Exploring paths of joy

This week has been designated as Catholic Education Week in Ontario.  To mark the occasion, a series of events and celebrations have taken place all week long in our school communities.  Students from three of the elementary schools in this city came to the church this week to celebrate a Mass with the members of our parish, and although I don't usually prepare a text for weekday Masses, I thought I'd make an exception in this case.

Thoughts for Education Week

All over Ontario this week, we are celebrating Catholic Education Week.  The theme chosen for this week is Exploring Paths of Joy, so today I would like to explore with you a few of the paths that have led us to this celebration, and perhaps to look forward to the path that leads ahead of us.

All of us are students.  Some of us are formally enrolled in school.  Attending classes each day, you seek to learn the lessons that will help you to become the best persons that you can be, but schools are often also the places where we learn about relationships and about how to get along with one another.  The gospel we have heard today tells us of some other students who had had a chance to learn some invaluable lessons.

The disciples were not privileged people.  They were ordinary people, like you and me.  They were fishermen; one was a tax collector; one turned out to be a traitor.  You might say that they were just ordinary people, but Jesus knew that they could learn another way, the way of love.

Jesus was a good teacher: the best teacher, because he recognized goodness in the hearts of each of his students and he challenged them to be the best people they could be.   When everyone and everything around them tried to convince them that they had to compete with one another to get ahead in life, He challenged them to believe that there was another way to live, based on love, based on forgiveness, based on the belief that everyone can find true happiness.

The lessons that Jesus taught, we still believe to be true.  These same lessons were taught here in this city first by priests belonging to the Congregation of the Resurrection (otherwise known as Resurrectionists) and by the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Sault Ste. Marie.  This year, Pope Francis has asked us to be especially thankful to those who have consecrated their lives to the service of God, like the priests and the Sisters who spent their lives teaching others about Jesus.

In recent decades, less and less priests and Sisters are involved in education, but their legacy lives on in the teachers who still dedicate their lives to passing on the faith they have learned.  If you’re really lucky, you know what it’s like to be in a class where the teacher is able to make you get really excited about learning, where you know that the teacher truly loves you because he or she will do anything possible to help you learn.  Jesus tells us in the gospel today that the greatest way we can show our love for others is to be willing to lay down our lives for them (cf Jn 15:13).

This week, as you explore the paths of joy that you have already traveled, and as you look forward to other paths of discovery, take a moment to say a silent prayer of thanks for all the priests and Sisters who bravely paved the way for Catholic Education, and for all those who continue in their footsteps, teaching others about Christ, about his love for us, and about how we too can love one another.