We Are An Encounter


“God continually gives us Faith, even after birth and Baptism. Faith is an invitation for us to be in a relationship with Him, and if we say “yes” to that invitation, then we certainly act upon it. As a teacher at a Catholic school, one of the best ways I know to act on that Faith is to make sure my students recognize the Faith that God has given them...that they recognize that God has, by Love, invited them into a relationship with Him. I teach and model for them that they are Loved and I challenge them to find ways they can respond to and share that Love with others.”
I wrote this to one of my course participants in response to a reflection of hers. The question was about how Faith is both a gift from God and an action on our part. As teachers, we rely on Faith. We have to believe that what we are doing will have some effect at some point. If we didn’t have Faith that what we were doing mattered, it would drive us mad!
But there is more to the Faith of teaching than just believing we will have some effect. That perspective is, to be honest, egoistic and, ultimately, empty; it is only concerned about ourselves as the vehicle of our students’ success and betterment. The Faith of teaching goes beyond even our own Hopes. As teachers, we become an opportunity for our students to encounter the Love and Mercy of Jesus Christ, an encounter they may never experience otherwise. We have a responsibility, then, a duty, to receive the Faith that God gives us and to grow in relationship with Him so we can become the encounter for our students.
Perhaps the greatest problem we have in Catholic schools is when we limit our Hopes to just graduation or college… we should always be thinking about something greater.
(If everything works out, they start to encounter Christ through each other.)

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