In today’s episode I share a great insight from a recent visit to the sacrament of confession. As Catholic teachers we need to constantly remember that it is Jesus who brings about healing and salvation and that it is not something we do in our own strength. As teachers we also have a powerful opportunity to share this insight with our students on a daily basis.
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Transcript
Well, Hey everybody.
Speaker:Jonathan Doyle with you.
Speaker:Once again, welcome to the Catholic teacher daily podcast.
Speaker:Hello, welcome a board wherever you're listening, day or night across the world.
Speaker:And I've got so many good friends in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom.
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Speaker:So welcome aboard everybody.
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Speaker:If you're hearing this for the first time today and you like what
Speaker:you're hearing and it gives you some encouragement as a Catholic teacher,
Speaker:please hit that subscribe button.
Speaker:And share this around with a few friends.
Speaker:I have a crazy busy life, probably just like you do.
Speaker:And so I'm trying to simplify.
Speaker:My life and, uh, and just get this podcast done each day and get it out there.
Speaker:So your help in sharing this with people would help to simplify the
Speaker:immense complexity of sharing content in this crazy attention economy.
Speaker:What a concept, attention economy.
Speaker:Where our attention is most important things.
Speaker:So I better do a good job or the holy spirit, a better do a good job.
Speaker:I'll make it the holy Spirit's problem.
Speaker:It makes it makes my life much easier.
Speaker:So welcome to the Catholic teacher daily podcast.
Speaker:And, uh, what else?
Speaker:I'm doing some coaching for Catholic principals and people in
Speaker:leadership in Catholic education.
Speaker:So if you could do with some mentorship,
Speaker:Some help with your school development.
Speaker:Reach out, send me an email, Jonathan at one Catholic teacher.
Speaker:Dot com Jonathan, at one Catholic teacher.com or there
Speaker:should be a link floating around somewhere here on the podcast.
Speaker:Wherever you're watching this.
Speaker:There'll be links.
Speaker:Uh, or listening to this, there'll be linked.
Speaker:So please go and check that out right yesterday.
Speaker:We talked about.
Speaker:A beautiful quote from Gavin.
Speaker:Ashenden.
Speaker:Which was really reminding us that.
Speaker:The church is here to rescue people.
Speaker:As we travel through the storms of history today.
Speaker:I just want to sort of develop that a fraction in terms of
Speaker:how we relate to our students.
Speaker:I had a beautiful experience.
Speaker:Last week, I went to, uh, the sacrament of reconciliation confession.
Speaker:With a wonderful, wonderful priest who was actually the
Speaker:priest that presided at a wedding.
Speaker:As many of you will know, Catholic priests do not marry you.
Speaker:They, uh, they witness your wedding.
Speaker:Is there any sacrament that.
Speaker:Uh, like Catholics can ther on themselves Catholic trivia.
Speaker:So any of you gone to a Catholic trivia night tonight, you are welcome.
Speaker:But, uh, this wonderful priest has been a huge part of our
Speaker:life for many, many years.
Speaker:And, uh, just so grateful for great priests.
Speaker:So grateful for the sacraments, you know?
Speaker:Uh, why am I Catholic?
Speaker:There are many, many reasons, but one of them is just the sacraments
Speaker:without a sacramental church.
Speaker:Why would you bother.
Speaker:Without these profound, incredible supra.
Speaker:Natural.
Speaker:Uh, impartation of grace into the world.
Speaker:Why would you do anything else and a beautiful Sacramento?
Speaker:We were talking about stuff off to confession.
Speaker:He made a really beautiful point about self saving.
Speaker:He made the point that, uh, you know, you need, we need to eventually
Speaker:realize that the challenges that we often have the things about ourselves
Speaker:that we really want to change.
Speaker:Come down to the realization that we are beings who need a savior.
Speaker:Such a simple concept, right?
Speaker:Everyone's like Jonathan, that's it.
Speaker:That's all you have for us today.
Speaker:You're going to basically tell us that.
Speaker:We can't save ourselves.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:That's exactly what I'm going to say, because.
Speaker:It's really, it's a really profoundly important concept.
Speaker:It's the, sort of the essence of the gospel really.
Speaker:That we were not capable of saving ourselves and that we
Speaker:required and needed a savior.
Speaker:What does it matter?
Speaker:Because I talk sometimes to friends.
Speaker:Uh, some people talk about.
Speaker:Sports.
Speaker:I talk about neoplasia aneurysm.
Speaker:Sometimes I talk to friends about Neo Pelagianism.
Speaker:So Neo Pelagianism of course, is a heresy from the monk Pelagius who argued that
Speaker:when Christ died, everything that he we needed for salvation was accomplished
Speaker:by him, which is technically true.
Speaker:And Pelagius then went a step further and said, if you're not
Speaker:living in total holiness and grace, it's simply, it's not cross fault.
Speaker:It's because you're not trying hard enough.
Speaker:So like a lot of heresies, this then kind of washed out into a theology of
Speaker:works of striving and forcing yourself harder because basically you're sort
Speaker:of going well, Christ did it all.
Speaker:He's done it.
Speaker:And if I'm not experiencing it, it's not cross fault.
Speaker:It's because I'm not working hard enough.
Speaker:And what this experience last week in this conversation with my priest
Speaker:friend helped me to understand once again, was the need for a savior.
Speaker:They're like many things that I Catholic faith there is this.
Speaker:Come penetration.
Speaker:There is this.
Speaker:Mutual kind of flow where it's both end.
Speaker:By which I mean, Yes, Christ's sacrifice on Calvary has opened the return to
Speaker:the father's house for all of us.
Speaker:But we've got to be careful of not falling into that trap of believing subtly.
Speaker:That really, what we need to do is try harder and harder and harder.
Speaker:And what this led to me thinking about was the simple concept of no self saving.
Speaker:So I actually have this reminder on my phone that pops up every single day and it
Speaker:says, Jonathan, remember no self saving.
Speaker:You need a savior.
Speaker:And it led to me, led me to a kind of dependence.
Speaker:If you've heard me speak live to Catholic teachers, I talk about
Speaker:something called the path of dependence, the path of dependence.
Speaker:It's an attitude of heart, a posture of life, where we depend
Speaker:upon Christ for everything.
Speaker:So easy to say, right?
Speaker:Because you can hear me say that.
Speaker:Oh yes, yes, Jonathan.
Speaker:I agree with you.
Speaker:I'm a committed Catholic, I'm a committed Catholic teacher and I
Speaker:depend on Christ for everything, but do we really like, come on seriously.
Speaker:How many of us deep down kind of just tweak the edges of reality a little bit.
Speaker:To kind of just go look at the edge.
Speaker:I used to joke on stage.
Speaker:I go, most of us pray kind of like.
Speaker:You know, God's really busy.
Speaker:Running the universe.
Speaker:He's like the wizard of Oz, you know, when they pull the curtain back and
Speaker:he's kind of pulling all those leavers.
Speaker:We're kind of like, God, I know you're really busy, but I just wanted to pray.
Speaker:And ask if you could help me here.
Speaker:See.
Speaker:What we actually need is a profound attitude of dependence of Lord.
Speaker:I need you for everything.
Speaker:I need you for this day.
Speaker:I need you for the grace to overcome sin.
Speaker:I need you for the grace in my relationships.
Speaker:I need you for the grace of discernment in all areas of my life.
Speaker:It leads to a posture of life, a disposition of heart.
Speaker:What's this got to do with Catholic education.
Speaker:I'm deeply convinced that we have the chance to present a different
Speaker:modality of being a different way of relating to reality itself.
Speaker:Yesterday.
Speaker:I said that that the world that our students are presented with
Speaker:is extremely utopian as cultural Marxism is in the ascendant, as it
Speaker:takes more and more cultural power.
Speaker:You know, cultural Marxism is a, you is a form of utopianism, right?
Speaker:That.
Speaker:By creating victims and oppressors, we can write all wrongs and we
Speaker:can create a utopian society.
Speaker:Students, our history will know that.
Speaker:Of course, every time it's been tried, it ends in vast human suffering, great
Speaker:evil and wickedness and human tragedy.
Speaker:And of course the great joke is that.
Speaker:You know, for those still clinging onto Marxism, the idea is that,
Speaker:well, you know, It every other time it's been tried, they didn't do it.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So we're going to do it right this time.
Speaker:No friends, we are frail and broken human sinners, and we are capable of
Speaker:great goodness and beauty as the world of art, music and literature shows us.
Speaker:We're also capable of great evil and wickedness.
Speaker:So, what I'm getting at here is that any form of utopianism presented to students.
Speaker:And it can be so subtle.
Speaker:It's presented these days in very subtle clothing.
Speaker:Uh, in terms of saving the world in any number of different
Speaker:ways, we cannot save the world.
Speaker:We cannot do it.
Speaker:We are beings who require being saved.
Speaker:Now, some of you will balk at that and say, so what do we do?
Speaker:Do we sit there and do nothing?
Speaker:Not at all.
Speaker:We participate.
Speaker:We, we participate with the grace of the holy spirit and the work that God
Speaker:gives us to do, but we need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that we.
Speaker:Uh, here to save ourselves or the world around us.
Speaker:We are dependent being.
Speaker:So what I'm getting at here is for Catholic teachers.
Speaker:To begin to gently inculcate this belief system into the lives of young
Speaker:people, or at least to present it.
Speaker:To present a young people, this radical paradigm that we are dependent beings.
Speaker:We are in Latin CapEx day.
Speaker:Being capable of God, capable of the experience of the divine
Speaker:and openness to the divine.
Speaker:Just finished praying my morning rosary it's I'm joyful mysteries today.
Speaker:And you know, the beauty of the incarnation.
Speaker:Mary's openness.
Speaker:To the divine movement, Mary's dependence upon the spirit.
Speaker:Mary's Fiat, her great.
Speaker:Yes of cooperation.
Speaker:That's the disposition friends.
Speaker:Mary didn't save herself.
Speaker:Mary didn't save humanity.
Speaker:She participated in God's salvific mission into humanity and into the human story.
Speaker:So that's what we're looking for.
Speaker:So I pray that as you go about your work as a Catholic teacher today,
Speaker:You can gently suggest, you know, just in moments of prayer, moments of
Speaker:discussion, moments of modeling, this dependence yourself, that we can help
Speaker:students and staff and colleagues and family and friends and principals and
Speaker:bishops begin to realize once again,
Speaker:That there is no self saving that we need a savior.
Speaker:That humanity needs a savior.
Speaker:That history needs a savior.
Speaker:And the good news is we have one and we just need to keep pressing more
Speaker:deeply into his grace and presenting him ever more fully to every young
Speaker:person we encounter through the vocation of Catholic education.
Speaker:All right, that's it for me today.
Speaker:God bless you.
Speaker:My friends go and grab that free coaching call.
Speaker:If you're in leadership, that mentorship call.
Speaker:Um, there's a whole bunch of other links fighting around here.
Speaker:You can get free access to a Catholic teacher formation program.
Speaker:You can book me to speak on Beck speaking friends.
Speaker:God bless everybody.
Speaker:My name's Jonathan Doyle.
Speaker:This has been the Catholic teacher daily podcast.
Speaker:And i'm going to talk to you again tomorrow
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