“So in this class, essentially, I want your kids to become saints.”
They broke out into laughter. I meant for it to be funny in an understated way. But I’m not entirely certain we were all on the same page. Continue reading “I Want Your Kids to Become Saints”
As school draws near and I find myself mentally preparing for a new year, I feel a growing excitement. It is mixed, however, with the knowledge that once this roller-coaster starts, it will not truly end until May. So I am saying a sad goodbye to sleeping in, staying up late, and not repeating myself fifteen times.
A few days ago, as melancholics are apt to do, I was reflecting on death. Particularly on my death. And how I don’t know when it will happen. It could be seventy years or this week. I have hopes and dreams about getting married and having a family, but those may never be fulfilled. Perhaps, I mused, perhaps I haven’t met the man I will marry because there isn’t one. Perhaps I don’t get married. Perhaps there is not much life left for me. Continue reading “The Vocation of the Present”
It is incredibly easy for me to think that everyone else has a far better job than I do. Over the past few years, I seem to have perfected the skill of viewing the neat ways that everyone else can live out their job as an apostolate for Jesus. Yet I seem to miss the ways in which I can do the same thing…in a Catholic school…teaching Theology.
Parked outside the Cathedral the other day, I thought of how neat it would be to show up to such a place for work. Wouldn’t it be neat to work for the Diocese? Or I’ll go to a restaurant and think about how wonderful it could be to subtly evangelize while serving people their food. Just a few weeks ago I had my students make lists of different secular jobs and then brainstorm ways to live the Gospel in the midst of such work. And I can give you a decent list for most jobs that are not immoral. I miss, however, the ability to live it out in the midst of a job that is so clearly evangelistic.
Because, so often, I want something else. Something easy. Something challenging. Just something different than the lot I have been given. Continue reading “When God Wills the Ordinary”
What I really wanted to do was call the teenage girl out on her attitude. Yes, I should have prepared better for class by having the questions printed out for them instead of having them write them out. At this point, however, it was the end of the day and I didn’t feel like trying to convince my students why school required them to do schoolwork.
Instead of writing down the questions, this young lady was resistant. Her face was one of annoyance that she would have to write down questions.
“Do we have to write these all down?”
“Well, I think you would want to. You need to answer these questions over the movie we are going to watch and you won’t be able to see the questions when I pull the projector down.”
“So we don’t have to?”
“I guess not if you think you can remember all the questions and answers.”
“Cool. I’m not doing it then.”
I was frustrated that something so little was seen as such a heavy burden. She wasn’t the only one who was put out by this task. As the students wrote down the questions, they would take time to heave a sigh or breathe deeply.
“I hear your sighs.” I told them as I waited for them to finish copying the questions.
So while others were not enjoying the task at hand, this girl was the most vocal about it. She has her days. Some days she is bubbly and excited, calling me “girl” and sharing different stories. Other days she has a bit of an attitude and looks unimpressed by nearly everything. I was trying to decide how to handle her responses to me in the classroom. Should I take her aside? Should I give her a look? How should I respond?
In the midst of my frustration, I remembered a personal detail she had written on an assignment at the beginning of the semester. She wrote briefly of a family life difficulty and in that moment of her less-than-desired responses, I thought of it. And I prayed for her. I ask Our Lady to give me the patience to deal with this young girl who was struggling with things that I didn’t know or understand. In a moment of clarity, I recognized her responses as being, at least in part, the fruit of inner turmoil and pain. She was hurting and something she felt she had control over was complaining about a simple task in class.
I wish I could say that I have applied this merciful attitude toward all of my students all of the time. I haven’t. But it did make me stop and consider: why don’t I extend to those I meet the same mercy I would desire others to extend to me? Of course, we all need to grow in not letting our emotions overrun us. We strive to not take frustrations out on people who are completely removed from the situation. But I know I have been unkind many times and what has brought me out of that rut before has been people looking beyond my ugly words or actions and treating me with kindness.
This brief interaction made me want to extend mercy, without being a doormat for my students. Not everything in their responses is about my teaching or what they think of me. Perhaps they just had a difficult test or a fight the night before with their parents. It doesn’t make what they have said or done acceptable, but it can make them more real to me, people with hearts and problems, struggling to navigate the difficulties of life.
It was once again impressed upon me the need to pray. I do not enter the classroom alone to fight in a fierce battle against teenagers. Those would be rather bleak prospects. Rather I go to them (hopefully) as a missionary and I go armed with the best of warriors–the universal Church. Particularly during this year of mercy, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could encounter my students and everyone I meet as a missionary of mercy? How beautiful would it be if through an encounter with us, people could know that attribute of God in a deeper, fuller way?
I’ve spent the last two months deciding if I would continue teaching next year. There were pros and cons on both sides and I couldn’t tell which side was weightier. Even though my mother insisted, repeatedly, that I should sit down and make a pros and cons list, doing so didn’t seem to really help. The benefits and drawbacks of either decision seemed incapable of being captured in words to jot on one side of a t-chart. I couldn’t go with my gut because it, too, was conflicted. In the end, I chose to stay and while I’m still uncertain if that was the correct decision, it was a decision and I finally made it. A part of me felt sadness to pass up a great service opportunity and another part feels concern that next year I will be climbing the walls of my classroom, wondering what momentary weakness caused me to sign another year of my life away. Despite these concerns, I am beginning to make plans about what this next year of life will look like. As a teacher, life stills comes about on a yearly schedule, broken neatly into semesters with lovely summer and winter breaks.
Last semester I was growing more and more convinced that I would love to not teach next year. It wasn’t one thing in particular, but it was a bunch of things all wrapped up together. Yet after applying for and being offered (even if only temporarily) another job, the joys of teaching became clearer to me. The things that I would miss stood out in my mind and I didn’t even want to think of telling my department head that I would be leaving or cleaning out my classroom. Yet I didn’t want to stay just because I didn’t want to do those things.
As frustrating and foolish as students can be at times, they can also be hilarious, witty, deep, encouraging, and beautiful souls. Yes, they complain, test my patience, seem incapable of following simple directions, make me question my own sanity, and relentlessly insist on moving the far row of desks next to the wall so they have a backrest. Yet at times we laugh together, we can reach a beautiful depth at times, we develop a relationship that is unlike any other relationship I have formed before–one of student and teacher. Over the past three years I’ve grown more comfortable with my students. Today I gave a test to my seniors and after they were finished, I couldn’t help but look at them and feel pleased. We aren’t best friends, but it is my class and we do have a unique dynamic.
I don’t know how long I will teach for and how long I want to teach for depends on the day. In the midst of my crisis (the I-have-only-two-days-to-know-if-I-am-going-to-sign-my-contract-and-I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing crisis), I called my sister. She asked me questions that I didn’t know how to answer about my personal desires and feeling peace.
“Answer this as quickly as you think of an answer,” my sister told me. “If you could do anything, what would you do or be?”
Pause.
“A missionary.”
Then she read me something. At first, I wasn’t quite certain what she was reading me. After a little while, I realized she was reading me one of my very first blog entries. “Young,” first-year teacher Trish was writing about how she was a missionary of the classroom and how even as she longed for greater missions, she was called to be a teacher and minister in the seeming mundane aspects of life. And that young teacher inspired me. As my sister read my writing, I felt inspired to truly take up the mission of being a teacher and to live it with a radical zeal that I had forgotten. At some point I had begun to resign myself to having a job rather than being a missionary.
So even in the midst of uncertainty, I am starting to look forward to another school year (of course, after my (I believe) well-deserved summer break) to be a missionary in a high school classroom. Because Christ instructed us to put out into the deep and I intend to cast my nets into the high school ocean. Because the harvest is abundant and the laborers are few. Because the Church needs the youth. Because Jesus says there is a millstone with my name on it if I fail to bring the little ones to Him. Because, for some unknown reason in God’s inscrutable Will, I am called to teach.
“How are we each like the man with the withered hand?”
It was seventh period and my students were, as usual, talkative and eager to laugh with their fellow students. We are in the midst of learning about the Gospel of Mark and today found us reviewing the story of the man with the withered hand.
One of the goals I have for my Scripture classes is to convince them that this is the Living Word of God and that it should be impacting their lives now. I tell them that Jesus desires to speak to each of us, today, in this very moment, through events that happened and were written about a couple thousand years ago.
“How are we each like the man with the withered hand?”
It was a rhetorical question and I continued on with one of my little preaching sessions. The man had a disfigured hand and yet Jesus asked the man to come before the crowd of people and stretch out his hand. This requires a deep trust that Jesus will be gentle and that He can heal. The part that the man most wanted to hide from other people, Jesus was asking the man to openly show to Him.
The words seemed to flow naturally from my mouth as I asked them to consider what part of them Jesus desires to heal.
“Perhaps you don’t have physical disabilities. Jesus wants to provide emotional, spiritual, mental healing. What if Jesus called you in front of the crowd and asked you, “How is your relationship with your mom?” Or if He asked you, “How did you feel when your friend betrayed you?” Jesus wants to come to you in the midst of your brokenness and heal you. Christ desires complete wholeness for us.”
As I said these words, I was looking at them and their solemn little faces spoke of hurts that I will never know or understand. Faces that a few minutes before were laughing, now would quickly drop their eyes when mine would rest on their face. I told them that Jesus desires to heal them. That whatever part of them they most want to hide from Jesus, is the place He most wants to come.
It was, I believe, a moment of the Holy Spirit working through me. The room had a stillness to it that revealed an attentiveness that went beyond the typical atmosphere for notes or theological discussions. I could feel the weight of the room and the weight of the Holy Spirit. In the momentary pause before I continued on with notes, I thought briefly, “I love talking about healing.” It was never something I had thought before, but I knew it to be true. There is a certain life that fills me when I am able to speak about the transforming effect that Christ desires to have on us.
How does Jesus desire to heal your withered hand today? Let’s let Him do it. Amen. Amen.
Before I started teaching I remember speaking to a priest about my lack of knowledge and experience. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to answer all of their questions and would find teaching to be too much for me.
“Do you trust that the Church has the answers, though? That your students couldn’t come up with a question that would prove the Church wrong or that she hadn’t thought of?”
“Absolutely.”
Father seemed to look at me as if that was enough. So I would be delving into teaching a subject that I didn’t know everything about but I believed that the Church could answer every objection. In other words, what was the worry?
That realization, that nothing my students or anyone could do or say would change my trust in the Church, was a necessary one. Even if I don’t know the answer now, I believe there is an answer.
I have a few students who are over the Church. They don’t want anything to do with religion and their perception is that mandatory theology classes are killing them. I graded a journal the other day and some of the things the student wrote made my heart ache. He was writing words that spoke strongly of his dislike for the Church, his disbelief that Christ was there or listening, and his dislike at even having to keep a prayer journal. What may have surprised him was how I read his words. When he talked about Christ not listening, I pictured a hurt little boy too closed off to even accept the comfort Christ was offering. As he described his desire to do whatever he wanted and not follow the Church, I envisioned reckless parties and a continued desire to fill an aching hole within himself, all the while refusing the only true means of fulfillment.
I don’t know how to prove the existence of God. I can give them different arguments for God’s existence but I cannot give to them my experience of God or the fact that I know, without a doubt, that God is present and that He loves me. In many ways, I am baffled by disbelief. I understand that I am a teacher and I am supposed to help them through these things, but it is not something I have experienced myself. Sometimes I was angry at God, sometimes I felt He didn’t care about me, but I always thought He was there. I see my students aching for God and yet not even willing to acknowledge the ache.
When I hear their questions or their critique of the Church I wonder how we can see things in such a different light. I see a loving Mother and they see rules. I see a tremendous love story and they see someone uninterested in their lives. It doesn’t make me doubt my faith or doubt God. Rather, it makes me desire, somehow, someway, to give them my faith, to help them understand God, to trust in Him. I haven’t figured it out yet, but there must be a way.
I never realized how controversial the simple truth could be until I stepped foot into my classroom. Prior to this I knew in theory that some truths people didn’t like but I was awakened to a whole new realm of this in one of my classes. The truth is offensive. I told my students that the Catholic Church had the fullness of the Truth and I didn’t expect the firestorm that would follow. It wasn’t always a verbal defense that they provided but I could tell that they were mad at me or mad at the Church. And I’m not certain if I ever really solved the problem. Because I am realizing more fully that I cannot make anyone believe. If only I could pray them into accepting the truth. Yet all I can do is pray for them and strive to present the Truth in the best possible way. I find myself desiring to protect the Church against any assaults they might hurl at Her. In the midst of the moment I forget that the Church can defend Herself adequately and I need have no concerns about Her being found lacking. I look at their lack of love for the Church and I am bewildered. It takes a while for me to remind myself that I did not always harbor this love for the Church that I do now.
I desired a mission and the Lord has placed me in the missionary field of a classroom in a Catholic high school. My idealistic view of teaching is not completely gone, although the past couple months has tempered it. How do I give the love I have to them? How do I take their skepticism and help it become belief? It is not because of me that any of their hearts will be converted. I am convinced of this. My beautiful lessons seem to be less than impressive to them. The very things that fill me with joy can put them to sleep. Despite the resistance that some of them put up to the Church, to the Truth, to me, I know that these hours that they spend in my classroom will impact them in some way unforseen to anyone. Initially, I was glad to see them write the correct answers on the paper, knowing that even if they didn’t believe the answer they had to memorize it for the test. Now, I want much more from them. I find myself desiring rebuttal rather than the perfectly formulated answer that they could care less about. I want them to care deeply one way or the other. In some ways it is hard to rouse this generation to action or to convince them to be totally committed to something even though in their core that is what they desire. But then again my own heart is so slow to be awakened and called to action.
How the heart of Our Lord must ache for us, His beloved ones! My desire for them to accept the truth is not as firmly rooted as is the Lord’s desire for them to become what they are called to be. My love for them wavers and changes based on the day. But the Lord’s love remains firm and unyielding. I pray to have His heart for them so that I may love them as I ought. How far I have to go. Where I see battle lines to be drawn, Our Lord sees lost sheep to find and craddle in His arms. Where I see rebellion, Our Lord sees the pain and hurt that they have experienced. Teaching one of my classes about David I was struck again by the call to be a woman after God’s own heart. I am called to become more and more like God and by doing so to become the saint that He desires me to be, that He needs me to be. Because only a saint can fulfill the call that the Lord has placed upon my heart, upon the heart of each person.
While my title may be “teacher” I am striving to embrace more fully the title of “missionary” so that I may remember that every place needs to be evangelized and that this is not my home. For now, my mission field is the classroom and my students are the ones who need to hear the Gospel proclaimed to them. Regardless of how small or large the task appears to me, I must remember that because the Lord wills this of me in this present moment, this task is the most important thing for me. This is my mission, this is my street, this is my life.
“Do not be afraid to go out onto the streets and into public places like the first apostles who preached Christ and the Good News of salvation in the squares of cities, towns, and villages.” Bl. Pope John Paul II (WYD 1993)
Seeking After His Heart 