Dear Parents:
Thank you for your continued support and patience as we move through our second week of digital learning at Opelousas Catholic. If you are following your student’s assignments, I am sure you saw some adjustments in instruction this week from last week. As I noted before, we are still learning and adjusting assignments and workload as we go.
I do have three points to make today:

1. If you have questions, please address the questions to the person directly responsible for monitoring instruction at that grade level. For PreK-5^th grade, that would be Matt Citron (citronm@ocsvikings.com); in grades 6-10, Liz Meche (mechel@ocsvikings.com); grades 11-12, Marty Heintz (heintzm@ocsvikings.com); religion in any grade, John Braham (brahamj@ocsviklings.com); and technology questions, Beth Hebert (bghebert@ocsvikings.com). We do ask that you contact the teacher first, however, for any questions about assignments, workload, tests and quizzes.
2. Assignments come with due dates and we are finding that many students are not submitting their work in accordance with the time requirements. There must be deadlines and we have to assess students accordingly when work is submitted late. All of us are understanding and if we receive an occasional email from a parent telling us of a problem, we will work with you.
3. Finally, there will be no work assigned or due from Wednesday, April 7 through Monday, April 13. This period is our official Holy Week and Easter break. I encourage you to spend that time with your children and family and forget about school just as you would in any other year.

I wish I had that crystal ball so I could see where we will be on April 13, but none of us can predict anything at this point. Please continue to pray for our state and country and especially for our OC family, many of whom are struggling with lost jobs and income.
Thank you, again, for helping us keep our students on track. Our teachers are working – and I can tell you from my own experience that it takes me a lot longer to create, assign, grade, and provide feedback electronically than it ever did in actual face-to-face classroom instruction.
Once a Viking, always a Viking!
Marty Heintz

Opelousas Catholic School Gospel Reflection for Week March 30 to April 2
Holy Gospel of St. John  11:1-45
Now a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany,
the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil
and dried his feet with her hair;
it was her brother Lazarus who was ill.
 
So the sisters sent word to him saying,
“Master, the one you love is ill.”
When Jesus heard this he said,
“This illness is not to end in death,
but is for the glory of God,
that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
So when he heard that he was ill,
he remained for two days in the place where he was.
Then after this he said to his disciples,
“Let us go back to Judea.”
The disciples said to him,
“Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you,
and you want to go back there?”
Jesus answered,
“Are there not twelve hours in a day?
If one walks during the day, he does not stumble,
because he sees the light of this world.
But if one walks at night, he stumbles,
because the light is not in him.”
He said this, and then told them,
“Our friend Lazarus is asleep,
but I am going to awaken him.”
So the disciples said to him,
“Master, if he is asleep, he will be saved.”
But Jesus was talking about his death,
while they thought that he meant ordinary sleep.
So then Jesus said to them clearly,
“Lazarus has died.
And I am glad for you that I was not there,
that you may believe.
Let us go to him.”
So Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples,
“Let us also go to die with him.”
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus
had already been in the tomb for four days.
Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, only about two miles away.
And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary
to comfort them about their brother.
When Martha heard that Jesus was coming,
she went to meet him;
but Mary sat at home.
Martha said to Jesus,
“Lord, if you had been here,
my brother would not have died.
But even now I know that whatever you ask of God,
God will give you.”
Jesus said to her,
 
“Your brother will rise.”
Martha said to him,
“I know he will rise,
in the resurrection on the last day.”
Jesus told her,
“I am the resurrection and the life;
whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
Do you believe this?”
She said to him, “Yes, Lord.
I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God,
the one who is coming into the world.”
When she had said this,
she went and called her sister Mary secretly, saying,
“The teacher is here and is asking for you.”
As soon as she heard this,
she rose quickly and went to him.
For Jesus had not yet come into the village,
but was still where Martha had met him.
So when the Jews who were with her in the house comforting her
saw Mary get up quickly and go out,
they followed her,
presuming that she was going to the tomb to weep there.
When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him,
she fell at his feet and said to him,
“Lord, if you had been here,
my brother would not have died.”
When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping,
he became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said,
“Where have you laid him?”
They said to him, “Sir, come and see.”
And Jesus wept.
So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.”
But some of them said,
“Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man
have done something so that this man would not have died?”
So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb.
It was a cave, and a stone lay across it.
Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”
Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to him,
“Lord, by now there will be a stench;
he has been dead for four days.”
Jesus said to her,
“Did I not tell you that if you believe
you will see the glory of God?”
So they took away the stone.
And Jesus raised his eyes and said,
 
“Father, I thank you for hearing me.
I know that you always hear me;
but because of the crowd here I have said this,
that they may believe that you sent me.”
And when he had said this,
He cried out in a loud voice,
“Lazarus, come out!”
The dead man came out,
tied hand and foot with burial bands,
and his face was wrapped in a cloth.
So Jesus said to them,
“Untie him and let him go.”
Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary
and seen what he had done began to believe in him.
 
The Gospel of The Lord
 
My dear families and friends of Opelousas Catholic School,
The Holy Gospel of St. John from this past Sunday has weighed heavy on my heart for this week’s reflection for I feel during our current situation with the uncertainty of the Corona Virus we can gain great knowledge and hope from the story of our great friend Lazarus and the message Jesus gives us.  As we know after hearing this Gospel, Jesus arrived late to the burial and death of Lazarus.  He was greeted with great disappointment from Mary and Martha as they anxiously awaited for Jesus to come and heal him.  To their dismay, when Jesus found out about Lazarus, he waited a further two days to arrive which caused great confusion to those who had hope in him to make things right by healing Lazarus. 
We are very much like Mary and Martha, especially during trying times in our life.  We are all victims of the “fast food” or “quick fix” mentality when it comes to wanting our lives or current situations fixed as soon as possible.  I once heard a speaker discuss how Jesus dealt with such issues.  The speaker made the amazing observation that nowhere in the New Testament did Jesus run or hurry to get somewhere where he was needed or expected.  Instead, just like in this week’s Gospel, Jesus went on His time which we find and grow to understand that God’s will comes when God is ready.  So much like today, as we all call out to God to “go ahead and fix this Corona Virus situation already”, we have to step back and understand that in time God will fix the situation.  I pray that through this insight of this week’s Gospel, we may know that God is working and in His time all will be well.  Much like it was when Jesus arrived, although late in the eyes of Mary and Martha, it will be fixed in the time of our loving Father.
 
God Bless,
John Braham 
 

For your child or children, do you want a place where:

* their faith will be reinforced
* they will be in a safe and loving environment
* they will learn from top quality teachers
* they will have access to a variety of extracurricular activities, strong athletic programs, and fun social events????

Then Opelousas Catholic School is the place to be!

Enrollment for the 2020-2021 school year is in progress. If you have not enrolled your child, please do so now. Classes are filling up, especially in kindergarten and first grade. We remind parents of potential NEW students to first complete the online application for admission by clicking here.

Opelousas Catholic is now a latex free zone as well as a nut free zone. We have recently discovered that we have students and faculty with latex allergies. We have several students with severe (deadly) allergies to peanuts and other nuts. There are other students with less severe, but still threatening nut allergies. Parents and students from grades PreK-12 are reminded to refrain from bringing any products with nuts on campus. 

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