I certainly enjoy the time away over summer break and I believe this time away is necessary for us to have the leisure required to be effective teachers. Likewise I am convinced that this time away for our students is essential for them to have a chance to truly grow into the people God is calling them to be, but there is something about summer break which can make it very easy for us to lose focus. I don’t know about you, but it seems, for me, that as the summer break ends, we can easily find ourselves in the midst of a flurry of activities preparing for a school year and if we are not careful these tasks can quickly consume us. These preparations for a new school year can easily leave us unfocused for the start of the school year. So, today, in the midst of preparing for another academic year, we are afforded this privileged opportunity to leave the craziness of preparing for a new school year behind for a few hours to gather and refocus. My prayer is that this day of recollection can provide us the opportunity to step back from the many small duties that must be completed before classes can begin, to focus and to prepare for what is most important; namely to resume our sacred responsibility of partnering with our parents, who are the primary educators of their children, so that journeying together, in the words of St. Paul to the Philippians, each of us can work out our salvation in “fear in trembling.”[1] Said in another way my prayer is that today assists us in being more focused and energized to carry out our sacred work of educating the next generation of saints with awe and seriousness in service to our heavenly father.
So, as we prepare to enter back into the classroom for a new year, it only seems appropriate that we take a moment to contemplate Jesus, the teacher par excellence. While we could choose many different passages from scripture to serve as the basis of our reflection, today I want to turn to St. Luke’s account of the boy Jesus in the temple. Here in the temple, we find the boy Jesus, at age 12, in what would today be around 6th grade, surrounded by the great scholars of his day. I chose this this passage because I believe that it can help us focus our teaching to imitate Christ and perhaps draw us deeper, in all humility, into the great blessing that as we teach, both we and our students will advance in wisdom and favor before God and man.[2]
From the second chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel[3]
Each year his parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and when he was twelve years old, they went up according to festival custom. After they had completed its days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Thinking that he was in the caravan, they journeyed for a day and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances, but not finding him, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers.
When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus advanced [in] wisdom and age and favor before God and man.
St. Luke begins his account by telling us that the Holy Family went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover. Since the Jewish people were supposed to make a pilgrimage to the temple three times a year, on the feasts of Passover, Weeks, and Tabernacles, we see from the very outset, the fidelity and devoutness of the Holy Family. This tri-annual journey to the temple, was a way for God’s chosen people to continue to be a pilgrim people journeying towards God and continually receiving their identity from Him. While you and I are not called to make a physical pilgrimage to the Holy Land three times a year, if we stop and think about it, is not the journey of learning a pilgrimage toward God; a pilgrimage where we receive our identity from Him? Much like the pilgrimage to the temple, the pilgrimage of learning takes time, it takes effort, and it can often seem inconvenient. Yet, also like a pilgrimage, when the educational journey is undertaken faithfully, it can lead us close to Jesus, who is Truth Himself. As we begin a new year then, having just prayed the joyful mysteries of the rosary and contemplated this mystery of the finding of Jesus in the temple, perhaps we ought to place before our eyes, two important questions. First, how is my teaching leading students towards God? Second, how does what we teach find its identity in Jesus Christ, who is “the way, the truth, and the life?”[4]
As we prepare for another school year by reflecting on Jesus, the teacher, in the temple, we should not overlook the fact that St. Luke tells us Jesus was in the temple for the feast of Passover. The annual feast of Passover commemorates the Hebrew’s liberation from slavery in Egypt and the passing over of the angel of death. Even today, this pivotal moment in salvation history is commemorated annual by the Jewish people with the celebration of the seder meal. The fifth and central step of the seder meal is the Maggid, the storytelling of the Exodus from Egypt and the description of the various ritual items of the seder. Just as the Jewish people continue to hand on their faith through the annual celebration of the seder meal, as teachers we too are called to hand on what has been entrusted to us, most importantly of which is the great deposit of faith. Afterall, all arithmetic and writing is useless if they (students) do not know the purpose of their lives; if they do not learn why we are on earth and if this knowledge does not produce freedom, serenity and goodness.”[5]
This great celebration of Passover commemorates the night before the Hebrews set out on their 40-year journey in the desert, leaving behind slavery in Egypt and moving towards the promised land. The years that our students are blessed to study at this school are also intended to be a preparation as they begin their journey from slavery to sin to the freedom, God willing, of the promised land in eternal life. Thus, in contemplating the setting of the boy Jesus in the temple, perhaps we ought to ask ourselves, how is our teaching helping to form saints.
You will recall from the Book of Exodus that on the day of Passover, the Hebrews were to procure for themselves a lamb, slaughter it, and then consume it with unleavened bread.[6] This Passover lamb then becomes a prefiguration of Christ. St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, teaches that us Christ is the pascal lamb who has been sacrificed,[7] and so we can thus see in this narrative a prefiguration of the Sacrifice of the Mass, wherein we are offered the lamb once slain, Jesus Christ, truly present, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Holy Eucharist. Just as the Hebrews were nourished for their journey to the promised land by the slain lamb, you are I are offered food for the journey to the promised land of heaven in the lamb once slain, Jesus Christ. Just as the sacrificial lamb was at the heart of the Passover celebration, our sacrificial lamb, Jesus Christ, must also be at the center of our school. How then is Christ at the heart of your classroom? How is our school and our classroom Eucharistic?
If you remember the story of Passover, you will recall that God commanded the Hebrews to take some of the blood from the slaughtered lamb and to apply it to the two doorposts and the lintel of the house.[8] This blood would mark their homes, so that the angel of death would pass over them that night.[9] Said in another way, the Hebrews would find their salvation by being marked with the blood of the lamb. The Hebrews were to mark their homes, identifying themselves as followers of God and in so doing would be saved. The same is true for us as a school. Just as the houses marked with the blood of the lamb housed God’s chosen people, our school and our classrooms house the people of God. How then is our school and our classrooms marked as belonging to God? When people look at our school and classrooms do they know that we are Catholic?
This of course is accomplished in many ways, but perhaps two areas are worth considering. First through the way we speak and act. When people walk through our hallways do they recognize that we truly love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind[10], and do we love our neighbor as ourselves?[11] Secondly, if someone simply looked at our school building would they know we are Catholic? For example, do our hallways, classrooms, etc. place before our eyes holy images which are meant to remind each of us of the sacred work, we are undertaking in educating the next generation of saints?
Seeing the setting for today’s passage, it is important to realize that the story really does not begin until Mary and Joseph are on their way back to Nazareth. More specifically Mary and Joseph do not recognize that Jesus was not with them on the journey back to Nazareth until the end of the first day’s journey. In his work Jesus of Nazareth, Cardinal Ratzinger, picks up on this small detail and remarks it must have been normal for Mary and Joseph to assume that Jesus was somewhere among the group of pilgrims.[12] Just as the holy family made their pilgrimages to the temple, the place where God dwells, in the company of fellow pilgrims, so too as we journey through this pilgrimage of life we do so, not on our own, but in the company of friends. As a school then we need to look beyond academics to ensure that we are assisting parents in finding a community for their children that will help them along the lifelong pilgrimage to be with God in the kingdom of heaven. How then are we working to form a Christian community that can help our students, and their families find lifelong friends to support and encourage them along the pilgrimage of life?
Like the good old days here in America, the child Jesus had the freedom to be with friends and children of his own age during the day but should have come home in the evening. Is the situation not the same with our school? Do not our parents entrust us with the sacred responsibility of providing for their children during the day, only to return them back at the end of the day. As I think about the freedom the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph offered to the child Jesus, I cannot help but see how much they trusted their community. Afterall, they trusted their community to care for the Son of God. Has it dawned on you that each of us bears the image of God and since each of us are loved and willed by God, our parents to entrust us with the responsibility of caring for those who bear the image of God? Yet, at the same time the story of the boy Jesus in the temple, shows us just what happens when the community, even if through no fault of their own, comes up short; namely people get left behind. With great privilege comes great responsibility. Perhaps this challenges us to look at our own school and classrooms to see if we are leaving students behind.
Those of you who are parents know far better than me the feeling that must have overcome the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph when they realized that Jesus was not with the caravan. When they realize that Jesus is not with their pilgrimage group, they do, what I think all of us would expect a parent to do, left the group and went back and look for Jesus. They were willing to leave the comfort and security of the group to retrace their steps to find their lost son. Of course, this doesn’t simply mean a short-term inconvenience. No presumably this meant, at a minimum they were going to need to travel two days on their own (one day to Jerusalem and then one day back to where they were) and perhaps the rest of the pilgrim group was going to continue home. Either the Holy Family had to make the whole journey from Jerusalem to Nazareth alone or they were going to hold the rest of the community back. Certainly, any parent would drop everything for the good of their child. We, who like Mary and Joseph, are entrusted with the child of another person must also imitate their love and devotion. So, what are we willing to sacrifice for the good of our students? How are we called out of our comfort zone to ensure that no student is being left behind?
St. Joseph and the Blessed Mother left the comforts of the group to find their son because they knew that was what was good for him. We too, as teachers must put aside our comforts for the good of our students. Of course, as people of faith, we know that the ultimate good of our students is their entrance into eternal life and so the greatest sacrifice should be made for us to help our students enter the kingdom of heaven. Afterall, Jesus sacrificed His life to open the gates of heaven to us, are we not then called to do the same for our students? Just as Mary and Joseph left the pilgrimage group behind to find the lost child, Jesus tells us that God also leaves the 99 to find the one lost sheep. How about us?
Teaching at a school where many of our parents choose the school because they desire the Catholic faith they hold dear at home to be at the center of the school, can make it so easy for us to simply assume that everyone is safely on the journey to eternal life. If we are not vigilant, it can be so easy for us to miss the opportunity to evangelize to those who perhaps need a little encouragement. Are our eyes even open to recognize those who may be with us physically but are being left behind spiritually? Are we so comfortable being in the pilgrim group that we fail to realize when someone is not making the journey with us? When we discover someone is not making the journey with us to heaven do we have the courage of Mary and Joseph to leave the group behind to go and find the one who is left behind?
As parents, you certainly know the feeling of relief and perhaps frustration that comes when finding a lost child and I think it is safe to assume all of us can only imagine the relief that must have come to Joseph and Mary when they found Jesus in the temple area with the scholars of the law. While St. Luke does not recount for us any account of what was being shared between Jesus and those scholars, St. Luke does recount for us that Mary and Joseph found Jesus “in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.”[13] Here is Jesus, the divine teacher, sitting in the midst of the scholars of his day, who, while perhaps they did not realize it, were really students of Jesus. This setting then provides us with two different ways to reflect. First, we can reflect on the role of Jesus as the teacher-student and secondly as Jesus the student-teacher.
While much has been said in recent years about teaching pedagogy and even much ink has been spilled over the pedagogy of Jesus, I am not aware of anyone who has evaluated the teaching pedagogy of Jesus in this passage. Notice that St. Luke tells us Mary and Joseph found Jesus sitting in the midst of the teachers of the temple listening and asking them questions. These small little details certainly have something important to say to us teachers.
We see time and time again in the scriptures that when Jesus teaches, he enters the midst of those he wants to teach. For example, we have several instances in the scriptures where Jesus sits down and calls the disciples to himself before teaching them and here it is no different.[14] In these instances, and certainly in this instance in the temple, Jesus has the superior knowledge, yet notice that he levels the playing field by being in the midst of his students. This begs the question of each of us, do we teach from a place nearness, where our students are gathered around or do we teach from a place of superiority. Additionally, notice that he teaches by asking questions. Having understood where the student is by listening to them, he draws them further towards the truth by teaching. Jesus uses the art of asking questions, to invite the teachers to come to know the truth rather than imposing the truth on them. Said in another way, Jesus leads those around him to the truth, he does not impose the truth upon them.
While there is no doubt that Jesus has the superior intellect of the group, St. Luke tells us that it is the teachers in the temple who are doing the talking. In other words, in some way, Jesus is learning from those who should be his students. While I will leave questions surrounding what Jesus knew and how He came to grow in wisdom, age and favor[15] for dogmatic theologians, I think it is worth us contemplating how do we learn from our students? As I look back on my life as a student and an instructor, I find time and time again, that I really do not know a concept until I have taught it to others, and I can point to countless examples of times a student has opened me to a new thought. How then as the teacher, am I still the student?
Friends, as we reflect on this passage of the finding of Jesus in the temple, I cannot help but feel a deep sense of gratitude for the life that God has called us to. Certainly, the life of an teacher is filled with challenges and frustrations, but it is a privileged opportunity to imitate Christ in leading our students to the truth. As we prepare to enter into another academic year, my prayer is that by reflecting on this passage we may come to see the blessing that God has called us to and the awesome responsibility we freely undertake. So then as we close today, I leave you with several questions for your reflection:
- How is our teaching leading students towards God?
- How does what we teach find its identity in Jesus Christ, who is “the way, the truth, and the life?
- How does our teaching help to form saints.
- How is Christ at the heart of your classroom
- How is our school and your classroom Eucharistic
- When people look at our school and classrooms do they know that we are Catholic?
- How are we working to form a Christian community that can help our students, and their families find lifelong friends to support and encourage them along the pilgrimage of life?
- Do we realize when families are not making the spiritual journey with us
- How then as the teacher am I still the student?
- Do I teach from a place of nearness or from a place of superiority?
- Do I lead students to truth or do I impose the truth upon them?
[1] Philippians 2:12
[2] Luke 2:52
[3] Luke 2:41-52
[4] John 14:6
[5] Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger .Dogma and Preaching Applying Christian Doctrine to Daily Life. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011. Pg. 371.
[6] Exodus 12:3-6
[7] 1 Corinthians 5:7
[8] Exodus 12:7
[9] Exodus 12:13
[10] Matthew 22:37
[11] Matthew 22:39
[12] Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives. Translated by Philip Whitmore. New York: Image, 2012. Pg. 122.
[13] Luke 2:46
[14] Example Mark 9:35-37
[15] Luke 2:52
Through The Cross To Light 