We are not a Private School; We are a Catholic School.

We are Not a Private School; we are a Catholic School!

What does it mean to be “Catholic”?

Ultimately, our vocation as Catholic school teachers is to play a role in the salvation of souls (Can. 1752). If we are not working to that end, then we are not providing for our students what we are called to do.

Immaculate Heart of Marcy Catholic Church and School in Atlanta, GA...where I grew up. (Photo: P. Smith)


The Church is the “family of the Lord”, so we say. The immediate family, the domestic Church, then, is the womb in which the children of God are cared for and protected in the safest environment possible. So what of the Catholic School? If the domestic Church is the womb of the Church, then the Catholic School is the nursery. And what are we nursing? To what end?
God certainly wants everyone to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4-6). But Salvation is not simply “getting into Heaven”. The contrary to salvation is damnation…slavery to sin and fixation on ego and material Truth. Salvation is freedom from obsession with ego and material Truth. How do we obtain that freedom? We do NOT “obtain” that Freedom… it is freely given to us within the context of a relationship with Jesus Christ.
The opposite of sin is the Love of God… the Love that He desires us to experience, both as Beloved and as Lover (Augustine).  When we live a life of sin, we cannot be fulfilled for we are not living out the image and likeness in which we are created to be. An artist created to be an artist will never flourish if they are forced to be a businessperson. The goal of Catholic schools, then, is to guide the student to become who God made them to be… to guide them to encounter the Love they are made to experience and to be. We cannot limit ourselves to being just a place that helps students to discover what “job” they are called to have. Any school can do that; any school should do that. We are interested in doing more… we are interested in helping students and ourselves in becoming our eternal and Authentic Selves. This is not something that can be taught, at least not in the way that private schools or a public schools teach. It is something that must be encountered. We learn at least as much with experience or encounter as we do in any lecture or classroom. If the ultimate goal, then, is an encounter with the Love of Jesus Christ so our students can begin to know what they are made to be and what will fulfill them the most, then we, as teachers, need to be a touchpoint of that encounter for them. We need to be the Love of Jesus Christ for our students; their entire Catholic education needs to be the Love of Jesus Christ for them. If our schools are doing anything less than being the Love of Jesus Christ for our students and their families, then we are not Catholic… we need to do and to be more. We need to Love our students and their families the way that they deserve.

Jesus Meets His Mother... Galway Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven (Photo: P. Smith)

I often tell my students that I cannot Love them as much as they deserve. They deserve to be Loved infinitely and perfectly… with perfect Justice and Perfect Compassion. Because of my sinfulness and my limitations, I cannot Love them. A long time ago as I was starting my career as a teacher, I was given some crucial advice from a former teacher and mentor of mine, Father Richard Lopez; He said to me, “Patrick, no matter what you do, always pray for your students, by name, in front of the Blessed Sacrament.” Effectively, Father Lopez was teaching me (he never stopped teaching me) that if I wanted to be a good Catholic school teacher and if I wanted my students to know that they were Loved, then I needed to develop my own relationship with Jesus Christ, first. I needed to know Jesus, personally, so I could be His Love for my students.
The formation and development of the Catholic school teacher must be, primarily, a formation and development of their relationship with Jesus Christ, precisely as it applies to how they can be an encounter with God for their students and their students’ families.
How do we form Catholic school teachers, then, to grow in their personal (and communal) relationship with Jesus? As we are all, presumably, at different points in our Faith Journey, we need to be in dialogue with teachers to determine the best and most appropriate course of action to achieve this, both for the individual AND for the school community. BOTH are necessary we are a Trinitarian Church, made in the image and likeness of ONE God, THREE Persons. Individually, we need to address how God reveals and Loves the teacher in the context of Actual Grace. At the same time, the Sanctifying Grace of communal experience in Liturgy and Sacrament IS essential for the full encounter with Jesus Christ. We have to pray individually AND communally.

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