Homily
[Isaiah 53:10-11; Psalm 33; Hebrews 4:14-16; Mark 10:35-45]
As I mentioned at the opening of mass, today we are marking Catholic Education Sunday throughout the province. It is a moment to thank God for the gift of our schools and pray for their strengthening. To lead us in a reflection on the importance and mission of the Catholic school in light of the scriptural texts for this mass, I shall focus with you on a particular expression many of our teachers use to describe their vocation.
The expression is this: “setting up students for success”. It is abundantly clear to me that everyone involved in Catholic education loves the children entrusted to their care and is willing to go to great lengths to see them do well. As they often put it, they work to set the children up for success. They earnestly want the students to succeed in school, first of all, and also throughout their entire lives. Success is thought of here in terms of getting good grades, doing well in sports, becoming good citizens, and so on. That is all good and necessary.
Ultimately, though, the Catholic school exists to set our students up for success as disciples. In our schools, we seek to lead them to Jesus so that they will come to know, love, and follow him throughout their lives. In this context, we need to be careful with how we understand “success”, given the perennial temptation to see things only in worldly terms. In fact, we shouldn’t take it upon ourselves at all to define it, because only Jesus can tell us what “successful” discipleship – true discipleship – is.
That is precisely what he is doing in the passage we have from the Gospel of St. Mark. Two of his disciples – James and John – have their own ideas about “success”. They are thinking entirely in worldly terms and jockey for the two top positions in what they imagine will be the future kingdom of Jesus. The indignation of the other disciples suggests they have much the same thing in mind and are upset that these two got their bid in ahead of them. At this point, Jesus makes clear to them all – and to us – what “successful discipleship” means. “…whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” The disciple imitates the Master. Success in discipleship is measured not in terms of self-aggrandizement but self-abasement, a constant willingness to serve and not be served.
Clearly, what Jesus sets out as the standard for “successful discipleship” calls for a complete change of mindset, a conversion away from thinking solely in worldly categories and toward those informed by the Gospel. This is a challenge, to say the least. But, like a good teacher, better than any teacher, Jesus wants to “set us up for success” by giving us what we need. He grants us his love and mercy, poured into our hearts through the sacraments of the Church. His grace, received in faith, changes our minds and transforms our hearts to become ever more Christ-like and thus “successful disciples”.
Let’s bring this back now to our schools. To assist students to become true disciples of Jesus, they, too, need to adopt mindsets often at odds with worldly wisdom and secular expectations. This is a demanding call, one which requires constant vigilance, so the Church “sets the schools up for success” by spelling out with clarity the hallmarks of an authentic Catholic school. There are five such marks.[1] As I recall each briefly, let’s notice the challenge implicit within them to think in Gospel, not worldly, terms.
A Catholic school is to be grounded in a Christian anthropology, which we know differs radically from secular anthropologies currently in circulation. Our schools must be imbued with a Catholic worldview, which sees all of history infused with the love of God and unfolding in accord with God’s saving purpose for the world – clearly different from approaches to reality and history that eclipse the divine from all consideration. Catholic schools are to be animated by a curriculum infused by the faith, which means having not only programming but also staff permeated by the truth and beauty of the Gospel, not by attitudes or patterns of thought at odds with it. The Church expects our schools to be sustained by Gospel witness, which means that all involved in Catholic education are to stand before their students and each other as living witnesses to Christ and the joy of life in him, and not to ways of behaving or thinking that point away from our Lord. Finally, the Catholic school must be shaped by a spirituality of communion; in an era marked by individualism and the resultant societal fracture, the school must foster unity of faith and collaboration for mission in keeping with the nature of the Church of Christ.
When they are “successful” according to these criteria, our schools are an extraordinary gift to their students, as well as to the mission of the Church. We all have a responsibility, then, to “set them up for success” by our prayer, in which we ask Almighty God to pour out upon our school communities the grace they need to lead our beloved youth to Jesus and to the fullness of life in him.
Let us bring that very prayer to our celebration of the Eucharist this morning. May the grace of this sacrament pour forth from this mass and into our schools, to sustain them as authentic and joyful communities of faith in Jesus Christ.
Most Reverend Richard W. Smith
Saint Joseph Basilica
October 20th, 2024
[1] Cf. Archbishop J. Michael Miller, The Holy See’s Teaching on Catholic Schools, 2006.