Alliance for Catholic Education
On the front page of our school website, you can find the following mission statement:
St. Catherine of Alexandria School is a Catholic community where parents and teachers educate life-long learners and form saints through the sacraments.
Walking through the halls of St. Catherine’s, it is easy to see that the saints are a part of the school culture. Whether it’s a drawing of St. Francis outside of Sr. Maria Christi’s room, a whole wall of saint coloring pages outside the science classroom, or a mini-shrine dedicated to Pope Saint John Paul II in Sr. Christina’s “office” in the hallway—where she blesses her students not only with individualized help, but also with her contagious love for life and for the saints—the saints can be seen almost everywhere you look. However, as close as you try to make the saints feel through all of these portrayals, sometimes once you shut that door to the classroom, the saints can feel like they are about as far away as can be.
So how do we find this great cloud of witnesses in the classroom? Are they hiding behind the smart board? Under the desk? On top of the bookshelf? Maybe behind that student who just threw his (thankfully closed) scissors to a classmate 3 minutes after you told everyone that messing around with scissors is a great way to get detention? Well, maybe, just maybe, the saints are in the classroom with us the whole time—or at least saints-in-the-making. After all, isn’t that what our mission statement says?
As Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass during the Jubilee of Sport on the feast of the Holy Trinity this summer, he remarked that “just as no one is born a champion, no one is born a saint. It is daily training in love that brings us closer to final victory.” That student who threw the scissors? Maybe he’s the saint in the classroom. A year ago, if that same student whom he was tossing the scissors to had asked for them, he might have just ignored him. After all, a year ago he was the biggest outcast in the classroom. If saints are formed through daily training in love, then I can begin to see how maybe those saints are not so far away once class is in session.
I’m generally not one for poetry, but one line that has always stuck with me is from Longfellow’s A Psalm of Life “lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime, and departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of time.” The great men and women in my life who have left their footprints in the sands of my memory never did anything particularly incredible that I can recall. In fact, a lot of them were people that I saw pretty angry on a few occasions. Despite this, I have no doubt that the ones who have passed are among that great cloud of witnesses. What makes me so certain? Well, despite their rare expressions of anger, they showed constant expressions of love.
Training takes discipline, it doesn’t just happen, not in sports, not in life. These great men and women went through that daily training, and they never backed away from it, despite how difficult it may have been at times. When I remember these people whom I have known personally, but are not here now, it does make the saints feel closer. It makes me realize that the saints are really just ordinary people who relied on extraordinary grace in order to have the discipline to train themselves in love every single day, and I see the same behavior in my classroom. Maybe we are living up to that mission statement after all.
All you holy men and women, pray for us.