News Detail

Blessing for Seniors at Community Meeting, May 1, 2020

On May 1, 2020, the last day of classes for seniors, the EHS community gathered online for a Special Senior Day Community Meeting. The Rev. Betsy Gonzalez, Episcopal's head chaplain, offered this blessing for the Class of 2020.

Loving, Liberating and Life-Giving God,
 
We come before you today in honor and gratitude for the Class of 2020.
 
Their parents and loved ones remember them, as little babies, born not long before or after the whole world seemed to change on Sept. 11, 2001. And there were their little faces, holding all of our hopes for the future in a time that felt so uncertain and unknown.

Over time, that hope grew physically bigger and grew to live at a distance from you, spending days and nights here at Episcopal High School.
 
And now, here they are. 
 
As a school community, we offer great thanks for the time that they have been entrusted to us, but they are ready to cut some of the strings that hold them to the daily life in this community. 

But we know that as these strings fall away, they will not become untethered from Episcopal. They will use those broken strings to weave together a tie that will bind them here for the rest of their lives, a tie made of memories, successes, failures, laughter, tears, and the uniqueness of our current life apart. A tie that will hold them fast but with lots of length to let them soar.

They stand before us as young people ready to cross another threshold, and, again, as history seems to do, the world seems uncertain and unknown. But they have on board with them already so much of what they will need for the next part of their journey. And they do not travel alone. Those classmates who are standing with them today, those who have stood for them in the past, and, you, O God, their never failing companion, all walk alongside, companions on the way.
 
So, be of good courage, Class of 2020, hold fast to what is right, do not let the darkness trouble you for you are bearers of the light, the light of knowledge and the light of hope, and you carry it into the places of our world that need it and we know this because you have been carrying the light with you from the beginning and we have all be fortunate enough to bask in its glow, if only for a while. 
 
May God bless you and keep you, may God’s face shine upon you and give you peace from this day forevermore, 
 
Amen.
Back

Other Recent News

List of 4 news stories.

Archive
1200 North Quaker Lane
Alexandria, Virginia 22302
703-933-3000