Little Flower Parish at 204 1st St. N.W., Browning, MT 59417 US - This Is Holy Ground

Adoration Of The Blessed Sacrament

DE LA SALLE BLACKFEET SCHOOL PROJECT By Fr. Ed Kohler April 2, 2002 On The Spiritual Life In Catholic Schools Besides a good education, my Catholic grade school gave me a good spiritual background in the Catholic faith, that is, until my eighth grade. I remember a day in 1959 in which I consciously willed to distance myself from the spiritual practice of prayer. Until that time I remember praying a set routine of prayers that lasted at least 15 minutes each day. That day marked my entry into the Secular Revolution. It was also the turning point in my life, which led me on a long road away from Christ, and at age 23 into depression, despair, and near spiritual death. My conversion happened on a trip to Mexico City. I was in the National Cathedral of Mexico, alone, wondering what had gone wrong in my life. I asked myself when was the last time that I was really happy. It came to me quickly that I last knew real joy during the time I had prayed. It goes with out saying that I had lots of company throughout the 1960s and 1970s in our rejection of the spiritual life. Everything was in transition. I remember that our Catholic Religion teachers hardly knew how to present the faith in the 1960s, a confusion that reached all the way into the 1990s. During those years we Catholic students developed a collective social conscience but for some reason we collectively distanced ourselves from the spiritual life and formal prayer. It really wasn't cool to be considered a person who prayed in a meaningful way for a period that lasted longer than 15 minutes. Our Catholic school experience became uncommonly secular during those years and this became its contribution to the Secular Revolution. I feel we need to come again to a clearer understanding of the purpose of Catholic education. Too often it has been presented as private education sponsored by the Catholic Church. Many of us, however are coming to realize that if we are to be true to Jesus Christ and His plan of salvation, Catholic education needs to be more than that. In Christ Jesus we are here on earth not primarily to gain a good education but to gain His salvation and then help Him establish His Kingdom here on earth. Separate from Jesus Christ a good education does not achieve either of these goals. Also just being in a Catholic school, without establishing a good spiritual life for the student, doesn't easily create a good Catholic person. Those of us who graduated from Catholic high schools in the 1960s and the 1970s need only observe how many of our classmates still practice the faith. Establishing the Kingdom of God is the mission and ministry of the Catholic Church and it follows that Catholic schools should have the same agenda. There are many good non-Christian private schools that promote their own agenda. Our Catholic agenda in education needs to be seen as more worthy than the agenda of the world so as not to simply duplicate general private education. We need Catholic Christian focus in every aspect of school life if we want to serve Jesus well. It is this focus that makes our Catholic education different from other private schools and because it serves the purposes of Jesus it is actually much, much better. I believe that this focus begins with prayer. We have many good Christian men and women teaching in our Catholic schools. They are very dedicated and want only what is good for our children. But many of them are uncomfortable with public prayer and the spiritual life because they, along with us their spiritual directors, grew up at the height of the Secular Revolution. We have a hard time demonstrating publicly some affection for Jesus Christ and without this affection we have a very hard time bringing our students to a deeper love for Him and His ways. It is this kind of love that would motivate us to grow in His ways and to spend energy helping Him build up His kingdom on earth. The Catholic Church is rich in its knowledge of prayer and the spiritual life. It can teach us many spiritual practices that will help us fall in love with Jesus. The first step is in seeing the need and wanting it to happen. The Lord again will show us the way. This spiritual renewal in our schools must start with the spiritual directors for the schools, then the teachers, then the student leaders followed by their fellow students. Because we are beginning again in the promotion of Jesus Christ, I feel the spiritual renewal of our children in our Catholic faith needs to be evangelical in nature. We cannot presume that the faith held by them is rooted in some personal experience of Him. Without this experience the faith is lifeless. At the same time it would be a mistake to hold that a child is not able have a true personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself teaches that unless we become like a little child we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. I have had plenty of experiences with children that have shown me how easily a child can enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. In my own grade school experience I remember being consciously aware of being loved and blessed during the Novena of Grace offered by the Jesuit fathers each lent in honor of Saint Francis Xavier. (By the way, the real reason I quit praying in my eighth grade was that I was being overwhelmed by the grace of God and was beginning to discern my vocation to priesthood. In the emerging secular world this definitely was not a cool idea and I stepped out of my personal relationship with the Lord.) Our job as spiritual directors and teachers is to give good evangelical experiences to these children balanced by good theology so they can grow up to be wholesome and holy lovers of the Lord Jesus. It is this love that will light a fire in their lives. As a priest who has had a lot of experience in the Cursillo movement, I offer this type of tool as a good first step for spiritual directors and the teachers. The Cursillo does everything I would hope to happen for a heart desiring to love the Lord. The Cursillo is a wonderful gift of the Lord to the Church. It is put on by Lay people who have been blessed by the Holy Spirit and they also grow in knowledge of the faith each time they work a Cursillo. I have seen candidates straight out of prison melt and fall in love with the Lord Jesus during their Cursillo. It is an international Catholic movement blessed by the Pope and the Bishops. Our students too need the type of experience that the Cursillo can give. The Cursillo movement has developed a number of events that are appropriate to each age group of student. These experiences have the quality of making it cool to follow Jesus Christ and to pray. They also surface good and empowered student leaders. The Novena of Grace is a great gift to schools located in Jesuit parishes. It would be easy to develop some similar Lenten experience for other Catholic schools. Student retreats are good for some age groups of students. Spiritual directors and empowered teachers delight in dreaming up ways for the their students to encounter the Lord in a new and fresh ways. I believe these encounters should be done often in our Catholic schools. There should be daily prayer. There should be time given in the week for shared prayer, especially the mass, and the Rosary should not be rejected as too old fashioned for the students to do. Remember that Mary is the mother of Jesus, and that she bears forth Jesus into the world. From the Rosary she bears forth Jesus into the heart of the one praying. The Rosary is not about Mary; it is about Mary birthing Jesus. For a person new to the spiritual journey, one of the quickest ways to fall in love with Jesus is to pray the Rosary. I believe that the environment of the modern day school should suggest that the school is holy ground. There should be a lot of meaningful sacred art that besides raising the social conscience of our students also demonstrates an atmosphere of love for Jesus. I believe that an environment can be created in our Catholic schools that would lead the student toward the sacred. It is holy ground. I believe that students should be taught to honor that sacredness by the way they treat themselves and each other. For example, they should dress in a modest way that respects their person as sons and daughters of God. In today's world a line needs to be drawn on how far a student can go in expressing his or her uniqueness. The secular world should not be allowed to dictate the fashions of our Catholic students. I abhor body piercing and tattoos as fashions inspired by Satan to mutilate a human body that was created in the image and likeness of God. For all this to happen the school must insist that the students respect their teachers or leave the school. The parents too must honor this rule or take their child to another school. In a secular environment it will be very, very hard to create our Catholic schools into holy ground. I pray every day for our De La Salle Blackfeet Middle School. I want desperately that it succeed and that it be worthy of Jesus Christ. I ask your prayers also. If you are interested in our parish or our De La Salle school project, please see our web site: http://LittleFlowerParish.Catholicweb.com . If you would like to help us financially please write us at Little Flower Parish, P.O. Box 529, Browning, Montana 59417. We pray for our benefactors. Please feel free to copy this article and to share it with others.

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