THOUGHTS FROM OUR HEAD OF SCHOOL, JOSEPH VORBACH:
Today is a big day in the life of our school. For the 57th time, a class of students will graduate from Bishop O'Connell. In the several decades-long tradition of our school, they will do so before their parents, loved-ones and friends at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. -- a place we are certainly blessed to be able to use for this great moment in our Catholic school's annual calendar. These graduates join a long line of alumni who used their Bishop O'Connell education as a launching pad for lives lived in service to God and others all around the world. The more I learn about our alumni community, the more aware I am of the scope and depth of the contributions made and being made by Bishop O'Connell graduates -- to the Church, in government, in education, in science and medicine, in community service, and across the business landscape as innovators and problem solvers. Across the altar of the Shrine today walk young men and women destined to add to this impressive legacy. As they do, we congratulate them and their parents and guardians, we give thanks to God for the blessing of their presence in our school and the community they helped form over these past four years, and we pray that as they pursue their hopes and dreams, they will do so comforted by the knowledge of God's presence in their life.