This is a homily delivered by Fr Aidan Carvill at St Kevin’s School, Geebung, staff commissioning Mass on January 23
NEMO dat quod not habet. You cannot give what you have not got.
As teachers within the Catholic education system of the Archdiocese of Brisbane you are called to give, to give a Catholic education to our children, to make them worthy followers of Christ. As Jesus called his apostles to be preachers of His word, so too are you called to be preachers of His word, not only in word but especially in action, in example, in witness.
Your vocation as teacher within our Catholic education system makes you, willy-nilly, a catechist, a person who has the responsibility to promote and to pass on the faith, faith in one person, Jesus Christ.
To “pass on the faith” is a challenge because it demands much more than knowledge about the faith.
It demands faith itself – a lively, active, joyful commitment to Jesus and to His body, the Church.
Without that commitment, you, I, all who teach the faith, lack credibility.
As Blessed Pope Paul VI of happy memory wrote in his seminal work Evangelii Nuntiandi (On the Evangelisation of Peoples) in 1975, “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.”
The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference put it a little differently only 18 months ago, in their words to Catholic parents who are the first teachers of their children: “Worry not that your children don’t listen to you. Worry that they watch you.”
The witness of action speaks much more loudly than words.
As American author Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Your actions speak so loudly I cannot hear what you are saying.”
A cousin of mine in Sydney once invoked me to reprimand his children for not going to Mass.
I replied “I will not, that’s your job. For years they have seen that it means nothing to you. They believe your actions, not your words.”
The same standards can be applied to all teachers and preachers of the Gospel.
It is not fine words, efficient programs, frequent exhortations that make a lasting impression on the souls of others.
It is the witness of what one truly believes in one’s heart.
That belief finds its inevitable expression in outward action. Blessed John Henry Newman wrote “Cor ad cor loquitur” meaning “Heart speaks to heart”.
In other words that which is most important to us, that which is at the very core of who we are in the depths of our soul: it is that which touches the mind, heart and soul of the other.
Tracey Rowland, dean of the John Paul II Institute in Melbourne and Adjunct Professor at the University of Notre Dame gave a very thought-provoking radio talk last year on “Catholic Education and the Bureaucratic Usurpation of Grace”.
She points out how the over-dependence on bureaucratic procedures and the practices of secular corporate bodies have effectively infiltrated our Catholic institutions to such an extent that many have lost their soul.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has expressed similar concern with the disordered spiritualities plaguing liberal mechanistic world, and notably, in the field of education, where much is reduced to dot points, check boxes and mission statements. “What the Church needs… in every age,” he says, “is holiness, not management.”
Today, in the field of Catholic education we need leaders who are people of imagination, people who love the Church, people who have an active spiritual life. We need saints.
We know that parents are the first and primary teachers of their children. But you, teachers of St Kevin’s, are the next most influential people that will ever touch these young people’s lives.
The influence you have will last to their dying day.
Think of it like this: “If you were dragged before a court and charged with being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”
Once Catholic institutions began to accept government hand-outs, not only here, but throughout the world, they effectively shook hands with the devil.
Modern secular society will rant and rave if it perceives our Catholic institutions as different from others.
Charges of discrimination will be laid and possibly successfully prosecuted. So be it.
That may be a very good thing. We must be different.
We cannot remain true to Jesus and be indistinguishable from the surrounding culture.
The root meaning of the Hebrew word for “holy” is “different”. Today I commission you in the name of St Kevin’s Parish, in the name of the Archdiocese of Brisbane, in the name of Christ Himself to be different, to give witness to your faith – lived, active, dynamic, sincere, genuine faith – to bear fruit that will last, to manifest in your lives your connection to the transcendent, to educe (educare means to lead out), to lead these children out of themselves towards the divine life of God Himself, to which they, everyone of them, and each one of us, is called.
In the end, nothing else matters.
Marist Father Aidan Carvill is the administrator St Kevinís Parish, Geebung.
