Santa came to St. Mary’s today! Thanks to the St. Mary’s Family, two families from St. Luke’s Mission of Mercy will have a very merry Christmas. Their Christmas lists were taken care of thanks to donations from the St. Mary’s students, parents, faculty, and staff. Families helping families is a beautiful thing this time of year!

The St. Mary’s Art Club hosted artist Gary Wolfe to speak to students about vocation and how his calling has informed his work over the years. He gave a presentation on portraits he did of people from the Matt Urban Center. According to Mr. Wolfe, “the disenfranchised, the poor, the problems of pain, suffering, and alienation consistently inform my work.” It was a powerful presentation that taught all who attended about how to convey life and meaning.

Eight St. Mary’s students competed in the Lockdown Cybersecurity Competition for high schools at the University at Buffalo. According to the competition’s website: “Student teams will be tasked with defending a small network of systems from attack and will be scored on how well their services remain available (service uptime). Teams will also be assigned and scored on various timed tasks to complete throughout the event.”

On November 25, 2019, 25 new members were inducted into the Marian Chapter of the National Honor Society. We are thrilled to honor the best and brightest our school has to offer as well as those who are service-oriented, leaders, and pride themselves on outstanding character.

St. Mary’s opened the curtain on this year’s fall play, Little Women November 1st and 2nd. The performances given by the entire cast was one for the ages. Here is the official cast list:

Earlier this week, the Head of School and Center for College & Career Counseling organized the annual “Bus to Bona,” where interested juniors and seniors were able to take a bus from St. Mary’s to St. Bonaventure University to spend the day on campus and meet with admission counselors. We’re thrilled to offer this opportunity to our students each year.

The Down Syndrome Parents Group of WNY held their annual Halloween party at St. Mary’s, and we had some Lancers leading the fun! Check out this spooktacular group!

Our entire Senior Class participated in a Day of Caring this past week, volunteering at one of five different organizations to help make things a little easier on them. Students went to The Teacher’s Desk, the Food Pantry, Our Lady of Pompeii, Hull Family Home & Farmstead, or Harvest House to spend the day cleaning, stocking, filling backpacks in honor of all the donations that came in memory of Poncho Billa, and doing whatever else was needed. The Day of Caring is now an annual tradition at St. Mary’s for our seniors as we continue to find ways to stress the importance of service and the feeling that comes when we give of our time and talents. What a day!