By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily April 9, 2015, at the closing Mass of the annual convention of the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA). The convention brought nearly 6,000 Catholic school teachers, principals, catechists and even librarians to Orlando April 7-9.
"Let our lives be conquered and transformed by the Resurrection": this was Pope Francis' exhortation to the faithful gathered on Easter Monday in Rome to pray with him the Regina Caeli. He also noted that the liturgy treats this whole week - this Octave of Easter - as if it were one day to permit us to better enter into the mystery of Easter. And in today's Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples and us: "You are witnesses to these things."
As Catholics, and as Catholic educators, we are called to witness to this Mystery by our lives both in and outside the classroom. Of course, as we have seen in recent weeks, to enshrine this expectation in our employee handbooks makes some take umbrage. However, allow me suggest that a more appropiate response, considering that the Lord entrusts such a mission to us despite our evident shortcomings and failures, is simply a good dose of humilty.
Saint Augustine once said, “If you ask me what is the essential thing in the religion and discipline of Jesus Christ, I shall reply: first, humility; second, humility, and third, humility."
The world has been impressed by the evident humility of Pope Francis; but humility is not just a virtue we should admire from afar. While it is good that we admire humility when we see it, especially in a leader, it is perhaps better that we try to imitate it. As one old monk told a group of nuns whom he thought had grown full of pride because of the vows they had taken, “you can be saved without virginity but you cannot be saved without humility.”
The virtue of humility will stand you in good stead in your role as teachers. And isn’t it humbling that parents who don’t know us that well trust us with their children? Isn’t it humbling to be in a position to make a difference in these children’s lives? And experiencing that humility is what brings us closer to the Lord himself. As Jesus himself said, “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.”
As teachers – and as Archbishop I am a teacher as well – we know that today people won’t necessarily do what we tell them to do just because we tell them to do it. The days are long gone when what “Father said” or “What teacher said” was law. Our culture today in the U.S. is not a little bit anti-authoritarian. And this goes beyond the recent failures of leaders whether in Church, business or politics. It goes back even beyond the '60s when I and others my age would say: Trust nobody over 30. It’s a sign of the times we live in.
Pope Paul VI sensed this and when he wrote Evangelio Anunciantis. He said that people today look not so much to teachers as they look to witnesses. And St. John Paul II told priests that the people look to them for the “word lived” before the “word proclaimed”. It is witness that convinces not words. If we are witnesses, then we can establish our authority without authoritarianism.
As Catholic teachers we count on you to teach the Faith – but given the reality of our times, we’re not going to be good teachers if we are not good witnesses. Our children today won’t follow “blind guides” as Jesus sometimes described the Pharisees. But they will follow witnesses.
Statistics tell us how fractured the families of our children are. Even Catholic school children are increasingly coming from broken homes. We can only marvel at the sacrifice that single parents make. And, to be sure, it is not easy even for intact families with both parents working to pay for the increasing costs of educating their children in Catholic schools, in a nation that refuses to acknowledge the value of faith based education by subsidizing religious schools, or by at least allowing tax credits for parochial school education. Even secular France has a more enlightened policy towards its Catholic schools.
Nevertheless, parents still come to us and willingly sacrifice to provide their kids with a Catholic education – an education supported by your teaching – and, very importantly, by your witness. I thank you for what you do. And I thank you for your sacrifices as well. For I know that many of you could be making more money elsewhere than by teaching i a Catholic school.
The best thing about our schools – and what makes your sacrifice and the parents’ sacrifice worthwhile – is that we can teach from within a particular understanding of the human person. We know that he or she is created in the image and likeness of God. And because of this particular understanding, we can teach values – and again, more importantly, we can teach virtue.
This goes beyond what is sometimes called teaching “self-esteem” to kids. I think a lot of what is said about “self-esteem” is just psycho-babble. It’s all well and good, I guess, that a kid feels good about himself – but without teaching values and virtues, you can end up raising an “axe-murderer” who has “great self-esteem” and no remorse for what he has done.
In teaching virtue, we teach that it is more important to do good than just feel good. Feeling good should not be anybody’s goal in life. One should strive to do good – and that sometimes – truth be told – that always means sacrifice, effort, suffering. But if we do good, then good feelings may follow – as the side effect but not the goal of our action. You know, it’s like the football coach – he doesn't get the kids to practice, to sweat, to train just because he tells them that it feels good – they don’t train to feel good but to win.
Now one good thing we do is to go to Mass on Sunday – in fact, it is the least we can do in returning to the Lord what he has given us. And this is one thing that it is important that we teach our kids – about going to Mass on Sunday – and to go even when they don’t necessarily feel like going or when they feel like doing something else.
In this I would hope that you as Catholic teachers also are witnesses. I think that on Monday morning you were discussing your participation at Mass, the importance that you give it, etc. will help set the benchmark for the kids, and through the children, the parents. And we know that most of these kids that are looking at us on Monday morning were not in church on Sunday. But again, it’s important to remember that the sacrifices we and their parents are making are not just to get these kids into Vassar, or Harvard, or Princeton. We are trying to educate them to get them into heaven, by leading them to make a gift of themselves – to God and to a future family.
I remember when my uncle Vinnie had just become the proud parent of his only son, little Vinnie. (Yes, I have a cousin Vinnie.) Anyway, my uncle had a terrible car accident. He had a flat tire and when he went to the rear of the car to get the spare a drunk driver rear-ended him and in the accident he lost both legs below the knees. Thanks to prompt medical service he survived and quickly learned to walk again with two prostheses and a cane. He walked pretty well – but with a limp. When little Vinnie – my cousin – became a toddler, his mother, my aunt, became very worried. She feared that he had contracted polio or some other disease – because he wasn’t walking straight. After many tests, x-rays, etc. one day instead of my aunt, my uncle took the boy to the doctor and he immediately diagnosed the problem. You see, we talk about God being all powerful, almighty – but for a little kid, the people he sees as all powerful and almighty are his parents – and his teachers. The boy limped because his father did. He wanted to be like his daddy. He did as he saw.
During the Easter Vigil throughout our country we welcomed thousands who recieved the sacraments of Christian initiation. And all of us on Easter Sunday were invited to renew our baptismal promises to turn away from sin and to live as a Child of God. Our baptism - which was a participation in Jesus' death and resurrection - has fundamentally changed us. Baptism made us children of God and brothers and sisters to the Lord; and, thus baptism (and the repentance it pre-supposes) represents a basic reorientation of our lives. As we pray in the Fourth Eucharist prayer: "...that we might live no longer for ourselves but for him who died and rose again for us, he sent the Holy Spirit from you, Father..."
With Jesus' resurrection and ascension into heaven, we discover new understandings, and new possibilities, of what it means to be human, "living no longer for ourselves but for him." This is the Evangelii Gaudium - the joy of the Gospel.
In the Aparecida document of the Latin American bishops in 2007, which in many ways was the precursor of Pope Francis' Evangelii Gaudium, we read: "To be a Christian is not a burden but a gift. To have encountered the Lord is the best thing that has ever happened to us and to share him with others is our joy."
The vocation of a teacher is a humbling one. What a privilege it is for us to be involved in the lives of these “little ones.” My uncle couldn’t help walking with a limp. But in all humility, let’s make sure that all of us walk in such a way that we model for the children entrusted to our care a straight path to the Lord. In the words of Pope Francis, "Let our lives be conquered and transformed by the Resurrection."
