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Benedictine Brother Ephrem Arcement regularly turns to Psalm 139 to be reminded of the miracle of life – that wondrous realization that God “formed my inmost being” and “knit me in my mother’s womb.” “That means it’s not just your parents that created you,” said Brother Arcement, speaking to 1,000 fifth graders from 30 Catholic elementary schools at Mount Carmel Academy May 1.

Nothing is more important than living a life in service to others, according to members of the Corpus Christi-Epiphany Knights of Peter Claver Ladies’ Auxiliary Sacred Heart Court 60. The group’s motto is “friendship, unity and Christian charity.”

For the fourth consecutive year, Holy Cross School has been named the top school fund-raiser in Louisiana and Mississippi for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s fund­-raiser “Pennies for Patients.” For the effort of being a top fund-raiser, the school was awarded a plaque in the  shape of a penny.

Spring storm peeled roof off at St. Philip Neri Church in Metairie On April 24, a tornado sliced through parts of East Jefferson including Metairie and Kenner. In its wake, it peeled off several pieces of the roof at St. Philip Neri Church on Kawanee Avenue in Metairie.

Deadline: Submissions due Thursday (10 days before each issue) calendar@clarionherald.org (504) area code unless noted May 9-18 PARISHES ST. RITA, monthly Peace Mass, May 9, 7:30 p.m. Celebrant: Holy Cross Father Thomas Chambers, president of the Willwoods Community; confessions, 6:30 p.m.; patriotic rosary, 7 p.m. 7100 Jefferson Hwy., Harahan.

Religious thanks New Orleans In the name of the sisters, brothers and religious order priests of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, I express sincere gratitude to all of you for your generosity to the December 2012 Retirement Fund for Religious collection.

As the end of the school year draws to a close, feelings of excitement and perhaps even doubt, begin to mount. In the home stretch of finals week, the exhaustion and stress are quite visible on college students’ faces.

Academy of Our Lady was among nine Salesian schools from across the province, which also included Archbishop Shaw, that attended a recent Salesian Leadership Retreat at Stony Point Retreat Center in New York.

In 2005, he was the toast of Uptown. His Green Wave were No. 1-ranked in the country and justified that ranking by playing in the College World Series for the second time in five seasons. Eight years later, a small but vocal fan base is growing weary as Rick Jones and the Green Wave are a serious threat to miss the NCAA tournament for the fifth consecutive season.

Sure signs of spring: Jesuit wins a record 18th Division I high school boys’ state tennis championship… The Academy of the Sacred Heart coasts to the Division IV girls’ tennis title… And St. Paul’s takes home a Division I boys’ golf team championship.

Valerie Englehardt is so passionately Catholic, her children’s earliest memories are of cuddling with their mother every night to recount the day’s blessings and kneeling alongside her to say “The Shepherd’s Prayer.” In the morning, they would be awakened by the sound of their mother singing the prayer “Good Morning, Dear Jesus.” In between these bookends of the day, the seven Englehardt children were expected to live out their faith, whether that meant standing up for a bullied classmate, visiting the sick at nursing homes, routinely receiving the sacrament of reconciliation or inviting friends to their home’s Sunday night rosary.

Wanting to strengthen the bond between our “family of Catholic schools” in the future, the Archdiocese of New Orleans has spent more than two years studying the 85 Catholic elementary and high schools in the archdiocese in order to formulate a strategic plan.

Notre Dame Seminary Graduate School of Theology held its 64th commencement exercises May 9 in the Archbishop Francis B. Schulte Auditorium on the seminary grounds. Houma-Thibodaux Bishop Sam G. Jacobs was the commencement speaker.

I was born a triplet to Bruce and Dorine Bozant on June 8, 1988. My two sisters, Heather and Dominique, and I have always been very close. We grew up in Chalmette and attended Our Lady of Prompt Succor Parish and School.

There are three pivotal moments that I can say changed my life forever. The first happened in my freshman year of high school when I was put on a bus by my parents, Roy and Yvette, which was headed for Steubenville, Ohio, where Franciscan University puts on a charismatic youth conference every year.

I am 31 years old. I was born and raised in Metairie, and I am a member of St. Philip Neri Parish. I am in my third year of theology studies at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. I will be ordained a transitional deacon on May 18 and, God willing, I will be ordained a priest in June 2014.

If someone had asked me when I was in high school if I thought I was going to be a priest, I would have laughed. At that time in my life, my priorities were a little skewed. Although my faith was important to me, sports were what really motivated me.

Sister of the Holy Family Greta Jupiter, far right, was among a group from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious who gathered in Washington, D.C., recently to discuss ways to increase collaboration to better minister to survivors of human trafficking, educate the public on the issue and influence public policy.

Slave labor and human trafficking must end and governments must make a greater effort to create dignified work for more people, Pope Francis said May 1 at his weekly general audience. The problem of unemployment is “very often caused by a purely economic view of society, which seeks self-centered profit, outside the bounds of social justice,” he said, marking the feast of St. Joseph the Worker.