school year Saint Gregory’s Academy will make a new beginning as Gregory the Great Academy, temporarily located at Chestnut Grove in the Poconos. As a school we are on pilgrimage. As in play so in life. Just as we set forth in the spring on our Italian pilgrimage with no money but with the intention to praise God and make God present to men, so we are setting forth as a school to do the same. We have set out walking without knowing where we shall end up, without knowing if we have the funds even for this school year. But we trust in God first of all and we trust in the knowledge that we know how to put on a damn good show. And finally, we trust in our friends who have learned to recognize something good when they see it. We are relying on you to help us continue the great tradition of education begun 20 years ago by the glorious fools who started us all out on this goodly path – Alan Hicks, Howard Clark, and their merry band of brothers, of whom you, dear friend, are one.
Please be generous! The show must go on!
In Christ,
Luke Culley
More Pilgrimage Photos and Video
Gregory the Great Academy on National Radio!
by Matt Williams
Recently I was privileged to be the musical guest on the Dr. Katherine Albrecht show, a nationally syndicated radio talk show based in Nashua, NH.
Dr. Albrecht was in the audience of the juggling show in February which took place at the Nashua Public Library. Our boys made a wonderful impression on her, and after discussing who we were and the mission of our school she asked me to come on the radio to discuss the music program. I agreed and gave her several of our CDs.
The topic of the show was Sacred Music, but we also had a chance to discuss Gregory the Great Academy and the unique educational experience it offers. Dr. Albrecht was not only interested in the musical aspects of our school but the entire curriculum. It is great to know that our school and the efforts of the students have now reached thousands across the country. This was a wonderful experience for me personally and a tremendous opportunity to spread the word about the academy.
We were able to highlight music from our most recent album Missa Je Vous Salue and the current students from Gregory the Great House of Studies.
Please click the link below to listen to the interview, which runs about an hour in length.