On Wings of Hope

Mary Rose Bacani Valenti

April 25, 2007
Mary Rose’s favourite butterflyI have been fascinated by butterflies recently. My growing fascination with butterflies “metamorphosed” into an adventurous excursion to the Wings of Paradise Butterfly Conservatory in Cambridge, Ontario. There were over 40 species of butterflies, and thousands of them fluttered around me at the conservatory.
One of my favourites is pictured above...
... and the picture below shows the biggest living butterfly I’ve ever seen!
It’s Butterfly Girl!Julie, my guide, informed me that some butterflies live for only two weeks.  Someone said, “Two weeks to be alive? And that includes mating and laying eggs? What’s the point?”
God wanted to create how ever many butterfly species he created. They are beautiful creatures, and God has his own plan for them, his own reason for them to be part of our world, even if for just a short time.
When eight-year old Noah Evans died of cancer, his school community grew together as a family of hope and peace. The butterfly image was present in many beautiful ways in his story…. but I won’t tell all.
In my Catholic Focus episode “On Wings of Hope”, which airs at 7:00 pm and 11:30 pm ET on Wednesday (with an encore presentaiton on Saturday, April 28th at the same times), Noah's best friend Maverick Guerra shares the touching story of Noah and John XXIII School. Blanche Tait, the school's principal, also shares her own experience with cancer, and opens our minds and hearts to the importance of the virtue of hope in student leadership and education.
In terms of Catholic education and our future in a Catholic system, we need to have hope, we need to breathe hope, we need to speak about hope all the time.
We need to get that message out to society as well. That we are distinct, we are different, we can make a difference. We do that by who we are, because we can, and we do that because we have signs and symbols all around us that speak of hope for a wonderful future, hope for Catholic education to continue, hope to make a difference in the world.
- Blanche Tait, Principal, John XXIII School