#LasallianLife
Celebrating Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
January 12, 2024
On Monday, we will celebrate and reflect on the life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Dr. King embraced love, equality, faith, justice, hope, non-violence, education, and advocacy. The holiday celebrates HIS life but also serves as a reminder of how we can live OUR lives.
Pope Francis reminds us, “Our only criterion for action is gratuitous love, free from every ideology and all obligations, offered freely to everyone without distinction of language, culture, race or religion.” In our Lasallian charism, a courageous love for others helps us live the legacy of Dr. King.
Our Lasallian Catholic mission is one through which education provides a pathway to a purposeful life. A Lasallian education engenders a means to discover and develop our God-given talents and learn to share them with others. In a similar fashion, Dr. King believed in the transformative power of education in the lives of young people, shaping their future. He delivered an inspiring message to students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia on October 26, 1967 that remains relevant to this day.
What Is Your Life’s Blueprint?
I want to ask you a question, and that is: What is your life’s blueprint?
Whenever a building is constructed, you usually have an architect who draws a blueprint, and that blueprint serves as the pattern, as the guide, and a building is not well erected without a good, solid blueprint.
Now each of you is in the process of building the structure of your lives, and the question is whether you have a proper, a solid and a sound blueprint.
I want to suggest some of the things that should begin your life’s blueprint. Number one in your life’s blueprint, should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your worth and your own somebodiness. Don’t allow anybody to make you feel that you’re nobody. Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance.
Secondly, in your life’s blueprint you must have as the basic principle the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor. You’re going to be deciding as the days, as the years unfold what you will do in life — what your life’s work will be. Set out to do it well. . . .
And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don’t just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn’t do it any better.
If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well. If you can’t be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.
Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail. If you can’t be a sun, be a star. For it isn’t by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.
~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our Lasallian Catholic faith teaches us that we are all born in the image and likeness of God. Hung boldly on the wall of our front hallway at CBA is a quote from Saint John Baptist de La Salle, “May God continue what He has begun in you.” On this important holiday, let us pray that God continues what He has begun in each of our Lasallian students, alumni, teachers, and community members. Through their own unique vocational call, may they reflect the image of God by being the best of whatever they are. In doing so, each of us has the opportunity to make the world a little kinder, more compassionate, and more loving - recognizing, celebrating, and most importantly - living the values of Dr. King.
God bless,
Mr. Matthew Keough
President, Christian Brothers Academy
