Seeds are the ultimate metaphor for hope – young and full of potential – and a fitting symbol for our students. Our young people are our future. With proper care and nurturing, they will grow to their full potential, but it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes intentional, focused work, day-after-day, and year-after-year, for our students to bring their true talents to fruition. Especially in a community climate full of challenges.
It doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t happen alone. It is a team effort. We are all called to plant and till and reap and replant in our own way according to our unique gifts and talents.
Jesus tells us, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few.” Part of the process of bringing in the crops includes reserving seeds for the next crop. It’s not a one-time event; it’s renewal – a growth cycle that transcends one person or one generation. Planting seeds, supporting our youth in their efforts to follow their passions and dreams, is about stewardship and mutuality, selflessness and generosity. It’s about love.
We invite you to join us in this worthy effort. What we do sets an example for the next generation. Planting seeds is hope in action; it’s betting on the future – believing that the best is yet to come – and knowing that our lives have been blessed by those who came before us and desiring to pass those blessings on to the next generation.
There is a famous prayer written by Ken Untener in memory of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Here are some excerpts:
It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete…
This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
An opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
We are only on this earth a short time, but our mortality offers us an invitation to do something, no matter how small, to make the world just a little better before we leave it. St. Paul insists, “Three things last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.”
If our students are seeds, our responsibility is to provide fertile soil and sunlight and water – access and opportunities that will create an ecosystem where they can grow and flourish with the hope that, when they develop their own potential, they will bear fruit and plant seeds for the next generation.
The single most effective way for a young person to find upward economic mobility is to stay in school, go to college, and find a career that matches their passions. At CRSM, this is what we are about: we prepare our students for the rigors of college and expose them to professional work environments not for the degree or the experiences in and of themselves, but for where those degrees and experiences will lead them – to greater career choices and, ultimately, social agency – toward a societal status where they can initiate positive change in our world… toward a place where they, too, can plant seeds and pay it forward again.
You help us continue our mission. By supporting our students, their families, and our community, you are planting seeds for success. You are sowing seeds of hope for brighter futures.
We recently held our 2022 Founders’ Dinner and, predictably, the theme was “Planting Seeds for Success.” Here is a link to the video we showed that evening. It really captures the spirit of our students who personify the mission of Cristo Rey St. Martin College Prep. Thank you for all you do for CRSM. ¡Viva Cristo Rey!