In today’s episode it’s time to talk about the question of ambition in a Catholic school. We’ve all seen what happens when people start playing politics to get that next promotion. Is this simply a part of human life in a work environment? Should a Catholic school have a different approach? In this episode we look at what happens when Marian spirituality meets the human quest for recognition and success.
Transcript
Well, Hey everybody.
Speaker:Jonathan Doyle with you as always welcome aboard to the Catholic
Speaker:teacher daily podcast for today.
Speaker:Really looking forward to sharing some time with you.
Speaker:It is.
Speaker:Well, it's an important liturgical day here in the great south land of
Speaker:the holy spirit here in Australia.
Speaker:It is a very significant fee state.
Speaker:It is the feast.
Speaker:Of our lady help of Christians, the, uh, the patron Saint,
Speaker:if you will, of this land.
Speaker:And so I got up this morning, I prayed the divine office and then
Speaker:went through the readings for the day.
Speaker:And usually regular listeners would know of course that on.
Speaker:The Catholic teacher daily podcast, we're looking at key quotes, but occasionally I
Speaker:think something jumps out from scripture that I wanted to share with you all.
Speaker:And the readings today, uh, come from James and they jump across
Speaker:to the start of Luke's gospel.
Speaker:And as I read them both, you see this incredibly important link.
Speaker:The holy spirit is trying to tell us something through.
Speaker:This feast day.
Speaker:And through these two readings.
Speaker:So the first readings over in James three, and it's talking about.
Speaker:Sort of two kinds of wisdom and, you know, sort of saying that human wisdom.
Speaker:Is often driven by ambition.
Speaker:Uh, that we think there's all sorts of things we should do.
Speaker:And I'll give you this key line here.
Speaker:This is in James three.
Speaker:Uh, we're jumping down to, uh, verse 15.
Speaker:It says such wisdom.
Speaker:So-called wisdom does not come down from heaven.
Speaker:But is earthly unspiritual of the devil for where you have envy.
Speaker:And so fish ambition there, you find disorder and every evil practice.
Speaker:So the first thing it's doing is talking about this kind of, I
Speaker:guess, earthly human wisdom, where people are driven towards ambition.
Speaker:And, uh, Applying their own relatively limited resources to the complex
Speaker:questions of human existence.
Speaker:And then we jump across and stay with me.
Speaker:This is where it gets good.
Speaker:We jump across to.
Speaker:The, uh, first chapter of Luke, and this is where Mary goes
Speaker:to visit her cousin Elizabeth.
Speaker:And then we get, of course the Magnificat.
Speaker:So she talks, of course my soul glorifies the Lord, my spirit
Speaker:rejoices in God, my savior.
Speaker:But then she gets down to this whole part where she says, where's
Speaker:this lime that God has looked upon.
Speaker:Um, the lowliness of his servant and she keeps talking about, you know,
Speaker:he's brought down rulers from their Thrones, but has lifted up the humble.
Speaker:He has filled the hungry with good things, but sent the rich away empty.
Speaker:And as you read through it, you see why they chose these readings because they're
Speaker:showing kind of a human earthly response.
Speaker:And then you see Mary's response of this profound humility.
Speaker:So, what is humility?
Speaker:You know, it's like, um, you know, the siege of Troy, you know, Helen of
Speaker:Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships humility is like the word that.
Speaker:Launched a thousand books, you know, there's so much written about it.
Speaker:I think.
Speaker:Look at the most simple level, it's basically an awareness of
Speaker:who we are in relationship to God.
Speaker:And it's not like, oh my gosh, I'm a miserable worm kind of reality.
Speaker:It's.
Speaker:This awareness that this weird paradox that we are.
Speaker:So, you know, so small in the cosmos, but so precious to God.
Speaker:So we see this, you know, this beautiful idea of humility, where we
Speaker:kind of sense our place in reality.
Speaker:That we have.
Speaker:A perfect father who loves us and loved us into existence and has
Speaker:promised to take care of us, you know?
Speaker:Why did Jesus talk about, you know, that not even a Sparrow would fall to the
Speaker:ground without his father knowing, and then saying that were of course so much
Speaker:more precious than a single Sparrow.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:This humility is this sort of trust in God.
Speaker:You look at Mary, you know, and Elizabeth says to her, she goes blessed to you.
Speaker:Who believed that what the Lord said to her would happen?
Speaker:So Mary's humility also comes from believing and trusting
Speaker:that God would bring about what he promised to bring about.
Speaker:Now, here's where I want to link this to Catholic education.
Speaker:I'm not a big fan of ambition in Catholic education.
Speaker:I'm a fan of ambition in our students in terms of wanting to encourage
Speaker:them to be ambitious, to learn, to achieve, to do well, to make the
Speaker:best of their talents and abilities.
Speaker:I think we should be ambitious in the sense of.
Speaker:Taking the incredible gifts that God's given each one of us as educators and
Speaker:seeing them fully brought to fruition.
Speaker:The ambition that can be problematic is the ambition for
Speaker:promotion or power or recognition.
Speaker:You know that spirit that, um, I guess all of us can carry at some point,
Speaker:but you'll definitely see it over the course of cure of your career.
Speaker:People jockeying for position.
Speaker:Manipulating things to get a promotion.
Speaker:And I remember seeing it over the years in different formats.
Speaker:And I think that kind of ambition as James tells us here in chapter
Speaker:three of James is highly problematic.
Speaker:It becomes very utilitarian.
Speaker:It becomes manipulative and, uh, Look, my whole attitude to promotion and
Speaker:power in a Catholic school comes from a beautiful quote from Christine cane.
Speaker:It's always stayed with me and I hope you remember this.
Speaker:She said, if God wants you.
Speaker:He knows where to find you.
Speaker:I always love that if God wants you, he knows where to find you.
Speaker:If God wants you to be a principal, he knows where to find you.
Speaker:If God wants you to be in charge of a subject area, he knows where to find you.
Speaker:If God wants you to be a humble, amazing classroom teacher for 45
Speaker:years, he knows where to find you.
Speaker:I think a great piece comes in Catholic education, where we relax and trust.
Speaker:That our career, our progress is in his hands and all we have to do.
Speaker:Is remember what Saint Augustan said.
Speaker:He said, you know, he who made you without your cooperation will not
Speaker:save you without your cooperation.
Speaker:Which simply means that God didn't ask us if we wanted to exist.
Speaker:We didn't get a choice on that one, but he does ask us if we
Speaker:want to cooperate with his grace and his, his heart for our lives.
Speaker:Isn't that incredible.
Speaker:That's that, you know, the humility of God, right?
Speaker:That.
Speaker:He doesn't create robots.
Speaker:So all he asks in our career is that we cooperate.
Speaker:And then he'll take care of the rest.
Speaker:What does that corporation looks like?
Speaker:It's a disposition of the heart.
Speaker:It's a simple desire.
Speaker:Lord.
Speaker:I trust you with my career.
Speaker:I trust you with this day.
Speaker:But the part that we need to do is be people of prayer, people of sacrament.
Speaker:We need to be in all our, you know, limited ability we need to be trying
Speaker:to, um, grow and holiness of life.
Speaker:So watching out for those big blind spots of sin, that all of us have.
Speaker:And then he'll do the rest, you know, and the, the greatest Catholic schools,
Speaker:the best Catholic principles, the best priests, bishops, religious,
Speaker:uh, men and women who relax.
Speaker:And simply try to be who God has called them to be in any given day.
Speaker:And then the rest takes care of itself.
Speaker:So my friends, I hope that today on the feast of our lady, help
Speaker:of Christians, we can be reminded of that great humility of Mary.
Speaker:Who and you know, it's always interesting.
Speaker:Who's the greatest Christian in history.
Speaker:I always have this joke with my kids when they were younger.
Speaker:I'd say.
Speaker:You know, who is the most important, greatest Christian ever.
Speaker:And when they were little, they'd be like, Jesus.
Speaker:I'd say no, Jesus was not a Christian.
Speaker:Jesus was not a Jesus follower.
Speaker:Um, he was not a disciple of himself.
Speaker:So they go, oh, oh.
Speaker:And they go with some Peter and then some people go with simple and I go, no.
Speaker:It's that beautiful line from, um, uh, Pope Benedict Ameritas.
Speaker:famous book, Mary, the church at the source.
Speaker:And I've said this many times, he starts this very important book on Mariology,
Speaker:where he simply starts with this sentence.
Speaker:He says the church.
Speaker:Begins.
Speaker:With Mary.
Speaker:Mary was the first disciple friends.
Speaker:She was the first disciple.
Speaker:She was the first one that heard the good news.
Speaker:That God was about to make a daring raid on enemy held
Speaker:territory and she was going to be.
Speaker:The, um, You know, the beachhead, the, the, the place where God would break
Speaker:into reality in a profound new way.
Speaker:So she is the greatest Christian in history without her.
Speaker:There is no.
Speaker:Christianity without her.
Speaker:And people go, well, maybe God would have done it a different
Speaker:way maybe, but he didn't.
Speaker:He did it through her and her humility.
Speaker:And that's why this Luke chapter one is so important because it just, she sings of.
Speaker:Her her, her have moved.
Speaker:She is that the great God of the cosmos has looked upon her.
Speaker:Lowliness.
Speaker:And her humility and raised her up to the highest place, you know, and you
Speaker:know, the doctrine of the assumption and Mary being crowned queen of
Speaker:heaven, it's kind of a big deal.
Speaker:It's almost as if, you know, when you seek the lowest place.
Speaker:And again, why did Jesus say that?
Speaker:Why did Jesus say, you know, when a friend holds a banquet go and sit in the lowest
Speaker:place and God's going to bring you up.
Speaker:Imagine if we had that in Catholic education.
Speaker:No political jockeying, no ambition.
Speaker:Just everybody constantly trying to be, just seek the place that
Speaker:God's put them in and be there until he changes that position.
Speaker:And then trusting that even if he doesn't, you're still where he wants you to be.
Speaker:Well kind of cultural, isn't it?
Speaker:How different is this?
Speaker:To the world of Instagram fame.
Speaker:How the world of look at me, look at me, look at me, validate me,
Speaker:you know, spend 30 seconds on Twitter and you just see half the
Speaker:planet screaming, validate my rage.
Speaker:May I imagine a world where we just keep seeking the lowest place.
Speaker:Huh?
Speaker:We seek, we keep seeking the place of service, not out of.
Speaker:You know, insecurity or a fractured sense of self, but a trust.
Speaker:A trust that I am today, where he wants me to be.
Speaker:And, uh, all we can do is pray.
Speaker:I think, you know, John Henry Cardinal Newman had that beautiful.
Speaker:Beautiful prayer, where he said, you know that even if I, even if I don't
Speaker:know what's happening, I'm going to trust that you're leading me.
Speaker:All right friends.
Speaker:I hope that's a blessing to you today.
Speaker:Let us let go of the wrong kinds of ambition and let us seek to be
Speaker:like Mary and, uh, allow God to do amazing things through our humility.
Speaker:And our trust in him.
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Speaker:That's it for me, everybody.
Speaker:Thank you so much for what you're doing in catholic education my name's
Speaker:jonathan doyle this has been the catholic teacher daily podcast and i'll
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