MASS IN CELEBRATION OF THE 90th ANNIVERSARY OF OUR LADY QUEEN OF MARTYRS SCHOOL/ACADEMY
“Yet all good things together came to me in her company, and countless riches at her hands.”

One Sunday morning about twenty years ago, while I was serving in the Office of the Episcopal Vicars, I offered Mass at the neighboring parish of Our Lady of Mercy. After Mass, a Miss Drucker introduced herself to me and told me that she was a member of the first graduating class from Our Lady Queen of Martyrs School. I pointed out that she and her classmates were the first graduates to receive their diplomas from Monsignor – then, Father -McLaughlin, whereas I and my fellow graduates of 1959 were the final class to have that honor. “At first, my father did not want to send me to Catholic school,” she recalled. “He was afraid that I would not receive an adequate education. But when he learned that the sisters whom Father McLaughlin had invited to teach in the new school all had college degrees before entering a classroom, he changed his mind and sent me to OLQM.”
The sisters, of course, were the Sisters Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, popularly known as the IHM’s. From their Motherhouse in Scranton and its attendant Marywood College, the Sisters provided skilled educators throughout the Northeast. Shortly before he passed away in 2015, Father Theodore Hesburgh, the President of Notre Dame University for 35 years, received a visit from Sister Kathleen Lunsmann I.H.M. and two companions. He recounted for them memories of the IHM Sisters who staffed his Alma Mater, Holy Rosary School in Syracuse. After Father Hesburgh’s passing, Sr Kathleen wrote, “I can’t tell you how much my heart swelled with joy when he attributed the Sisters who taught him with giving him the foundation and motivation to excel — to give his all – to be a man of God and bring God’s goodness to life.” Quite a tribute from a man who was, himself, one of the most influential educators in America
“To excel — to give one’s all – to be a man or woman of God and bring God’s goodness to life.” I cannot think of a more concise or focused description of the spirit that the IHM sisters instilled into the ethos of OLQM School and bequeathed to the dedicated lay teachers and administrators who have come after them. By a happy coincidence, the liturgy for this Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time invites us to reflect on excelling, to think about giving one’s all, about refusing to settle for second best, about striving to be, to have, and to do the best.
Think of King Solomon. In his youth, God offered to give him whatever he asked. He might have prayed for wealth, prestige, long life, the defeat of his enemies. But he would not settle for second best; he prayed, instead, for an understanding heart. God was pleased with the young monarch’s prayer and replied, “Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches or for the life of your enemies, I now do according to your word. I give you a wise and discerning mind…I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor all your life.” In his old age, Solomon could reflect, “I prayed and prudence was given me; I pleaded and the spirit of wisdom came to me…and I chose to have her rather than the light…Yet all good things came to me in her company, and countless riches at her hands.” There was the foundation and motivation to excel. And how delighted the sisters would have been to have him as a student at OLQM.
The man in the Gospel, by contrast, settles for second best. He had the foundation and the motive to excel. “Teacher all these I have observed from my youth.” Like the sisters who taught Father Hesburgh and so many of us, Jesus saw that he had it in him to do more, be more, to bring God’s goodness to life. Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and held out to him an offer of a lifetime, “God sell what you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” Sadly, the man settled for second best. But how many of us were blessed to have had a sister, a teacher or an older student here who encouraged us to “go for the gold.” I remember once reading an interview with the actress, Pia Zadora, in the Sunday papers. In response to a question about how she found her way into the movies, Pia replied. “I attended Our Lady Queen of Martyrs School, and the sisters there encouraged me to develop my acting skills.” And, of course the sisters could see a religious vocation a mile away; in just my own class, we can boast of three priests and one Sister of Mercy.
“To excel, to give one’s all: that ideal was incorporated into the very fabric of OLQM School. Monsignor Joseph McLaughlin, whose vision brought to life by the architectural firm of Maginnis and Walsh, bequeathed us this entire parish plant, beginning in 1928 with our school, would settle for nothing short of excellence. According to a history of the school prepared for the 50th Anniversary celebration in 1979 put it succinctly, “The external excellence of the building symbolizes the high standard of scholastic, religious, moral and cultural education given within its walls.”
The challenges involved in sustaining that standard of excellence over the course of nine tumultuous decades have been daunting; but the faculty and student body have continually adapted to changing circumstances. Miss Drucker and her schoolmates who entered the doors of OLQM a matter of hours after construction was completed, had no chrome books at their disposal, no smart boards, no calculators, no ballpoint pens – or fountain pens either for that matter. They had text books that they carefully wrapped in newspaper at the end of the school year and stowed away in coatrooms to be placed back into service the following year. Some of them were still in use thirty years later when my classmates and I took our places at the fixed desks and chairs.
Speaking of desks and chairs, the next challenge came in the form of the post WWII baby boom. When I entered Sister Angelis’ 1A classroom in September 1951, there were 101 of us squeezed into that room overlooking Austin Street. We shared fixed desks, two to a desk. Yet, sister taught us to read and write, to tell time, to memorize times tables. She prepared us for our first confessions and for First Holy Communion.
Yet, there always seemed to be room for one more. I cannot omit the story of the day that Sister Hubertine was summoned from our third rade classroom to Mother Wenceslaus’ office across the hall. She returned with a rather dazed-looking new boy in tow and directed him to take the empty desk across from me. That little boy, now Msgr. John McGuirl, the pastor of Our Lady of Mercy, is concelebrating this Mass, and we have been friends since that fateful day in 1953. Ours is only one of hundreds of friendships forged here that have endured over years and decades. Itis special gift of Catholic schools to foster tight and lasting bonds among students, as well as a fierce loyalty to Alma Mater.
The Vatican Council with the massive changes it introduced into Catholic life, the decline of the number of sisters available for staffing schools such as ours, the cultural revolution of the late 1960’s, the exponential advances in pedagogical methods and technology, the conversion of parish schools into academies: all of these have spurred our Alma Mater on to continuing excellence.
We, the graduates of OLQM, have gone out into life to make our marks in the fields of education, medicine, entertainment, public service, the law, the military, the financial world, publishing, religious life and the clergy, to name but a few. So many of us cherish the friendships that we formed as students and have maintained through the decades.
Today we give thanks for all that has come to us in the company of having received our early education at OLQM. We give thanks, above all, for the faith that was nurtured during our formative years and that has inspired, consoled, and sustained us along life’s journey. And we remember with gratitude the many people whose paths crossed ours in the classrooms and hallways of our alma mater, blessing us in a multitude of ways. So many of them have been called home to God. May they find rest in the presence of our Savior Jesus Christ and his dear mother whom we salute as Our Lady Queen of Martyrs.