Alliance for Catholic Education
Written by: Eric Prister
As Fr. Scully and the ACE Bus team were homeward bound from Baltimore on October 28, our ACE teachers, leaders, and graduates were also setting their sights on Notre Dame.
Back in the home of ACE after the trip to Richmond and DC, I was fielding many questions from our graduates and friends:
Can I sign my children up for child care in Remick Commons during the game?
Absolutely!
Do you mind if I bring my parents to the tailgate?
Of course! I loved meeting them a few years ago at the Parent Retreat.
How many ACE 15s will be in town this weekend?
I'm anticipating 14 or 15. (The answer ended up being "nearly 30"!)
With each question and answer, it became clearer that our ACErs were brimming with excitement not just to visit Notre Dame for the weekend, but to come home, and to invite their families to share in the homecoming.
Our time on the road with the bus tour has afforded many blessings. Chief among them, for me, has been the chance to visit our friends, graduates, and partners in their own homes and schools across the US.
But I was also moved by how powerful it was to reconnect with so many of these friends and grads in the home of ACE, at Notre Dame. As I caught up with many of our alums, they told me stories of their current homes, and, even more often, of their homes in ACE:
Tim and his wife, Katie, who reflected on their time in ACE 7 and 6 at St. John the Evangelist in Pensacola, where they met; Adam, serving with RLP in Minnesota, who joined in the reunion of the ACE 12s of the Rio Grande Valley; Alissa, who found a passion for English language acquisition, inspired by her time in Chile with ChACE, that led her to a Ph.D. program, and Laura and Dan, two of my ACE classmates who brought along their beautiful two-month-old, Mary Guadalupe. She reminds them daily of the blessings of their ACE (and post-ACE) school, named after Juan Diego.
Over the weekend, we welcomed eight hundred friends for our open house, reception, tailgate, and post-game Mass----not to mention eighty-eight thousand people at Notre Dame Stadium who, thanks to the Band of the Fighting Irish, joined us in giving thanks to God for ACE's 20 years of service to children, cities, and the Church. You can see the video of our performance here.
And so I'm deeply grateful to all of our ACE friends, participants, and graduates who made the effort to join us. As our friend and colleague Andie says, it was truly inspiring to share a weekend with such a "quantity of quality."
So thanks for coming home.
Thanks for all you've done for Catholic schools,
For the communities you serve and the families you raise,
For the way you continue to nurture others' vocations and your own.
From our home to yours: our thanks and prayers.