Class of 2025 St. Cecilia Girl, Emma Rose Golczynski!

The title of St. Cecilia Girl is the highest honor St. Cecilia Academy confers on a student. By vote of the juniors and seniors, with faculty approval, a senior is chosen who best exemplifies the ideals of St. Cecilia Academy. The St. Cecilia Girl is also the recipient of the Lisa Elcan Bruner Memorial Scholarship. Lisa Elcan graduated from St. Cecilia in 1973, when she, too, was named St. Cecilia Girl. Lisa died in 1993 and her family began a scholarship fund in her honor because of Lisa’s love and dedication to St. Cecilia.

 

This year’s St. Cecilia Girl radiates what Galatians chapter five describes as the “fruit of the Spirit”: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. During her four years at St. Cecilia, she has become a young woman admired by her peers and teachers alike. She has proven to be an outstanding leader in our community—not by being the biggest voice, but by her natural ability to befriend anyone and her sincere commitment to serving others.

 

Dependable, diligent, and kind are three words that come to mind when thinking about her character. One of her teachers remarked, “She is an outstanding student with a consistently positive attitude and a genuine love for learning.” Another stated, “She presents herself as a curious servant [who] is willing to go where there is greatest need and ‘where duty calls.’”

 

This year's St. Cecilia Girl is a woman of integrity, always doing the right thing, not in order to be noticed by others, but simply because it's the right thing to do. And for that very reason, people take notice and learn from her example. Her goodness has influenced others far beyond what she can imagine.

 

To know her is to know of her deep passion for the faith and love of the Church. It is little surprise that she will soon be relocating to Benedictine College in Kansas.

 

Golczynski is a St. Matthew Catholic School graduate who attends the Cathedral of the Incarnation with her family.