Today is the feast of Don Bosco, one of the giants of Catholic education. In today’s episode I share a simple quote from him that reminds us of the very purpose and essence of all Catholic education.
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Transcript
Well, hello everybody.
Speaker:Jonathan Doyle with you.
Speaker:Once again, welcome friends to the Catholic teacher daily podcast,
Speaker:wherever you are in the world.
Speaker:And you are everywhere in the world, wherever you're hearing this.
Speaker:There are so many interesting, different places and people.
Speaker:That are caught up in this great journey of Catholic education.
Speaker:Happy feast, stay friends.
Speaker:Today is the feast of one of the great saints of Catholic education.
Speaker:John Bosco often referred to was Don Bosco.
Speaker:The founder of the Salesians.
Speaker:We'll talk about him in a minute.
Speaker:Uh, yeah, I love being Catholic.
Speaker:I love praying the divine office in the morning because you get a, you get all
Speaker:the saints, you get sort of each day, you get to read about the different,
Speaker:incredible men and women that have.
Speaker:Um, paved the way for us that have, uh, shown by their heroic virtue.
Speaker:What's possible for us.
Speaker:I really love that.
Speaker:Often when I'm speaking on stage to teachers, I make the distinction that
Speaker:the Catholic church does not make saints.
Speaker:It's not as if there is a committee in the Vatican and they sit around and they go.
Speaker:Uh, I guess we better roll out a few new ones.
Speaker:Anybody got new ideas?
Speaker:In the beautiful language of the church, the church doesn't
Speaker:make saints or create saints.
Speaker:The Saint, the church ready for it.
Speaker:Recognizes saints, recognizes them.
Speaker:It's a, it's simply under grace, the church as the great mother that keeps
Speaker:the children together on the journey.
Speaker:She, she presents to us, the men and women.
Speaker:Who, uh, who have shown us sort of the path ahead.
Speaker:What's possible.
Speaker:Such an incredible diverse mix.
Speaker:So we're going to talk about Dom Basco in a second.
Speaker:What else?
Speaker:I'll tell you a couple of things.
Speaker:I've um, yesterday.
Speaker:I got really stressed.
Speaker:I don't know about you.
Speaker:I'm sure for you as a Catholic teacher, you don't get stressed.
Speaker:You know, burnout.
Speaker:Either sit around every day, drinking daiquiris, thinking to yourself, this
Speaker:is the greatest vacation in the world.
Speaker:It's just easy for you.
Speaker:But I've got to let you in on a secret for some of us.
Speaker:We get stressed.
Speaker:There's a lot going on.
Speaker:And yesterday in our three kids.
Speaker:Uh, back at school school started again today.
Speaker:And it's a mix of kids that are going to school and kids were homeschooling and.
Speaker:And I am.
Speaker:I just have a low threshold for complexity and stress.
Speaker:I just, I just don't have, you know, I just don't.
Speaker:It wasn't born with it.
Speaker:Does.
Speaker:As I get older, I'm learning about the distinct personality.
Speaker:The good Lord created me with.
Speaker:So what happened was I was feeling pretty frayed.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:Like you'd relate to this, right.
Speaker:Because a lot of the time you've got so much that you have to do.
Speaker:The classic.
Speaker:Engine of stress, the cause of stress.
Speaker:If you ever heard of the UX Dodson curve, it's like a.
Speaker:Stress happens because we perceive.
Speaker:Oncoming.
Speaker:Drawdowns oncoming drains upon our available resources.
Speaker:Basically stress happens because we believe that there is more
Speaker:coming at us than we can handle, and we get a stress response and.
Speaker:Sometimes to me, it feels like that's every day, but anyway, here's the
Speaker:point of this somewhat drawn out story.
Speaker:Is in my brain.
Speaker:I was like, okay, now I'm stressed.
Speaker:It was like 10 o'clock.
Speaker:I'm like, right.
Speaker:I'm stressed now.
Speaker:I got this, all this stuff on my plate.
Speaker:And I just kind of realized that I had to just get to work or stuff,
Speaker:but you don't want to actually did.
Speaker:Was that stressed?
Speaker:I jumped in the car.
Speaker:And I drove to the cathedral because I spent I'm usually there
Speaker:most days, I always pray best in churches, beautiful churches.
Speaker:So I sat in the back of the cathedral with my apple AirPods, max.
Speaker:Uh, playing rain sands.
Speaker:I have an app, the place, right?
Speaker:Sans course, this is a very.
Speaker:This is a very revolutionary podcast today.
Speaker:Isn't it.
Speaker:You're getting an insight into the complexity of my day.
Speaker:Because I love the silence and.
Speaker:I had this incredible time of prayer, just sort of sitting in silence and telling the
Speaker:Lord what I was experiencing and feeling.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:And I would say.
Speaker:A lot of us, I don't believe I hear God speaking to me a great deal, but
Speaker:I just had this strong sense of the beautiful scripture from Matthew's gospel.
Speaker:You know, come to me all you who labor and are heavy burdened.
Speaker:And I opened my Bible and I sat with that.
Speaker:And it was profound and, you know, I left there and all the challenges and
Speaker:complexity and problems were still there.
Speaker:But I was kind of different and the journey that I'm on at the moment.
Speaker:Which is the one I want to invite you all on is just this gradual ongoing.
Speaker:Descent into trust.
Speaker:Into slowly letting go of the belief that I have to know.
Speaker:How everything's going to turn out.
Speaker:That I can be sure of everything and also being purged of the belief
Speaker:that if I just try harder and work harder and push myself harder.
Speaker:Then everything will work out.
Speaker:So this ties into the second thing I wanted to share, which was we've
Speaker:been watching the chosen as a family.
Speaker:Each night and we've, you know, we've been watching it on and
Speaker:off for a couple of years.
Speaker:And recently the series C season three was on at the theater.
Speaker:So into the cinemas and what's that.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:I think we've got one episode left to watch tonight and just.
Speaker:You know, I just watched that, uh, Same with Jesus has commissioning
Speaker:the 12 shout out to my good friend, Michael Lind Costa Hercs.
Speaker:He put that in an email to me the other day reminded me of it.
Speaker:And there's just, this it's beautifully down.
Speaker:If you haven't seen it.
Speaker:It's Jesus actually sending the 12 out.
Speaker:And it's so human.
Speaker:I think what the chosen does really well is that.
Speaker:Is, it gives us that very human insight.
Speaker:You see these men and women basically.
Speaker:Trying to.
Speaker:I guess.
Speaker:In interpret what the presence and action of.
Speaker:Jesus and their life means.
Speaker:And some of them in that scene of worried about death, some of
Speaker:them are worried about rejection.
Speaker:Some of them are worried about, you know, being away from other
Speaker:priorities and commitments.
Speaker:It's very human and.
Speaker:All of it, both their journey.
Speaker:And also the way that Jesus has presented is this constant.
Speaker:Refrain around trust.
Speaker:You know, Pope Benedict used to say that that the ultimate identity of
Speaker:Jesus in his earthly journey was.
Speaker:He is revealed as the son of the father.
Speaker:And his identity was so utterly rooted in that reality.
Speaker:Which led to this profound trust.
Speaker:You know, which makes the agony of the cross itself so extraordinary.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And find out my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Speaker:If Jesus is complete, identity was rooted in sun ship.
Speaker:What it must've been like to, to feel that, um, That that break.
Speaker:Anyway, I digress, but my point is.
Speaker:The both in yesterday's stress.
Speaker:And in the lives of the greatest saints, the apostles.
Speaker:We're all on this journey of invitation to deeper and deeper trust.
Speaker:You got to catch yourself in the moment.
Speaker:You got to catch yourself in the moment.
Speaker:Constantly.
Speaker:Catch yourself in that moment of self-reliance and
Speaker:I'm just learning to do it.
Speaker:I'm just going, Lord.
Speaker:I trust you.
Speaker:I'm going to trust you.
Speaker:I trust you.
Speaker:This is hot.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So what I want it to do is just share with you a beautiful
Speaker:quote from, uh, Don Bosco now.
Speaker:Sorry.
Speaker:So John Bosco had Don Bosco as he was, uh, named.
Speaker:What makes him so interesting is I said to my son that I was driving him to school.
Speaker:He started the eighth grade this morning.
Speaker:And we're chatting away and I'll tell him, I said, you know what?
Speaker:My.
Speaker:And I jumped bus guy said different was.
Speaker:Education before that.
Speaker:At least formal structured education, the dominant form of pastoral care
Speaker:was basically beating students.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And I know there's a couple of you listening right now thinking, oh, I wonder
Speaker:if we could go back to that now you can.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Drop that you can't.
Speaker:Yes, it may be effective in the short term, but now you're not
Speaker:allowed to do that's terrible.
Speaker:Stubborn.
Speaker:Go to confession.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You know, really for.
Speaker:Before John Bosco and some of the other great sites of that
Speaker:educational revivals, such as say Marshall and chimpanzee as well.
Speaker:Children where we're really second class citizens in many way.
Speaker:They, they, you know, they could be beaten regularly.
Speaker:And so a lot of the times students were beaten into submission.
Speaker:Even my own father, who's been dead for a long time.
Speaker:He was left-handed in the 1950s and was constantly beaten.
Speaker:Bye.
Speaker:Um, by religious brothers at the, at the school he was at, he was
Speaker:beaten for the great sin of being left-handed because at that time
Speaker:they often thought it was demonic.
Speaker:So what makes Bosco so amazing is that he believed that the best
Speaker:thing you could possibly do was love your students, was to love.
Speaker:Students.
Speaker:And to act to them with great patience and kindness.
Speaker:And today in the divine office, I read this letter and it wasn't a great sort
Speaker:of theologian or writers, very simple what he writes, but he's like, we have
Speaker:to, you guys, we're going to sometimes we'll feel angry, but we need to
Speaker:moderate it and we need to love them.
Speaker:We need to be gentle and kind and friends.
Speaker:That's really revolutionary.
Speaker:So the simple quote that I found here, because there's not a lot of them,
Speaker:there's not a significant number of quotes attributed to him, but there's one here.
Speaker:That's quite beautiful where he says the school.
Speaker:Was not the end.
Speaker:It was rather the instrumental means for improving the way of life.
Speaker:You know, Marsalis champagne.
Speaker:You said that the purpose of a, of a Christian school was to create.
Speaker:Uh, good Christians and good citizens.
Speaker:It's a beautiful, simple concept.
Speaker:And you know, you can see Bosco.
Speaker:He is saying that.
Speaker:I didn't create schools because I wanted to be able to sit at dinner parties
Speaker:saying, Hey, I created the school.
Speaker:He asked what I do in the school, create a.
Speaker:He didn't do that.
Speaker:The school was simply what he says here.
Speaker:The instrumental means the vehicle for improving the way of life.
Speaker:So students trapped in poverty.
Speaker:Could improve the way of life through education, through learning,
Speaker:they might have more options.
Speaker:But also improving the moral character.
Speaker:The sense of justice and decency and the virtues, the theological virtues, the
Speaker:Cardinal virtues being formed in students.
Speaker:So friends in summary, that is what you are part of.
Speaker:Isn't it great to realize that you are.
Speaker:When you get to heaven, you are going to meet people like John Bosco.
Speaker:I mean, you know, I mean the mystical body of Christ.
Speaker:We will know each other and you know, you will meet these people, but you'll realize
Speaker:in many ways how similarly you were.
Speaker:That you, maybe you don't haven't started a school.
Speaker:Maybe you don't think you're going to be a great Saint.
Speaker:But the fact is that each day that you show up and try and care for young
Speaker:people and improve their way of life.
Speaker:Their kindness, their, their, their respect, the decency, the
Speaker:patients, their care for others, the love of Christ, the love of the
Speaker:sacraments, the love of the faith.
Speaker:Each of those things is improving their life in profound
Speaker:ways that you may never see.
Speaker:Amazing.
Speaker:Alright, that's it.
Speaker:I'm learning slowly to know when to stop.
Speaker:It's 11 minutes.
Speaker:God bless you.
Speaker:Uh, send me an email.
Speaker:If you want to say hi, Jonathan.
Speaker:One Catholic teacher.com.
Speaker:Look in the next few months.
Speaker:Oh, I'll get them start.
Speaker:Give me some access to a whole bunch of stuff that we're doing.
Speaker:In terms of curriculum resources for schools around the world, that's going
Speaker:to be really developing for us with.
Speaker:We doing some amazing work with many dioceses around the world.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:I should be more diligent in putting that on your radar.
Speaker:So I'll do that.
Speaker:But for now, God bless you.
Speaker:Thank you for listening to the daily podcast.
Speaker:If you like it, just subscribe to it and, and grab the link wherever you listening
Speaker:and send it to a few Catholic teachers.
Speaker:It's a huge blessing it's growing.
Speaker:It's just great to say it's touching.
Speaker:He Touches one more life one more teacher around the world that's called
Speaker:thing god bless everybody my name is jonathan doyle this has been the
Speaker:catholic teacher daily podcast and you and i are going to talk again tomorrow
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