A Catholic school serves as a privileged oasis for missionary training, a seminary, if you will, or a hothouse (its core meaning) where young plants grow and become strong so that they might not only endure but flourish in the heat of the noonday sun. Its purpose is to prepare students, much like a seminary or collegium, for their mission in Christ’s Church. In a Catholic school, we focus on training and acquiring the habits of Jesus Christ, allowing us to embrace His virtues and form ourselves in His person and mission.
Jesus became a gift to us so that, through the Holy Spirit, we could be filled with the love of the Father and, in turn, become a gift to others. When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, with your whole soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments the whole law is based and the prophets as well.” (Mt 22:36-40) These commandments encapsulate our mission and become the canvas upon which we paint our lives and begin to tell our unique stories.
Catholic education is fundamentally a journey in Christ, allowing His story to become our own. It involves coming to understand God’s plan in Jesus Christ and allowing ourselves to be caught up and disciplined in our love for Him. This inspires us to seek His will that each of us, and all of us together, might become examples of Christ’s self-giving love.
At the core of Catholic life is the person of Jesus Christ, sent by the Father and born of the Virgin Mary. His gift of Himself in the Incarnation, and most especially His sacrifice on Calvary, forms the center upon which all of Catholic life turns. The Mass is the mystical making present of Jesus’ sacrifice, applying the fruits of this sacrifice to our lives in the present day.
Jesus says something particularly important to us as St. John the Evangelist records, “If you love me you will keep my commandments.” (Jn 14:15) Nowhere in all of Scripture is a greater example of loving God before all else than in Jesus’ obedience to the Father in His sacrifice on the cross. This supreme moment of Sonship is something we enter into during the Mass, enabling us to reproduce that perfect act of love and self-donation through the power of the Holy Spirit in each of our lives.
God desires to relive His incarnation and holy sacrifice within each of us so that we, like Him, might become love too. He bids us with these words, “Do this in memory of me,” (Lk 22:19) to, through his love, become a eucharistic people.
Attending Mass and receiving Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of the altar is a covenantal act that personally and publicly asserts your desire to be conformed to Christ and His mission. Doing so signifies your commitment to being in communion with the Father’s plan to re-establish all creation in Christ
(cf. Eph 1:10).
In the Church we are undergoing a movement of eucharistic renewal; the recent pilgrimage to Indianapolis was the highlight of this movement. We continue to own our identity as a eucharistic people and to seek ever more fully to be conformed to the person of Jesus Christ and His mission.
Living a eucharistic life means more than just being in communion with Jesus Christ; it also means being in communion with His body, which includes our brothers and sisters in Christ. In every Mass, we imitate Christ and receive Him as nourishment for our journey of discipleship so that we may embody the eucharistic life of Christ and bear Him into the world through our very flesh.
Catholic education serves as the training ground for living this eucharistic life and prepares us to move forward in our following of the mission of Christ.
Story by Most Reverend Gerard W. Battersby, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of La Crosse