Thursday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time
Catholic Schools Convocation
August 24, 2022
Church of the Nativity
Introduction
After a very short but I hope enjoyable summer begins another school year. Many of you are returning to the ministry of Catholic education, but some of you are beginning your service in our Catholic schools, while others of you have taken on more responsibility than last year, and still others of you are simply doing what you do best – forming, shaping, educating the whole child – body, mind, and spirit – helping young people to grow into the persons God calls them to become, helping young people to unlock their potential, and helping parents to discharge their challenging responsibility as the first teachers of their children in the ways of faith and virtue.
And you do this very well indeed! Last year, enrollment in our Catholic schools increased by some 8% and this year the increase is projected to be another 2 ½ to 3%. More parents are willing to make the financial sacrifice to entrust their sons and daughters to you as Catholic educators. Some, perhaps, think of Catholic schools simply as the best value in private education. Other parents believe that their children are better off in our schools without necessarily being able to articulate fully why they think that is the case. It is not my intent to put words in their mouth but I would like to reflect with you for a moment on the deeper reasons why many people feel our Catholic schools are so valuable. There is something more to Catholic education than meets the eye & what is it?
The Humanity of Christ
That “something more” is the Person of Christ. Being here at Nativity reminds us that in Jesus, the Son of God became man. He was formed in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary and born on a cold winter’s night under the stars. But Jesus’ human formation did not stop there. Joseph and Mary continued to form the humanity assumed by the Son of God – teaching Jesus to pray, instructing him in the Scriptures, but also teaching him the knowledge and skills he would need for life. For, as the II Vatican Council said of Jesus, he worked with human hands, thought with a human mind, and with a human heart he loved (GS, 22). B. What emerged from formative influence of Mary & Joseph was a luminous humanity, a humanity that was nothing less than the sacrament, the symbolic presence of God. When Jesus preached, they said he spoke with a power and authority like no other. When Jesus healed, he reached into the deepest recesses of human woundedness. When Jesus engaged with others, he was fully present to them, and reading their inmost thoughts, he loved them, yes, even those who rejected him. Jesus did this not because of mere human genius but because he constantly lived in the orbit of his Father’s love. Because he was immersed in God the Father’s love for each person, Jesus could make himself utterly present to everyone he met. Reflecting the Father’s love, he revealed those he encountered to themselves, showing the true greatness of their dignity and loftiness of their calling.
Dr. Hargens likes to say that we offer a Christ-centered education. This doesn’t merely mean that we talk about Jesus quite a lot, or that we spend a lot of time teaching the Church’s doctrine about Christ, vitally important as it is to teach the Catholic faith in its fullness. No, it means something more – it means that we portray Christ in all his beauty, in all his attractiveness, in the reality of his love. In a word, we help the young people we serve to encounter Christ and to enter deeply into his mystery, to see Christ not as a figure of the distant past but as Someone supremely real.
This is a point I want to emphasize. We must present Christ, not as if he were a dead man confined to the history books, but rather as a contemporary who is supremely relevant to the lives of our students, as One who provokes and challenges their freedom, including the ideas and mindset of the culture around them. And we have to go further to show that the Church is that “place” where a living encounter with Christ can and does take place, for, as the theme of this convocation proclaims, “We are one body in Christ.” When Christianity is presented merely as morality, the result is deadly. When Christianity is presented as a set of dry formulae, like the dry bones in the vision of Ezekiel, the result is deadly. At an ever-earlier age, young people are picking up and leaving religion. They are deciding, before they have experienced the Lord’s love, that Christ and the Church are not for them – until that is, he gazes into their eyes and touches their hearts. Once they fall in love with Christ, morality becomes a response of love and new life and joy is breathed into the doctrinal teachings of the Church.
Relevant for Every Aspect of Life
Indeed, if Christ is rightly understood as a contemporary, there is no way for us to put him into a box, to compartmentalize our faith. Our faith is attractive and meaningful only when it extends to the whole of life – what we read, whom we choose as our friends, what we do with our free time, what gets up in the morning, what, or better, to whom we will give our lives. This is the kind of faith that Jesus elicited when he walked the earth: a faith engages us, challenges us, sometimes provokes us, spurs us on to open our hearts more widely to Christ and to the Father’s love, and therefore also more widely to those around us, especially those in need. A faith that stays in a box marked religion dies in that box. Our goal is a living faith that blossoms into an enduring relationship with Christ.
Not Only Teachers But Witnesses
Let me speak now in an even more personal way. Like many of you, I am a “product” (as they say) of Catholic education. Along the way, I encountered superb educators, others less so. But the teachers who made the deepest impression were the ones who loved me… not merely with a natural affection but with a supernatural love, teachers who cared about me as a person – body, mind, and spirit – teachers who wanted for me whatever God wanted for me. To this day I remember them, not only as teachers but as witnesses of God’s love. Without those teachers, I would not be a priest today.
I am here to celebrate with you because I am confident you are teachers but more than teachers – you are witnesses to the Lord’s love – those who first allow yourselves to be loved by the Lord and by others so that you can hand on that same love to your students by loving them with a supernatural love, a love that is divine – and this in the give and take of the classroom, the gym, and the cafeteria. Easier said than done? You bet. But I make my own the words of St. Paul: “I give thanks to my God always on your account for the grace bestowed on you in Christ Jesus, that in him you were enriched in every way, with all discourse and knowledge, as the testimony to Christ was confirmed among you . . . .” May God’s blessings be upon you and your schools as you begin anew!