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School
Symbol
Our
School emblem is the PELICAN,
because of the great care of the mother
bird bestows on her young.
The
Pelican - Self Sacrifice
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Pelican
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A symbol of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross and in the Eucharist
because it was believed to feed its babies with its own blood which the
pelican caused to flow by piercing its own breast with its beak.
"I am like a pelican in the wilderness." Psalm 102:6
"Pelican of mercy, Jesus, Lord and God, cleanse me, wretched
sinner, in thy precious Blood; Blood, whereof one drop for humankind
outpoured, might from all transgression have the world restored." -
Thomas Aquinas
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The Pelican is excessively devoted to its children. But, when these have
been born and begin to grow up, they flap their parents in the face with their
wings, and the parents, striking back, kill them. Three days afterward the
mother pierces her breast, opens her side, and lays herself across her young
pouring out her blood over the dead bodies. This brings them to life again.
In the same way, Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the originator and maker of
all created things begets us and calls us into being out of nothing. We, on
the contrary, strike him in the face. As the prophet Isaiah says: "I have
borne children and exalted them and truly they have scorned me." We have
struck him in the face by devoting ourselves to the creation rather than the
creator.
That was why he ascended into the height of the cross, and, his side having
been pierced, there came from it blood and water for our salvation and eternal
life.'
The Book of Beasts, T.H. White (translated and edited), New York, 1954,
repr. 1984.
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