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Reflections from The Cross, Our Only Hope

Since God alone provides the means for the successful accomplishment of any task, it really seems evident that a person needs to be called by God to be a teacher if that person is going to be able to be effective. — Blessed Basil Moreau, C.S.C.

Teaching is a path to sainthood, or perhaps martyrdom. Either way, being an educator—especially a Catholic educator— is a vocation that demands devotion and humility if one is truly to educate both the heart and the mind.

During my firth months of teaching high school, I had one particularly frustrating evening. As I was correcting papers, I came to the realization that several of the students had blown off an assignment that I had worked hard to create. Disheartened and drained by long and thankless days, I cried out to God, “What am I doing wrong?” I walked down the hall and talked to Fr. Sean McGraw, C.S.C., and at his suggestion, I retreated to our chapel, Bible and gradebook in hand.

There, before the Blessed Sacrament, I prayed the words of the parable of the sower and the seed. Christ told his followers that the seed they spread throughout the world would find many different kinds of soil, some rich and some rocky, but their charge was simply to spread the good news with reckless abandon. I realized that it would not be through my strength that these seeds would take root, but only through the power of the Holy Spirit. His was the mission, his would be the strength, and from him alone would come the grace to persevere in teaching each of the names staring at me in my gradebook. This, for me, is the divine call not only of teaching, but of all vocations—cooperating with God’s grace, spreading the good news, and then getting out of the Holy Spirit’s way.

— Nate Wills, C.S.C.

From The Cross, Our Only Hope: Daily Reflections in the Holy Cross Tradition, ed. by Andrew Gawrych, C.S.C., and Kevin Grove, C.S.C., Copyright 2008 by Priests of Holy Cross, Indiana Province. Used with permission of Ave Maria Press (www.avemariapress.com).