Dear students, dear faithful,
Today we celebrate the feast of St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland, and likewise we commemorate a Polish blessed bishop and martyr: Bł. Bogumiła. In both of these saints we see many heroic virtues worthy of imitation. We see in their lives a model in keeping the commandments of God. Yet today, instead of concentrating on the lives of these saints, it would be also edifying to look exactly on the purpose of the commandments which God has given. us.
It seems rather odd, if you think about it, that so many of the commandments seem so negative: you shall not do this, you shall not do that. Seems all rather negative, rather boring. It would seem that since God is perfect, He wouldn't need to state everything in so negative a fashion. So it seems in so many things in life there are more things you shouldn't do than anything else.
Yet this is not true, and in fact it is quite the opposite. What we don't do, and what we shouldn't do, are actually more defining of who we are than anything else.
In fact, if you look at how a scientist begins a problem, he often begins his research by finding out what something isn't than talking about what it is. After all, if he knew what it was, he wouldn't need to study it. A scientist will often begin by eliminating certain things from his experiments. This is part and part of the scientific method: we eliminate those variables that change, so that we study only one thing at a time. For instance, like when we studied the effect of gravity we try to eliminate the difference in air resistance. We try to have both objects the same size and shape. We eliminate the different things that could influence our study in order to arrive at a basic truth of how gravity alone affects something falling. So a scientist will often spend a lot of time eliminating things, seeing what has no influence at all in order to arrive at the actual and precise cause of what he is observing.
The same is especially true with God. We can't see God, after all, and He is so perfect that we really don't have words to describe him. Even St. Peter, when he saw the glory of Our Lord on Mount Tabor, was at a loss of words, only saying "Lord, it is good for us to be here", and the gospel says "For he knew not what he said" [Mk 9,5], so overwhelmed he was with the vision. So when we study God, we don't really have words for Who He is, but rather for what He isn't: God is Im-mortal, Un-changing, in-finite and so on. We actually have to describe God by first finding out what He isn't.
The same is true in the moral life. The splendor and magnificence of what God has prepared for us is so great that St. Paul tells us: "That eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him." [1 Cor 2,9]. It will be a life without end, without sadness, without suffering. And the same can be said about the way to obtain eternal life. It is true that each of us knows in our hearts that we must seek good and avoid evil, yet the good we seek is infinite so it is difficult to express and describe in a positive fashion. So often, in the moral order, we look more about what we have to avoid. True, the ten commandments tell us to observe the Holy Days, but it will be often the observance of Holy Days that are outlined in a rather negative fashion: that we don't work on these days for example - this negative precept actually makes the Sunday different from all the other days when we do work.
Even in mundane things like going to school on the bus, or driving down a highway, often your path is defined by what you don't do: you don't get off at the first stop, but only on the second. You don't take this exit on the highway, but another you must take if you want to arrive at your destination. So in the moral life, in our search for perfection, it is sometimes very difficult to describe what perfection is like but much easier to know what it isn't.
We can see this in the example of the pagans who do not know God. They have a certain instinctive knowledge that God exists, that some higher power is ruling the universe that they ought to obey, but they really have no idea what God wants from them and so they give themselves over to all sorts of excesses. THe different superstitions and exaggerations which we see in the pagan religions are often because they really have no precepts - no commandments saying what they shouldn't do. They give themselves over to their passions and concupiscences with no restraint. A rational man however, is often characterized by the fact that he has the strength of will to say no to his lower passions.
It is exactly the absence of restraint that paralyzes and imprisons the poor soul that does not know how to say no. You have certainly seen people that think they are cool because they can break the rules, because they think they are somehow superior, because they are rebellious or whatever. But actually these people are slaves to their own passions and to others. It might seem fascinating at first, but actually their way of life is more and more limiting the further they continue on the bad path. They are slaves to the opinions of others, for they only do what they do so that others will somehow respect them. They do not have a personality but rather are completely governed by what others want them to do. On the contrary, the truly interesting people are often attractive for the simple fact that they don't do like others do.
What is more, the really interesting life is rather by following the commandments of God, not by disobeying them.
Just to take one example, you might wonder why it is that God tells us not to tell a lie. It seems rather so impractical - lying seems so easy and so much more efficient than telling the truth. AFter all, politicians lie everyday and they seem to have a lot of success. But actually, if you think about it, politicians are actually and most often the most unsuccessful of people, and it is because of their lies. No one believes what they say, and their promises are worse than empty air. You might think, for instance, that it is so much easier to lie and said you did your homework so you can be free and go out and play, but that one lie actually leads to less and less freedom. For the next day you have to tell another lie to hide the fact that you didn't do as you said, and then another lie to cover that one, and soon you even forget what you said. President Reagan was once asked how he had so quickly answers to the questions reporters asked him, for unlike other politicians he had very straight and simple answers to what was asked of him. He simply answered the reporter that the truth is so much easier to memorize. So it is in real life: lying might seem a shortcut to get what you want, but in fact it makes you a prisoner, leaving you nothing but an empty mind full of nonsense, and soon leads to the loss of everything for no one can be a friend of someone who has the habit of lying.
So my dear faithful and students, let us remember that the prohibitions that God gives to us are always for our good. The good God wants for us is so great that often we cannot understand it, and so God to help our weakness adapts His commandments that we can more easily follow them. Even if they seem negative to us, they are actually defining our course in life so we don't destroy ourselves. The same is true of your parents. They will often forbid you things that you think are so fantastic that you can't imagine why they wouldn't allow you to do it. And yet you have lived so little of your life, you have seen so little of this world that you really have no idea how harmful some things can be. Your baby brother for instance will want to touch the hot stove because it looks so interesting, and yet you can't let him do that or else he will lose the skin off his hands. He will also want to drink some cleaner or other poisonous liquid, not really knowing what it is except that it has a nice looking bottle. In the moral life there are likewise things no parent can allow their children to do, and the hurt that comes from being unsupervised is often much greater than just a burn - it can mean the loss of one's soul for eternity.
Yet life is not just negatives, this we know. There are so many things that we know to be good, but the problem is that we are often distracted by what looks good rather than what really is good. Nonetheless there are so many obviously good things to do that it really is a shame to waste one's time and energy trying out things that are doubtful and sinful. Especially remember that you will be often like whom you spend the most of your time with. If you have bad companions, you will end up being a bad person. You are, in the physical order, what you eat - if you eat bad food you will starve and maybe even die. So also we shouldn't fill our souls with stupidities and ugly things, but rather what is good, what is true, what is noble and what is truly giving us a glimpse of that infinite joy we will have in heaven.
So let us ask especially of that grace that will help us to realize what God wants for us, namely that we be happy for ever and ever. True, it is often difficult, often rather painful, but that is how life works. If you only learn that one lesson, of how life works, you will have learned everything. If however you have only learned how to be influenced by others and have them lead you by the nose throughout your life, then even with all the books and learning in the world, you will really have understood nothing. So pray that Our Lady might help us, show us like the Mother she is, the way to eternal happiness. Amen.
Showing posts with label józefów. Show all posts
Showing posts with label józefów. Show all posts
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Conference on the program "Great Books"
Dear Mr. the Director, dear fellow colleagues, dear listeners,
I would like to begin with a few observations concerning today’s problems in education. I think all of us here are convinced that there is a true problem in modern education, and one might even say a true crisis. Problems in a certain sense have always been, but the scope and magnitude of today’s problems are not so much material, not so much a question of difficulties but rather a crisis of identity. Today it is not so much a question of lack of means or money for education, but rather what does it mean to be an educated man.
Yet it is one thing to diagnose an illness, it is quite another to find a cure. We all, I think, are certain that the educational system is sick, mortally sick, and so our task should not be so much as to criticize as to provide help and remedy. However the remedy must be proportionate to the disease if it is to bring the patient back to health. What I would like to do in this short conference is to give a brief summary of an experience in America that one could characterize as a healthy reaction to the present crisis, and in many ways a help as it corresponds in a large measure to what might be called a classical education.
In a certain sense the present malady we see in Poland is actually quite late in comparison to the rest of the world. America, which has often been the vanguard for all that is modern, has also unfortunately been the experimental ground for all that is revolutionary. The current educational system now being imposed is following in large measure the educational system in America, and thus it is only natural that the same results follow: a lack of discipline, lack of authority, lack of standards, lack of demands on the children, lack of respect for the past, lack of any formation of character, lack of anything more elevated than simple pragmatic necessity - in brief, a lack of everything that we call civilization.
Yet there were certain academic voices in America, especially connected with Columbia University in the 1920’s and 1930’s, that saw as it were the future where education was heading. There were teachers and professors, especially in higher education, that already recognized the extreme dangers threatening the youth and their education. Amongst them was Prof. John Erskine, who in turn would influence such notable personalities as Mortimer Adler. The primary concern at that time was that education was becoming so specialized that universities were no longer forming human beings but rather parts of them, or that rather the system of education had forgotten what a human being was. It was a healthy reaction against what is called pragmatism today, a system propagated by such American educators as John Dewey which emphasized that all education had to have practical use, or to work properly, for it to be of value. It was the radical empiricism of such philosophers such as William James that in many ways signaled the death knell of true education. By concentrating all human worth on what worked or what was of practical application, it eliminated whole branches of knowledge by reducing them to a practical consensus of opinions of a pluralistic society. Gone was the search for truth, or rather truth was reduced to what was expedient or what was practical or what simply worked correctly. Of course such a philosophy never makes very clear what ‘working correctly’ implied, and completely ignored the fact that human beings are not so much machines for the state, but rather have immortal souls.
The great books program was a reaction against this empty philosophy by a return to what were deemed the primary sources of Western civilization. It aimed to return to what they called “the Western Liberal Arts Tradition”, and the essential component of the program is a profound study of primary texts which were called “the Great Books”. The curricula is formed upon a canon of texts considered more or less essential to a student’s education. There are at present several programs that are modeled on this Great Books movement, the selection of texts of course varies. I would nevertheless like to give you a list coming from Mortimer Adler’s book: How to Read a Book, which is considered as a classic introduction to this program. This list is typical of such a curriculum, and from it we can form a first assessment of its strengths and weaknesses, especially with reference to a Catholic school.
Since the program uses a list of texts, and not a syllabus, the students rely almost entirely on the primary sources. The emphasis is on open discussion guided by a professor or tutor. The students are expected to write essays and reports on what they have read, and this consists the large portion of their grade. The use of primary texts dictates an interdisciplinary approach, as most of the books in the so-called Western Canon do not really fall into a certain category or discipline. Even if books such as Plato’s Republic could be called philosophy, Plato himself therein speaks of music, of government, of virtue and countless other things such that he cannot be truly categorized but rather is himself the founder of a whole school of opinions.
This universal vision or personal understanding encompassing every subject is very much the end desired by the Great Books program. What is desired is not so much a great mathematician or a great historian, but rather something of the Renaissance man who has a universal knowledge of everything that is around him, or as the Roman playwright Terence once said: I am a man, I hold that nothing human is alien to me. An educated person, according to this conception, should have at least an elementary knowledge of every human science and art. One should know at least the core of what is called Western civilization. It would be rather the initiative of the student and his particular talents to excel in a certain domain, not the chief obligation of the school.
It might be added in passing that it is often the mark of an educated man is that he cannot really be categorized or labeled with an epithet. The labels such as ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ are actually quite modern and stem more from this philosophy of Pragmatism or more specifically from Hegel, with the idea of conflicting or contrary opinions somehow meeting together to form a practical consensus or synthetic truth. A truly educated man cannot be pigeon-hold into a category, rather he is inclined towards the objective truth which is a conformity with reality. He is not imprisoned or held to hold what is “practicable” or built upon the consent of others. We are far gone from the days where one could debate the relative merits or moral consequences of some legislation - instead everything has to fall into a category as being ‘left-wing’ or ‘right-wing’, ‘popular’ or ‘unpopular’ with absolutely no regard as to whether it contributes to the common good or not. This is just a consequence of a lack of culture, or rather of a new anti-culture invading every aspect of public life, the fruit of today’s present system of education.
Although many schools modeled on the Great Books program have lectures concerning the works to be read, the primary method of instruction is rather through discussion. The professor is more of an arbiter of a debate upon a theme more than an actual lecturer in the modern sense. There is much to be criticized in this approach, which I will touch on later, but the general principle is the engagement of the student in all aspects of the text - that the text should be assimilated, understood, even questioned and criticized. The aim is not so much a memorization of opinions and details but rather to encourage the student to think.
The method is largely Socratic in the true sense: one starts rather with a series of questions, and the discussion is supposed to lead to some conclusion. A gifted professor will gradually lead the questioning until the students themselves come to the same opinion as Plato himself. For instance, the text of the Republic concerning the qualities necessary for government [q.v. Republic 473c-d], the professor will not begin with listing the various doctrines of Plato, but rather ask the students what the ideal president or governor would be. Gradually the questions would be talking about government in general, and lastly some sort of conclusion similar to that of Plato: that kings must be philosophers if they are to rule well. You can see that such a technique requires a great deal of preparation from the professor and can often just lead to random discussion without any real education at all - and this is one of the greatest weaknesses of such an approach. With a good professor it is truly ideal; with an ill-equipped teacher it is little less than empty discussion.
This is only a small outline of the Great Books program, and perhaps I would do best by giving some sources where you can find more about the program itself as well as several Universities and schools in America where this program is implemented. However, what I think most important is to highlight the strengths and weakness of this approach to classical education in a Catholic school.
Firstly, let us look at the strengths. The return to the sources, to primary texts, is absolutely Catholic in the truest sense - for it is to the sources that one will always find the clearest expression and the most authoritative voice. We must always return to the Holy Scriptures, the words of Our Lord and to the decisions of the Councils to constantly renew and reaffirm our faith. Likewise in human learning there is no better voice than those who are truly masters of their domain. Reading is in a certain way having a professor speak to us through the distance of time and space. Thus to read the works of Isaac Newton is to learn from him, though second hand. All the great theologians, of whom we must especially make mention St. Thomas Aquinas, always had enormous respect for the ancient authorities, and it was always deemed impious to differ from their opinion, and if one did so one never criticized one’s master. This Catholic spirit must be kept in all domains, not just in divine Tradition but even in what might be called human tradition. Regardless of whether one likes Shakespeare or not, his command of the English language demands respect and his mastery of the description of all facets of human nature and frailty is something eternal in that it is a faithful echo of reality and even of eternal beauty. That there should exist a “Canon of Western Civilization” is certain, from the simple fact that there are souls who are more gifted than others, who have worked in union with their talents to produce works of eternal worth that have stood the test of time.
However, as you can see from this list of books, there is much to criticize. This ‘Canon’ of works cannot be separated from the Magisterium of the Church in a Catholic school. It is nonsensical to try to form the intelligence of students with books that are patently false. Many of these books on this list are not only harmful, but even destructive of the very end of education itself. For instance, one can only imagine the confusion given to the students of placing on the same list the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and Bertrand Russell or Karl Marx. There is a huge difference between the influence that an author has and whether or not he speaks the truth. In placing them all on the same footing one only ends up with an intelligence that has read everything but understood absolutely nothing.
Like in the question of Sacred Scripture, we have Tradition as witness to what is the Canon of inspired works. Likewise, in the natural realm, there is a certain tradition - the works of authors that have been used in schools since time immemorial. For instance even for the teaching of Latin the orations of Cicero are always used as a model, Virgil is still studied, as well as Caesar and Ovid. They form as it were the backbone of what can be called the highpoint of Latin literature. Certainly other authors have merit, but when there is so little time to form a good style, one should stay with what is certain and true. The same could be said of each subject.
We can see in this list of books given by the Great Books program the Protestant influence of many of the initiators of the program - the entire selection is devoid of a guiding principle or magisterium. In a sense even these educators could not escape the true source of the problem - In reality the crisis in education really began with Protestantism which set the human reason independent from the objective truth. In this sense the list of “Great works” provided by this program must be heavily modified and even rejected as non-Catholic. Nonetheless, as said before, for each study there is a certain tradition that must be held and respected, and it is a question of simply being more selective - and not less - in the choice of great works, that they be great not just in name but in value. WIth some substantial modifications there could be drawn up a similar list of elementary works that are best echos of what we often call the philosophia perennis.
What is perhaps the most profitable however from this approach advocated by the Great Books program is building the core of the syllabus around these pillars of the past. There is something in the reading of Newton himself that you cannot get by simply having the facts laid out in an outline. For instance, you often read in a book of physics that we can take the movement of a large body such as the earth and treat it as the entire mass was concentrated in a single point. From this point you can describe its movement with a mathematical equation which then allows you to predict its future movement. In modern textbooks this is treated as an assumption, and no proof of it is given. Yet Isaac Newton did not take this as granted. He goes even at length to prove this assumption with an elegance that is as admirable as the result. He even says that any object’s movement follows the same trajectory as what we call its ‘center of mass’, an even more general result that can be applied to everything that moves. He then proves that any mutual force whose strength diminishes in the inverse ratio of the distance between the objects will move in an ellipse. Then there are the enormous tables of observations of the planets, literally hundreds, to show the reader that reality corresponds to this fact. All of this is completely missing in a modern manual, as the modern manual will only teach the equations and ignore entirely the reason why they work.
In this return to the great minds of the past we can see this why which is so important to education. Education is not simply the memorizing and using of formulas, it is fundamentally understanding why the universe is the way it is, and not otherwise. Unfortunately so many manuals are only content to give us a syllabus, a series of facts that one has to know in order to pass an exam. There is no sense of wonder, no sense of discovery or trying to find out why. To give another example, it is often stated that the earth goes around the sun, and yet there is no effort at all to prove that this is true. We only read that in ‘ignorant times’ people thought otherwise, but really, if you think about it, there is nothing so non-intuitive as the movement of the earth. The earth that we see and feel and live on doesn’t move - rather the sun and the stars move around us. It took many great minds to prove this, and not without reason - and yet we are supposed to take all this on faith, without question. In a certain sense we are even more ignorant than people of the past who at least followed their instinct and observations. Yet today the modern student is asked to accept this fact which is in a certain sense completely contrary to our own observations - for none of us have ever seen the earth move or rotate, it is rather deduced from other observations.
Thus classical education must never ignore the saying of Aristotle that knowledge comes from causes, that science is built upon the principle of causality. To truly know something is to know the cause of something, to know why it is. Sometimes the causes are historical, sometimes they are simply from human free will, but nonetheless everything has a cause. Education is boring and repetitive today because there is no attempt to give the reason why, only to memorize and do as the book says. In this aspect the original initiators of the Great Books program have much of value to say - and in reality they are only echoing the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle before him: scientia ex causis. The first thing a child will ask is not “what” but rather “why” - and a true education has to be able to answer his question.
Likewise the Socratic method is entirely traditional, and one might say even scholastic. St. Thomas himself does not begin the articles of his Summa Theologia with a series of facts, but rather with a series of questions and objections. The reason for this is that there can never be the desire to know unless there is first something to be found out. If you know the answer there is no need for a professor. It is the series of objections which provide the motor, as it were, for the mind to engage itself and to find the solution provided by the master. This method is absolutely vital and even necessary for a truly Catholic education, as education is not simple the parroting of phrases, but the assimilation of the truth and making it one’s own.
However there are two major extremes that must be avoided, to which the Great Books program is not immune. Firstly, the complete absence of a manual or fixed program. Simply giving a reading list is not really realistic in a school, especially a school that is very limited in the number of hours it can give for each subject. To simply give original texts and to read them through would really mean trying to relive the past few centuries of human knowledge in the space of a few years. There simply isn’t enough time to follow the entire arguments of Newton for example establishing the different ways that motion can be added and subtracted, especially since the theory of vectors has superseded these discoveries. Thus there does have to be some sort of summary and the student will simply have to believe the professor for much of the material that he is given. And actually, historically speaking the manuals were created exactly with the limits of time as being the primary concern - that the student assimilate as much as possible in the short time allotted for the subject. Thus no school can hope to fulfill its obligations without some sort of syllabus and outline of the material. Nonetheless there should be a constant and continual effort to refer to the past and to the reason why the facts given in the manual are what they are.
This first extreme, of working without a fixed syllabus, is actually very easily avoided in our system of education as there is already a certain minimal standard given by the state that we have to fulfill. Thus there will be basic manuals. What I would encourage however is the addition of material, to return to the sources of your subject and give the texts that prove and establish the assumptions given. For instance, in treating of electricity, to go back to the basic texts of Maxwell and see how his observations that electricity is not only positive but also negative, that electric force decreases over distance and so on. I would like to show you a sort of manual that is used in seminaries which best illustrate this idea: the Elements of Philosophy by Gardeil. You can see that the first part is the manual, the stuff the students have to know. Yet for each major point of the manual there is a reference to back of the book, where you will find the original text of St. Thomas Aquinas. One can also think of the old catechisms that would have questions and answers and the appendix reserved for the decrees of the Councils or citations from the Fathers. This sort of solution really does allow the best of both worlds: having a basic outline of the material and yet still a reference to the great texts, and what is more the gifted student will know where to look for some of the same.
Concerning the second danger of this program, we must say that the Socratic method is really only as good as Socrates. If the professor has the gift of being able to lead by questions, it is a very powerful tool. However most professors do not have this gift, and usually asking questions just leads to a chaotic discussion that is more of a distraction than learning anything. Also simply questioning can just put more doubts in the mind of the students that knowledge. Thus, the Socratic method is best used in the hands of Socrates, that is to say, in a professor with a depth and breadth of knowledge as strong as his desire to lead his students to the truth. Nonetheless nothing prevents oneself from a little healthy introspection from time to time. For instance, in the preparation of your courses, really ask yourself the question: how do I know this is true? For instance, a physics teacher will teach the theory of Einstein that the speed of light is constant in all frames of reference. How do I know that this is true? What is a student doesn’t believe me, could I prove it to him? You can be sure that it is true - in fact your little GPS device wouldn’t work if it wasn’t - but how does this little gadget work? You should be the first to ask yourself why, and if you can give the answer, let your students also ask why, or even challenge them by asking the question first. You will find that this classical method of questioning and answering, especially at the beginning of a lesson, is often very rewarding and will naturally engage the curiosity of the students. Instead of simply giving them facts and equations to memorize you will have them wanting to find out, wanting to discover, in short, wanting to learn.
Let me then bring to a short conclusion with a Catholic assessment of what one should call the “Great Books program”.
Firstly, the return to the sources is something absolutely essential to a classical education, and even to what one must call a Catholic education. There are, and there will always be, works of human genius that surpass others and which in a certain way codify the natural gifts of man. It should be the obligation of each teacher to be able to give to his students at least a sample of these great thinkers and a coherent list of works that are the best in the domain of study. A great thinker is not only someone who happens to discover a truth, but especially one who can effectively communicate it to others. Newton in large measure took from others, but his presentation, form and logic are what make his work a classic. There are similar in each domain. I would propose that a concrete exercise for you as participants is to at least draw up a list of those works that are absolutely essential to understanding one’s subject of competence. Not manuals, not syllabus, but source texts.
Secondly, that a truly classical education really can’t be satisfied with a simple reading of texts. There must be a search for causes, of the reason why things are the way they are. Even in literature there are causes: why does Shakespeare use such a word in such a context, what are its consequences for rhythm, alliteration, and all the other literary devices that make the dramas not only convincing but beautiful. A teacher should not, and cannot, be content with just giving information. The child wants to know why, and a school that cannot answer his question will have failed in its purpose.
For this reason our school does not apply the Great Books program, though it admires it, but rather attaches itself to the schema given by the great medieval thinkers of the seven liberal arts - the seven arts being the causes or answers to why things are the way they are. For this I can refer you to the brochure of our school which gives a small synopsis of this idea.
Thirdly, the fundamental reason why we know from our catechism: why we are here is to serve and love God and by this means enjoy eternal happiness. If there is one great problem with the Great Books program is that it does not have a unifying thread or purpose, so often its graduates will be highly intelligent but still be searching for something. They will be much like the pagan Greeks who knew almost everything about every subject and yet the most important questions were still a mystery. Yet a Catholic school has the enormous advantage, the infinite advantage, in that it already knows the end to be achieved. The model for the classical education is already incarnate in the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and the fruits have already been seen in the lives of the saints and the martyrs.
The true problems of education today fundamentally began in the 16th century with the advent of Protestantism, that separated men from the guiding light of the magisterium of the Church, and the consequent loss of discipline, of subjecting oneself to reality, is only a natural and inevitable consequence of this revolt against Tradition. Thus, in bringing back to the school the love of Tradition, of the wisdom of the ancients, of all that is eternally true and good and beautiful, we can be assured of transmitting the treasures of civilization to the next generation. It is only a matter of being consistent and especially asking the grace of God for persevance
For such graces you may be assured of my prayers, and happily will answer any questions that you might have.
I would like to begin with a few observations concerning today’s problems in education. I think all of us here are convinced that there is a true problem in modern education, and one might even say a true crisis. Problems in a certain sense have always been, but the scope and magnitude of today’s problems are not so much material, not so much a question of difficulties but rather a crisis of identity. Today it is not so much a question of lack of means or money for education, but rather what does it mean to be an educated man.
Yet it is one thing to diagnose an illness, it is quite another to find a cure. We all, I think, are certain that the educational system is sick, mortally sick, and so our task should not be so much as to criticize as to provide help and remedy. However the remedy must be proportionate to the disease if it is to bring the patient back to health. What I would like to do in this short conference is to give a brief summary of an experience in America that one could characterize as a healthy reaction to the present crisis, and in many ways a help as it corresponds in a large measure to what might be called a classical education.
In a certain sense the present malady we see in Poland is actually quite late in comparison to the rest of the world. America, which has often been the vanguard for all that is modern, has also unfortunately been the experimental ground for all that is revolutionary. The current educational system now being imposed is following in large measure the educational system in America, and thus it is only natural that the same results follow: a lack of discipline, lack of authority, lack of standards, lack of demands on the children, lack of respect for the past, lack of any formation of character, lack of anything more elevated than simple pragmatic necessity - in brief, a lack of everything that we call civilization.
Yet there were certain academic voices in America, especially connected with Columbia University in the 1920’s and 1930’s, that saw as it were the future where education was heading. There were teachers and professors, especially in higher education, that already recognized the extreme dangers threatening the youth and their education. Amongst them was Prof. John Erskine, who in turn would influence such notable personalities as Mortimer Adler. The primary concern at that time was that education was becoming so specialized that universities were no longer forming human beings but rather parts of them, or that rather the system of education had forgotten what a human being was. It was a healthy reaction against what is called pragmatism today, a system propagated by such American educators as John Dewey which emphasized that all education had to have practical use, or to work properly, for it to be of value. It was the radical empiricism of such philosophers such as William James that in many ways signaled the death knell of true education. By concentrating all human worth on what worked or what was of practical application, it eliminated whole branches of knowledge by reducing them to a practical consensus of opinions of a pluralistic society. Gone was the search for truth, or rather truth was reduced to what was expedient or what was practical or what simply worked correctly. Of course such a philosophy never makes very clear what ‘working correctly’ implied, and completely ignored the fact that human beings are not so much machines for the state, but rather have immortal souls.
The great books program was a reaction against this empty philosophy by a return to what were deemed the primary sources of Western civilization. It aimed to return to what they called “the Western Liberal Arts Tradition”, and the essential component of the program is a profound study of primary texts which were called “the Great Books”. The curricula is formed upon a canon of texts considered more or less essential to a student’s education. There are at present several programs that are modeled on this Great Books movement, the selection of texts of course varies. I would nevertheless like to give you a list coming from Mortimer Adler’s book: How to Read a Book, which is considered as a classic introduction to this program. This list is typical of such a curriculum, and from it we can form a first assessment of its strengths and weaknesses, especially with reference to a Catholic school.
Since the program uses a list of texts, and not a syllabus, the students rely almost entirely on the primary sources. The emphasis is on open discussion guided by a professor or tutor. The students are expected to write essays and reports on what they have read, and this consists the large portion of their grade. The use of primary texts dictates an interdisciplinary approach, as most of the books in the so-called Western Canon do not really fall into a certain category or discipline. Even if books such as Plato’s Republic could be called philosophy, Plato himself therein speaks of music, of government, of virtue and countless other things such that he cannot be truly categorized but rather is himself the founder of a whole school of opinions.
This universal vision or personal understanding encompassing every subject is very much the end desired by the Great Books program. What is desired is not so much a great mathematician or a great historian, but rather something of the Renaissance man who has a universal knowledge of everything that is around him, or as the Roman playwright Terence once said: I am a man, I hold that nothing human is alien to me. An educated person, according to this conception, should have at least an elementary knowledge of every human science and art. One should know at least the core of what is called Western civilization. It would be rather the initiative of the student and his particular talents to excel in a certain domain, not the chief obligation of the school.
It might be added in passing that it is often the mark of an educated man is that he cannot really be categorized or labeled with an epithet. The labels such as ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ are actually quite modern and stem more from this philosophy of Pragmatism or more specifically from Hegel, with the idea of conflicting or contrary opinions somehow meeting together to form a practical consensus or synthetic truth. A truly educated man cannot be pigeon-hold into a category, rather he is inclined towards the objective truth which is a conformity with reality. He is not imprisoned or held to hold what is “practicable” or built upon the consent of others. We are far gone from the days where one could debate the relative merits or moral consequences of some legislation - instead everything has to fall into a category as being ‘left-wing’ or ‘right-wing’, ‘popular’ or ‘unpopular’ with absolutely no regard as to whether it contributes to the common good or not. This is just a consequence of a lack of culture, or rather of a new anti-culture invading every aspect of public life, the fruit of today’s present system of education.
Although many schools modeled on the Great Books program have lectures concerning the works to be read, the primary method of instruction is rather through discussion. The professor is more of an arbiter of a debate upon a theme more than an actual lecturer in the modern sense. There is much to be criticized in this approach, which I will touch on later, but the general principle is the engagement of the student in all aspects of the text - that the text should be assimilated, understood, even questioned and criticized. The aim is not so much a memorization of opinions and details but rather to encourage the student to think.
The method is largely Socratic in the true sense: one starts rather with a series of questions, and the discussion is supposed to lead to some conclusion. A gifted professor will gradually lead the questioning until the students themselves come to the same opinion as Plato himself. For instance, the text of the Republic concerning the qualities necessary for government [q.v. Republic 473c-d], the professor will not begin with listing the various doctrines of Plato, but rather ask the students what the ideal president or governor would be. Gradually the questions would be talking about government in general, and lastly some sort of conclusion similar to that of Plato: that kings must be philosophers if they are to rule well. You can see that such a technique requires a great deal of preparation from the professor and can often just lead to random discussion without any real education at all - and this is one of the greatest weaknesses of such an approach. With a good professor it is truly ideal; with an ill-equipped teacher it is little less than empty discussion.
This is only a small outline of the Great Books program, and perhaps I would do best by giving some sources where you can find more about the program itself as well as several Universities and schools in America where this program is implemented. However, what I think most important is to highlight the strengths and weakness of this approach to classical education in a Catholic school.
Firstly, let us look at the strengths. The return to the sources, to primary texts, is absolutely Catholic in the truest sense - for it is to the sources that one will always find the clearest expression and the most authoritative voice. We must always return to the Holy Scriptures, the words of Our Lord and to the decisions of the Councils to constantly renew and reaffirm our faith. Likewise in human learning there is no better voice than those who are truly masters of their domain. Reading is in a certain way having a professor speak to us through the distance of time and space. Thus to read the works of Isaac Newton is to learn from him, though second hand. All the great theologians, of whom we must especially make mention St. Thomas Aquinas, always had enormous respect for the ancient authorities, and it was always deemed impious to differ from their opinion, and if one did so one never criticized one’s master. This Catholic spirit must be kept in all domains, not just in divine Tradition but even in what might be called human tradition. Regardless of whether one likes Shakespeare or not, his command of the English language demands respect and his mastery of the description of all facets of human nature and frailty is something eternal in that it is a faithful echo of reality and even of eternal beauty. That there should exist a “Canon of Western Civilization” is certain, from the simple fact that there are souls who are more gifted than others, who have worked in union with their talents to produce works of eternal worth that have stood the test of time.
However, as you can see from this list of books, there is much to criticize. This ‘Canon’ of works cannot be separated from the Magisterium of the Church in a Catholic school. It is nonsensical to try to form the intelligence of students with books that are patently false. Many of these books on this list are not only harmful, but even destructive of the very end of education itself. For instance, one can only imagine the confusion given to the students of placing on the same list the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and Bertrand Russell or Karl Marx. There is a huge difference between the influence that an author has and whether or not he speaks the truth. In placing them all on the same footing one only ends up with an intelligence that has read everything but understood absolutely nothing.
Like in the question of Sacred Scripture, we have Tradition as witness to what is the Canon of inspired works. Likewise, in the natural realm, there is a certain tradition - the works of authors that have been used in schools since time immemorial. For instance even for the teaching of Latin the orations of Cicero are always used as a model, Virgil is still studied, as well as Caesar and Ovid. They form as it were the backbone of what can be called the highpoint of Latin literature. Certainly other authors have merit, but when there is so little time to form a good style, one should stay with what is certain and true. The same could be said of each subject.
We can see in this list of books given by the Great Books program the Protestant influence of many of the initiators of the program - the entire selection is devoid of a guiding principle or magisterium. In a sense even these educators could not escape the true source of the problem - In reality the crisis in education really began with Protestantism which set the human reason independent from the objective truth. In this sense the list of “Great works” provided by this program must be heavily modified and even rejected as non-Catholic. Nonetheless, as said before, for each study there is a certain tradition that must be held and respected, and it is a question of simply being more selective - and not less - in the choice of great works, that they be great not just in name but in value. WIth some substantial modifications there could be drawn up a similar list of elementary works that are best echos of what we often call the philosophia perennis.
What is perhaps the most profitable however from this approach advocated by the Great Books program is building the core of the syllabus around these pillars of the past. There is something in the reading of Newton himself that you cannot get by simply having the facts laid out in an outline. For instance, you often read in a book of physics that we can take the movement of a large body such as the earth and treat it as the entire mass was concentrated in a single point. From this point you can describe its movement with a mathematical equation which then allows you to predict its future movement. In modern textbooks this is treated as an assumption, and no proof of it is given. Yet Isaac Newton did not take this as granted. He goes even at length to prove this assumption with an elegance that is as admirable as the result. He even says that any object’s movement follows the same trajectory as what we call its ‘center of mass’, an even more general result that can be applied to everything that moves. He then proves that any mutual force whose strength diminishes in the inverse ratio of the distance between the objects will move in an ellipse. Then there are the enormous tables of observations of the planets, literally hundreds, to show the reader that reality corresponds to this fact. All of this is completely missing in a modern manual, as the modern manual will only teach the equations and ignore entirely the reason why they work.
In this return to the great minds of the past we can see this why which is so important to education. Education is not simply the memorizing and using of formulas, it is fundamentally understanding why the universe is the way it is, and not otherwise. Unfortunately so many manuals are only content to give us a syllabus, a series of facts that one has to know in order to pass an exam. There is no sense of wonder, no sense of discovery or trying to find out why. To give another example, it is often stated that the earth goes around the sun, and yet there is no effort at all to prove that this is true. We only read that in ‘ignorant times’ people thought otherwise, but really, if you think about it, there is nothing so non-intuitive as the movement of the earth. The earth that we see and feel and live on doesn’t move - rather the sun and the stars move around us. It took many great minds to prove this, and not without reason - and yet we are supposed to take all this on faith, without question. In a certain sense we are even more ignorant than people of the past who at least followed their instinct and observations. Yet today the modern student is asked to accept this fact which is in a certain sense completely contrary to our own observations - for none of us have ever seen the earth move or rotate, it is rather deduced from other observations.
Thus classical education must never ignore the saying of Aristotle that knowledge comes from causes, that science is built upon the principle of causality. To truly know something is to know the cause of something, to know why it is. Sometimes the causes are historical, sometimes they are simply from human free will, but nonetheless everything has a cause. Education is boring and repetitive today because there is no attempt to give the reason why, only to memorize and do as the book says. In this aspect the original initiators of the Great Books program have much of value to say - and in reality they are only echoing the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle before him: scientia ex causis. The first thing a child will ask is not “what” but rather “why” - and a true education has to be able to answer his question.
Likewise the Socratic method is entirely traditional, and one might say even scholastic. St. Thomas himself does not begin the articles of his Summa Theologia with a series of facts, but rather with a series of questions and objections. The reason for this is that there can never be the desire to know unless there is first something to be found out. If you know the answer there is no need for a professor. It is the series of objections which provide the motor, as it were, for the mind to engage itself and to find the solution provided by the master. This method is absolutely vital and even necessary for a truly Catholic education, as education is not simple the parroting of phrases, but the assimilation of the truth and making it one’s own.
However there are two major extremes that must be avoided, to which the Great Books program is not immune. Firstly, the complete absence of a manual or fixed program. Simply giving a reading list is not really realistic in a school, especially a school that is very limited in the number of hours it can give for each subject. To simply give original texts and to read them through would really mean trying to relive the past few centuries of human knowledge in the space of a few years. There simply isn’t enough time to follow the entire arguments of Newton for example establishing the different ways that motion can be added and subtracted, especially since the theory of vectors has superseded these discoveries. Thus there does have to be some sort of summary and the student will simply have to believe the professor for much of the material that he is given. And actually, historically speaking the manuals were created exactly with the limits of time as being the primary concern - that the student assimilate as much as possible in the short time allotted for the subject. Thus no school can hope to fulfill its obligations without some sort of syllabus and outline of the material. Nonetheless there should be a constant and continual effort to refer to the past and to the reason why the facts given in the manual are what they are.
This first extreme, of working without a fixed syllabus, is actually very easily avoided in our system of education as there is already a certain minimal standard given by the state that we have to fulfill. Thus there will be basic manuals. What I would encourage however is the addition of material, to return to the sources of your subject and give the texts that prove and establish the assumptions given. For instance, in treating of electricity, to go back to the basic texts of Maxwell and see how his observations that electricity is not only positive but also negative, that electric force decreases over distance and so on. I would like to show you a sort of manual that is used in seminaries which best illustrate this idea: the Elements of Philosophy by Gardeil. You can see that the first part is the manual, the stuff the students have to know. Yet for each major point of the manual there is a reference to back of the book, where you will find the original text of St. Thomas Aquinas. One can also think of the old catechisms that would have questions and answers and the appendix reserved for the decrees of the Councils or citations from the Fathers. This sort of solution really does allow the best of both worlds: having a basic outline of the material and yet still a reference to the great texts, and what is more the gifted student will know where to look for some of the same.
Concerning the second danger of this program, we must say that the Socratic method is really only as good as Socrates. If the professor has the gift of being able to lead by questions, it is a very powerful tool. However most professors do not have this gift, and usually asking questions just leads to a chaotic discussion that is more of a distraction than learning anything. Also simply questioning can just put more doubts in the mind of the students that knowledge. Thus, the Socratic method is best used in the hands of Socrates, that is to say, in a professor with a depth and breadth of knowledge as strong as his desire to lead his students to the truth. Nonetheless nothing prevents oneself from a little healthy introspection from time to time. For instance, in the preparation of your courses, really ask yourself the question: how do I know this is true? For instance, a physics teacher will teach the theory of Einstein that the speed of light is constant in all frames of reference. How do I know that this is true? What is a student doesn’t believe me, could I prove it to him? You can be sure that it is true - in fact your little GPS device wouldn’t work if it wasn’t - but how does this little gadget work? You should be the first to ask yourself why, and if you can give the answer, let your students also ask why, or even challenge them by asking the question first. You will find that this classical method of questioning and answering, especially at the beginning of a lesson, is often very rewarding and will naturally engage the curiosity of the students. Instead of simply giving them facts and equations to memorize you will have them wanting to find out, wanting to discover, in short, wanting to learn.
Let me then bring to a short conclusion with a Catholic assessment of what one should call the “Great Books program”.
Firstly, the return to the sources is something absolutely essential to a classical education, and even to what one must call a Catholic education. There are, and there will always be, works of human genius that surpass others and which in a certain way codify the natural gifts of man. It should be the obligation of each teacher to be able to give to his students at least a sample of these great thinkers and a coherent list of works that are the best in the domain of study. A great thinker is not only someone who happens to discover a truth, but especially one who can effectively communicate it to others. Newton in large measure took from others, but his presentation, form and logic are what make his work a classic. There are similar in each domain. I would propose that a concrete exercise for you as participants is to at least draw up a list of those works that are absolutely essential to understanding one’s subject of competence. Not manuals, not syllabus, but source texts.
Secondly, that a truly classical education really can’t be satisfied with a simple reading of texts. There must be a search for causes, of the reason why things are the way they are. Even in literature there are causes: why does Shakespeare use such a word in such a context, what are its consequences for rhythm, alliteration, and all the other literary devices that make the dramas not only convincing but beautiful. A teacher should not, and cannot, be content with just giving information. The child wants to know why, and a school that cannot answer his question will have failed in its purpose.
For this reason our school does not apply the Great Books program, though it admires it, but rather attaches itself to the schema given by the great medieval thinkers of the seven liberal arts - the seven arts being the causes or answers to why things are the way they are. For this I can refer you to the brochure of our school which gives a small synopsis of this idea.
Thirdly, the fundamental reason why we know from our catechism: why we are here is to serve and love God and by this means enjoy eternal happiness. If there is one great problem with the Great Books program is that it does not have a unifying thread or purpose, so often its graduates will be highly intelligent but still be searching for something. They will be much like the pagan Greeks who knew almost everything about every subject and yet the most important questions were still a mystery. Yet a Catholic school has the enormous advantage, the infinite advantage, in that it already knows the end to be achieved. The model for the classical education is already incarnate in the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and the fruits have already been seen in the lives of the saints and the martyrs.
The true problems of education today fundamentally began in the 16th century with the advent of Protestantism, that separated men from the guiding light of the magisterium of the Church, and the consequent loss of discipline, of subjecting oneself to reality, is only a natural and inevitable consequence of this revolt against Tradition. Thus, in bringing back to the school the love of Tradition, of the wisdom of the ancients, of all that is eternally true and good and beautiful, we can be assured of transmitting the treasures of civilization to the next generation. It is only a matter of being consistent and especially asking the grace of God for persevance
For such graces you may be assured of my prayers, and happily will answer any questions that you might have.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Thursday within the Octave of Pentecost
Dear students, dear faithful,
Today we are in the octave of Pentecost. The great feast of Pentecost is a feast unites both the Old and New Testaments, as it is on the day of Pentecost that the two laws were given. The first and ancient feast of the Old Testament celebrated the gift of the ten commandments to Moses fifty days after the liberation of the chosen people from slavery in Egypt. God wrote upon the two tables of stone the ten commandments, giving them to the people whom He would send His only Son, Our Lord. And Our Lord, having completed the will of His Father and ascended into heaven, sends the Holy Ghost who is Himself the New Law.
Whereas the Old Law was written upon tablets of stone, the New Law is written in our hearts by grace which flows from the Holy Ghost. Whereas in the Old Law there was the prescriptions of what to avoid, in the New Law there is rather the one prescription coming from Our Lord: be ye perfect even as your heavenly Father is perfect [Mt. 6]. The Old Law was a law of death, as St. Paul says, putting to death the concupiscence in our members, whereas the New Law is a law of life, perfecting and lifting us up by grace. In the New Law Our Lord more than commands. He does more than just show us what to do by sanction and prescription. He becomes Himself the Law, the animating spirit of each of our actions when we are in the state of grace. When we become children of God by grace, we are moved by that same law that governed the acts of Our Lord. As Saint Paul says: because you are sons, God hath sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father. [Gal 4,6]. The Holy Ghost is given to us as it is the Holy Ghost who is the Spirit of Our Lord [Rm 8,15], who gives testimony of Our Lord by vivifying each of our actions by grace. [Jn 15,26]
It is this grace of Our Lord that makes us pleasing to God, and not simply the following of the letter of the law. St. Paul will say: the letter killeth, but the spirit quickeneth [2 Cor 3,6]. This is so important to remember - the ten commandments, and any other prescription that is given to us by law or by edict - are not enough. Only grace can sanctify and bring us close to God. It is exactly in this respect that the Jews and especially the Pharisees are in error: the simple material observation of the commandments, even to the exact detail, cannot sanctify us. On the contrary, the only purpose for the prescriptions of the law is to safeguard this grace we receive from Our Lord [Rm 2,29; 7,6].
The New Law is not simply a codex of observances. It has a purpose, it has an end - it has even a life of its own as it gives to the observances the power of meriting eternal life.
These considerations bring us naturally to the final mystery of Our Lady, the last mystery that we will contemplate before next Monday when we will consecrate our school to Her Immaculate Heart. In a certain way it is most fitting that we see in the final glory of Our Lady the perfection we hope to obtain for the students of our school.
The mystery of the Assumption is profoundly related to this purity of Our Lady - since her body had never touched sin, and as her body was pure and Immaculate, it was unfitting that it should undergo the corruption of the tomb. God raised her to heaven as she is the Immaculate. We also see in this mystery the goal or purpose for which God made Her: that that woman whom He chose as His Mother should be happy for all eternity in heaven with Him.
In everything that we do we can speak of the intention, or rather the goal or end which we hope to achieve. In fact, when something reaches its end, it is complete, it is accomplished, it is done, it is perfect. When we look at it carefully, the end is the first thing that we desire. For instance we want to eat a cake - so we go to the store, buy the ingredients, make the cake and then we have our cake which we can eat. All those things are done because they lead us to the end, the cake. We want to go to the store because we want the cake - we wouldn’t go otherwise. Yet notice that the cake is the last thing we have. We have to do a lot of things in order to get the cake. The cake might be the first things we want to do, but we have to do many things in order to obtain this result. All the other things are what we call means, means to that end which we desire.
This is very important in the questions concerning education. We all want to be perfect. We all want to be adults, free and powerful and rich and whatever other ambitions we might have. Yet we must know that all things must be directed to our final end, that is to say, to happiness - perfect happiness which can only be found in that one perfect good which can only be God. Thus all that we study, all that we do, must be somehow in some manner directed towards this happiness. It is indeed the whole reason we are on this earth, to be happy - and this happiness can only come from that which is infinitely perfect, namely God.
Thus in our school we cannot make an abstraction of study and life. If we study physics, it is to be happy. If it is to study mathematics, it is to be with God. If we study history, it is to arrive at eternity someday. If we study art, it is to show the beauty of the Creator and His creation. In everything Jesus Christ must reign [I Cor 15,25]and must be the center, as He gives life and purpose to everything [1 Cor 10,5].
And thus Our Lady, assumed into Heaven, is a model of that final reason for education: she is glorified and happy for all eternity in Heaven. She obtained her end, her final destiny, a destiny that will also be ours if we are faithful to that grace given to us. We must always keep this in mind when we study, when we play, when we do whatever. Our Lady will always be there, in Heaven, to remind us of this.
We saw last week how Our Lady is our sorrowful mother. The action of Our Lady as educatrix in this aspect is much akin to her helping of Our Lord during the carrying of the Cross. We have seen that Our Lady is like any mother, and so for us, as children of God, she fulfills the office of mother in the spiritual life. She often has to correct us, to tell us to be careful, to stay away from dangerous things, like your mother does in the physical realm. Thus Our Lady, as the Sorrowful Mother, is often at the foot of the Cross in order to help us endure the difficulties of obtaining virtue.
Yet in this mystery, of her Assumption into Heaven, she takes on a particular aspect that is rather a sort of encouragement: she shows us the glory that is ours if we are faithful. She is rather pulling us towards success and perfection by her example and the reward which she fulfilled.
A mother in teaching a child to walk will firstly hold the child close to her knees, resting the child’s feet upon her feet and holding his hands in her hands, and whilst pulling his hands will slowly move the child forward on her own feet. Our Lady’s divine motherhood is much the same: we see in her all the virtues of Our Lord, and thus by imitating her we gradually learn to walk in the ways of salvation. She, by the fact that she stood beneath the Cross, can place our feet upon her example, can place our works into her hands, and by gently admonishing us can teach us how to carry the Cross in imitation of her Son.
Yet there will be a time when the child wants to walk by himself, to do it as an adult would do it, with his hands and feet untied, freely. And here the mother’s influence is still so important for the little child. Instead of taking his hands and feet she will stand a few steps away, and with words of encouragement draw the child to her. She will hold her arms open so the child can fall into them when he arrives at the end of his difficult first steps. So also Our Lady, being assumed into heaven, opens up her arms in a gesture of encouragement, in a loving embrace that will be complete when we at last arrive in her bosom. Our Lady in her Assumption is still a mother, yet a mother glorified and wishing rather that her children also merit freely, that they walk as children of God under their own initiative and power.
We, as children of God, must walk like children of God [Eph 5,8]. We must walk, like the child, under our own initiative and power. And yet heaven can seem so harsh and so far away when one is small and young. Our Lady in Her Glory, Assumed into heaven, is that dawn which welcomes the brightness of the day, the sun that is not harsh like the midday, but rather gentle and full of promise, the dawn that encourages as it enlightens and prepares the soul for the full splendor of eternity.
The Assumption of Our Lady also teaches us another mystery so important for our school: she is showing us the fullness and perfection of love. God so loved Our Lady that in a certain sense God couldn’t wait for the last day in order to bring her body and soul into heaven. The rest of humanity will likewise be glorified body and soul, but only on the Last Day and the Resurrection of the Dead. Yet God loves this woman so much that the great work of salvation, even eternal life in a certain sense, is not complete without her.
The very presence of a loved one is enough to make one happy. It is said that the greatest sign of a friendship is that one can simply be with one’s friend and not say anything - their presence is enough to nourish the soul and give encouragement to do good. On the contrary the possession of everything else, of money, wealth and power, are nothing without the presence of a person one deeply loves. So likewise heaven itself would seem to be missing something if Our Lady was not there body and soul to greet those souls entering the gates of heaven which had been closed for so long till the work of the Redemption had been accomplished.
What we see in the Gospels is exactly this presence of Our Lady at every instance of Our Lord’s life. We see her at Cana of Galilee and we see her at the foot of the Cross. Our Lady was there as that one person who loved Our Lord most, and whom Our Lord loved most deeply. Her very presence was enough to provoke His first miracle, and Her presence at the Cross allowed Him to say Consummatum est - it is consummated. Her presence in Heaven is also that encouragement for Him to say to each of us if we are faithful: Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. [Mt 25,34].
And so too, my dear faithful, we can be sure that Our Lady is also at our side in our moments of difficulty, but she is also wanting us to walk as an adult. The work of education is difficult, it is truly a way of the Cross, a bearing of our earthly infirmities and imperfections. Humanly speaking education is truly impossible, considering the weakness of human nature and the effects of original sin. Yet Our Lady is there, with her arms outstretched, encouraging us, ready to embrace us, giving us by her love and example that strength to continue till we arrive at our heavenly glory if we but persevere.
And so, my dear friends, if there is only one fruit to be taken from these considerations, it is to remember the presence of Our Lady, to remember her glory, and to remember that we too can achieve this if we follow her example. If we live according to the grace of God, like she did, we too will be taken into Heaven, there to enjoy eternal happiness for ever and ever Amen.
Today we are in the octave of Pentecost. The great feast of Pentecost is a feast unites both the Old and New Testaments, as it is on the day of Pentecost that the two laws were given. The first and ancient feast of the Old Testament celebrated the gift of the ten commandments to Moses fifty days after the liberation of the chosen people from slavery in Egypt. God wrote upon the two tables of stone the ten commandments, giving them to the people whom He would send His only Son, Our Lord. And Our Lord, having completed the will of His Father and ascended into heaven, sends the Holy Ghost who is Himself the New Law.
Whereas the Old Law was written upon tablets of stone, the New Law is written in our hearts by grace which flows from the Holy Ghost. Whereas in the Old Law there was the prescriptions of what to avoid, in the New Law there is rather the one prescription coming from Our Lord: be ye perfect even as your heavenly Father is perfect [Mt. 6]. The Old Law was a law of death, as St. Paul says, putting to death the concupiscence in our members, whereas the New Law is a law of life, perfecting and lifting us up by grace. In the New Law Our Lord more than commands. He does more than just show us what to do by sanction and prescription. He becomes Himself the Law, the animating spirit of each of our actions when we are in the state of grace. When we become children of God by grace, we are moved by that same law that governed the acts of Our Lord. As Saint Paul says: because you are sons, God hath sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father. [Gal 4,6]. The Holy Ghost is given to us as it is the Holy Ghost who is the Spirit of Our Lord [Rm 8,15], who gives testimony of Our Lord by vivifying each of our actions by grace. [Jn 15,26]
It is this grace of Our Lord that makes us pleasing to God, and not simply the following of the letter of the law. St. Paul will say: the letter killeth, but the spirit quickeneth [2 Cor 3,6]. This is so important to remember - the ten commandments, and any other prescription that is given to us by law or by edict - are not enough. Only grace can sanctify and bring us close to God. It is exactly in this respect that the Jews and especially the Pharisees are in error: the simple material observation of the commandments, even to the exact detail, cannot sanctify us. On the contrary, the only purpose for the prescriptions of the law is to safeguard this grace we receive from Our Lord [Rm 2,29; 7,6].
The New Law is not simply a codex of observances. It has a purpose, it has an end - it has even a life of its own as it gives to the observances the power of meriting eternal life.
These considerations bring us naturally to the final mystery of Our Lady, the last mystery that we will contemplate before next Monday when we will consecrate our school to Her Immaculate Heart. In a certain way it is most fitting that we see in the final glory of Our Lady the perfection we hope to obtain for the students of our school.
The mystery of the Assumption is profoundly related to this purity of Our Lady - since her body had never touched sin, and as her body was pure and Immaculate, it was unfitting that it should undergo the corruption of the tomb. God raised her to heaven as she is the Immaculate. We also see in this mystery the goal or purpose for which God made Her: that that woman whom He chose as His Mother should be happy for all eternity in heaven with Him.
In everything that we do we can speak of the intention, or rather the goal or end which we hope to achieve. In fact, when something reaches its end, it is complete, it is accomplished, it is done, it is perfect. When we look at it carefully, the end is the first thing that we desire. For instance we want to eat a cake - so we go to the store, buy the ingredients, make the cake and then we have our cake which we can eat. All those things are done because they lead us to the end, the cake. We want to go to the store because we want the cake - we wouldn’t go otherwise. Yet notice that the cake is the last thing we have. We have to do a lot of things in order to get the cake. The cake might be the first things we want to do, but we have to do many things in order to obtain this result. All the other things are what we call means, means to that end which we desire.
This is very important in the questions concerning education. We all want to be perfect. We all want to be adults, free and powerful and rich and whatever other ambitions we might have. Yet we must know that all things must be directed to our final end, that is to say, to happiness - perfect happiness which can only be found in that one perfect good which can only be God. Thus all that we study, all that we do, must be somehow in some manner directed towards this happiness. It is indeed the whole reason we are on this earth, to be happy - and this happiness can only come from that which is infinitely perfect, namely God.
Thus in our school we cannot make an abstraction of study and life. If we study physics, it is to be happy. If it is to study mathematics, it is to be with God. If we study history, it is to arrive at eternity someday. If we study art, it is to show the beauty of the Creator and His creation. In everything Jesus Christ must reign [I Cor 15,25]and must be the center, as He gives life and purpose to everything [1 Cor 10,5].
And thus Our Lady, assumed into Heaven, is a model of that final reason for education: she is glorified and happy for all eternity in Heaven. She obtained her end, her final destiny, a destiny that will also be ours if we are faithful to that grace given to us. We must always keep this in mind when we study, when we play, when we do whatever. Our Lady will always be there, in Heaven, to remind us of this.
We saw last week how Our Lady is our sorrowful mother. The action of Our Lady as educatrix in this aspect is much akin to her helping of Our Lord during the carrying of the Cross. We have seen that Our Lady is like any mother, and so for us, as children of God, she fulfills the office of mother in the spiritual life. She often has to correct us, to tell us to be careful, to stay away from dangerous things, like your mother does in the physical realm. Thus Our Lady, as the Sorrowful Mother, is often at the foot of the Cross in order to help us endure the difficulties of obtaining virtue.
Yet in this mystery, of her Assumption into Heaven, she takes on a particular aspect that is rather a sort of encouragement: she shows us the glory that is ours if we are faithful. She is rather pulling us towards success and perfection by her example and the reward which she fulfilled.
A mother in teaching a child to walk will firstly hold the child close to her knees, resting the child’s feet upon her feet and holding his hands in her hands, and whilst pulling his hands will slowly move the child forward on her own feet. Our Lady’s divine motherhood is much the same: we see in her all the virtues of Our Lord, and thus by imitating her we gradually learn to walk in the ways of salvation. She, by the fact that she stood beneath the Cross, can place our feet upon her example, can place our works into her hands, and by gently admonishing us can teach us how to carry the Cross in imitation of her Son.
Yet there will be a time when the child wants to walk by himself, to do it as an adult would do it, with his hands and feet untied, freely. And here the mother’s influence is still so important for the little child. Instead of taking his hands and feet she will stand a few steps away, and with words of encouragement draw the child to her. She will hold her arms open so the child can fall into them when he arrives at the end of his difficult first steps. So also Our Lady, being assumed into heaven, opens up her arms in a gesture of encouragement, in a loving embrace that will be complete when we at last arrive in her bosom. Our Lady in her Assumption is still a mother, yet a mother glorified and wishing rather that her children also merit freely, that they walk as children of God under their own initiative and power.
We, as children of God, must walk like children of God [Eph 5,8]. We must walk, like the child, under our own initiative and power. And yet heaven can seem so harsh and so far away when one is small and young. Our Lady in Her Glory, Assumed into heaven, is that dawn which welcomes the brightness of the day, the sun that is not harsh like the midday, but rather gentle and full of promise, the dawn that encourages as it enlightens and prepares the soul for the full splendor of eternity.
The Assumption of Our Lady also teaches us another mystery so important for our school: she is showing us the fullness and perfection of love. God so loved Our Lady that in a certain sense God couldn’t wait for the last day in order to bring her body and soul into heaven. The rest of humanity will likewise be glorified body and soul, but only on the Last Day and the Resurrection of the Dead. Yet God loves this woman so much that the great work of salvation, even eternal life in a certain sense, is not complete without her.
The very presence of a loved one is enough to make one happy. It is said that the greatest sign of a friendship is that one can simply be with one’s friend and not say anything - their presence is enough to nourish the soul and give encouragement to do good. On the contrary the possession of everything else, of money, wealth and power, are nothing without the presence of a person one deeply loves. So likewise heaven itself would seem to be missing something if Our Lady was not there body and soul to greet those souls entering the gates of heaven which had been closed for so long till the work of the Redemption had been accomplished.
What we see in the Gospels is exactly this presence of Our Lady at every instance of Our Lord’s life. We see her at Cana of Galilee and we see her at the foot of the Cross. Our Lady was there as that one person who loved Our Lord most, and whom Our Lord loved most deeply. Her very presence was enough to provoke His first miracle, and Her presence at the Cross allowed Him to say Consummatum est - it is consummated. Her presence in Heaven is also that encouragement for Him to say to each of us if we are faithful: Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. [Mt 25,34].
And so too, my dear faithful, we can be sure that Our Lady is also at our side in our moments of difficulty, but she is also wanting us to walk as an adult. The work of education is difficult, it is truly a way of the Cross, a bearing of our earthly infirmities and imperfections. Humanly speaking education is truly impossible, considering the weakness of human nature and the effects of original sin. Yet Our Lady is there, with her arms outstretched, encouraging us, ready to embrace us, giving us by her love and example that strength to continue till we arrive at our heavenly glory if we but persevere.
And so, my dear friends, if there is only one fruit to be taken from these considerations, it is to remember the presence of Our Lady, to remember her glory, and to remember that we too can achieve this if we follow her example. If we live according to the grace of God, like she did, we too will be taken into Heaven, there to enjoy eternal happiness for ever and ever Amen.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
St. Bernardine of Sienna
Dear students, dear faithful
This day is the feast of St. Bernardine of Siena, a saint whose life and merits had far reaching influence even here in Poland through his friend St. John of Capistrano. The reform of the franciscan order, which gave birth to the Bernadines, had enormous effect in the defense and increase of the faith in Poland. Yet is perhaps by the devotion he encouraged to the Holy Name of Jesus and May that he is more known. The symbol that you see on the altar, the IHS, is a symbol popularized by him, and it stands for the greek abbreviation for Jesus, from whose letters you can form the phrase: Jesus Hominum Salvator, or Jesus, Savior of men. He was renown throughout all Italy especially for his preaching which reformed all society, planting virtues where once vice reigned.
One of the principle devotions of St. Bernadine was to Our Lady. In fact he owed his conversion largely to his involvement with the confraternity of Our Lady attached to the hospital Santa Maria della Scala. He consecrated most of his early religious life to the help of the sick in the hospital, but his apostolate as a preacher was impeded because he was born with a speech defect that made him very difficult to be understood. No matter what zeal he put into his sermons he was always a disappointment for his hearers. After many years of efforts, he would often stop his sermons and cry in frustration, at being unable to communicate to others his burning love for Our Lord. Yet at last, after twelve years of struggles, Our Lady heard his prayers and miraculously his impediment disappeared in 1417. From that day forward and in thanksgiving for such a miracle he never let a day pass without preaching in honor of Our Lady.
One day, preaching in praise of the Blessed Virgin, he applied to Her the verse of the Apocalypse: “A great sign appeared in heaven, a Woman clothed with the sun...” At once a brilliant star appeared over his head. He was understood, when he spoke in Italian, by listeners of the Greek language who knew only their maternal tongue. The miracles that accompanied his preaching were numerous, and though he spoke very simply his words burned in the hearts of his hearers such that they embarked on a life of virtue with zeal and ease.
This devotion of our saint of today for Our Lady, the marvelous efficacity which it gave to his preaching, brings us to mind the preparation of our school for the consecration to Our Lady which will be in just 12 days. Our school, as we saw last week, is by its very nature a continuation and instrument of the magisterium of the Church, or rather of the preaching of the Church. Just as in the life of St. Bernadine we can see the enormous graces flowing from devotion to Our Lady in his preaching, we likewise beg of Our Lady for similar fruits flowing from the total consecration of our school to Our Lady.
We have seen the various mysteries of Our Lady, and yet there is one mystery that is most important for the work of our school and the work of education in general. Our Lady, we have seen, is the Immaculate Conception, she is also the Mother of God. Yet the work of the Redemption, of which she is an intrinsic part of, is shown especially by her presence at the foot of the Cross. She is not only the Mother of God, she is also our Mother. Yet she becomes our mother exactly at that moment when she stood at the foot of the cross.
It was in fulfilling her first religious duties as a mother, the presentation of the Child Jesus in the temple at Jerusalem, that her cooperation in the work of the Redemption was announced by St. Simeon. He said that a sword would pierce her heart [Lk 2,35]. And yet the Evangelist St. John tells us, that as Our Lord hung upon the Cross, there stood by him Mary, His Mother. What is astonishing, or rather supernatural, in the motherhood of Our Lady, is the two-fold love that unites her to her Son and to her mission in the Mystical Body.
On the one hand, like every mother, she loved the life of her Son, cherising it most of as it was a divine life, the life of the Son of God. No mother ever loved her child as the Virgin Mary, the holiest of all pure creatures, loved her Son. Her Immaculate Heart was pure in every respect, granting to that most pure maternal instinct the perfection of the most noble sentiments. Every mother worthy of the name would give their own lives for their children, as a mother by her very nature gives herself for others. No words, no description, no tears can do justice to what agony must have filled every part of her being upon seeing the tortures inflicted upon her Son.
Human nature, when put in confrontation with suffering which surpasses its ability to endure, is provided with such things as fainting spells and swoons which suspend the workings of our sensitive faculties in order to prevent those painful impressions from affecting the heart and even causing death. And yet we read in the Gospel that she stood at the Cross. She stood with all the strength of her soul. She stood, with her eyes fixed upon her Son as the sword pierced her heart. She stood in acceptation of that same sacrifice which the Son of God accomplished in that moment. The sacrifice that Our Lord offered at that moment was the same that she also offered - whereas He offered His human nature to God the Father, she offered Her only Son.
Although Our Lady loved the natural life of Our Lord in a degree commensurate with her perfection and dignity as mother, she also loved the decree of God that declared that the human race must be saved by sacrifice, by the only sacrifice that was at once human and divine. Just as Our Lord represented the new Adam, the redeemed humanity reconciled to God by the sacrifice of the Cross, so Our Lady represents and figures the new Eve, the mother of all the living who partake in the fruits of this one sacrifice. In offering of her Son to the torments of the Passion and the death of the Cross, she merits in a secondary manner the fullness of the merits of her Son.
And it is exactly on the Cross that Our Lord will recognize her merits and her intimate connection with that one sacrifice: Mother, behold thy Son. [Jn 19,26]. And in order to show us that all the graces that Our Lord won for on the Cross must pass also through her maternal hands, He then says to St. John: behold thy mother.
The reality of grace, in our present condition, cannot be separated from the reality of suffering, my dear faithful, especially in the work of education. Original sin has created a disorder in our nature that must be brought back into harmony with the original plan of God, and this disorder can only be reestablished by grace which flows from sacrifice. With every act of virtue there is something of a martyrdom and passion, that is to say, the death of sin so that grace might reign. Just as on the Cross the fault of the old Adam was washed away, so also by our daily mortifications and struggles our faults and imperfections are also slowly cleansed. And just as at the Cross, there stood Our Lady, so also in our carrying of the Cross in imitation of Our Lord, there must also be Our Lady, standing by and encouraging us.
IT is especially Our Lady that will remind us that learning and study is often not very pleasurable, and that it is in some ways very painful. And yet the rewards are infinitely greater than our meagre inconveniences. It is true that putting into memory all the facts and figures, and trying time and time again the same exercises with so little to show for it can be frustrating and even painful. And yet it is only painful if we try it without Our Lady. It is she that makes the Cross, by her presence alone, not only understandable, but even a paradise, for it is there that we receive her as our mother. It is there that she shows us the sweetness of love, a sweetness that flowers by what it offers, namely itself.
And so my dear students and dear faithful, let us put into practice this mystery of Our Lady by constantly reminding ourselves of her presence in the times of difficulty, and to call upon her aid. By this act of consecration we will, like the Apostle St. John, receive her unto his own. [Jn 19,27]. So then, in imitation of the great St. Bernadine of Sienna, and hoping likewise that Our Lady's intercession produce also extraordinary fruits through our school, let us pray to her, let us love her, let us do all through her through whom we have Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who liveth and reigneth world without end, Amen.
This day is the feast of St. Bernardine of Siena, a saint whose life and merits had far reaching influence even here in Poland through his friend St. John of Capistrano. The reform of the franciscan order, which gave birth to the Bernadines, had enormous effect in the defense and increase of the faith in Poland. Yet is perhaps by the devotion he encouraged to the Holy Name of Jesus and May that he is more known. The symbol that you see on the altar, the IHS, is a symbol popularized by him, and it stands for the greek abbreviation for Jesus, from whose letters you can form the phrase: Jesus Hominum Salvator, or Jesus, Savior of men. He was renown throughout all Italy especially for his preaching which reformed all society, planting virtues where once vice reigned.
One of the principle devotions of St. Bernadine was to Our Lady. In fact he owed his conversion largely to his involvement with the confraternity of Our Lady attached to the hospital Santa Maria della Scala. He consecrated most of his early religious life to the help of the sick in the hospital, but his apostolate as a preacher was impeded because he was born with a speech defect that made him very difficult to be understood. No matter what zeal he put into his sermons he was always a disappointment for his hearers. After many years of efforts, he would often stop his sermons and cry in frustration, at being unable to communicate to others his burning love for Our Lord. Yet at last, after twelve years of struggles, Our Lady heard his prayers and miraculously his impediment disappeared in 1417. From that day forward and in thanksgiving for such a miracle he never let a day pass without preaching in honor of Our Lady.
One day, preaching in praise of the Blessed Virgin, he applied to Her the verse of the Apocalypse: “A great sign appeared in heaven, a Woman clothed with the sun...” At once a brilliant star appeared over his head. He was understood, when he spoke in Italian, by listeners of the Greek language who knew only their maternal tongue. The miracles that accompanied his preaching were numerous, and though he spoke very simply his words burned in the hearts of his hearers such that they embarked on a life of virtue with zeal and ease.
This devotion of our saint of today for Our Lady, the marvelous efficacity which it gave to his preaching, brings us to mind the preparation of our school for the consecration to Our Lady which will be in just 12 days. Our school, as we saw last week, is by its very nature a continuation and instrument of the magisterium of the Church, or rather of the preaching of the Church. Just as in the life of St. Bernadine we can see the enormous graces flowing from devotion to Our Lady in his preaching, we likewise beg of Our Lady for similar fruits flowing from the total consecration of our school to Our Lady.
We have seen the various mysteries of Our Lady, and yet there is one mystery that is most important for the work of our school and the work of education in general. Our Lady, we have seen, is the Immaculate Conception, she is also the Mother of God. Yet the work of the Redemption, of which she is an intrinsic part of, is shown especially by her presence at the foot of the Cross. She is not only the Mother of God, she is also our Mother. Yet she becomes our mother exactly at that moment when she stood at the foot of the cross.
It was in fulfilling her first religious duties as a mother, the presentation of the Child Jesus in the temple at Jerusalem, that her cooperation in the work of the Redemption was announced by St. Simeon. He said that a sword would pierce her heart [Lk 2,35]. And yet the Evangelist St. John tells us, that as Our Lord hung upon the Cross, there stood by him Mary, His Mother. What is astonishing, or rather supernatural, in the motherhood of Our Lady, is the two-fold love that unites her to her Son and to her mission in the Mystical Body.
On the one hand, like every mother, she loved the life of her Son, cherising it most of as it was a divine life, the life of the Son of God. No mother ever loved her child as the Virgin Mary, the holiest of all pure creatures, loved her Son. Her Immaculate Heart was pure in every respect, granting to that most pure maternal instinct the perfection of the most noble sentiments. Every mother worthy of the name would give their own lives for their children, as a mother by her very nature gives herself for others. No words, no description, no tears can do justice to what agony must have filled every part of her being upon seeing the tortures inflicted upon her Son.
Human nature, when put in confrontation with suffering which surpasses its ability to endure, is provided with such things as fainting spells and swoons which suspend the workings of our sensitive faculties in order to prevent those painful impressions from affecting the heart and even causing death. And yet we read in the Gospel that she stood at the Cross. She stood with all the strength of her soul. She stood, with her eyes fixed upon her Son as the sword pierced her heart. She stood in acceptation of that same sacrifice which the Son of God accomplished in that moment. The sacrifice that Our Lord offered at that moment was the same that she also offered - whereas He offered His human nature to God the Father, she offered Her only Son.
Although Our Lady loved the natural life of Our Lord in a degree commensurate with her perfection and dignity as mother, she also loved the decree of God that declared that the human race must be saved by sacrifice, by the only sacrifice that was at once human and divine. Just as Our Lord represented the new Adam, the redeemed humanity reconciled to God by the sacrifice of the Cross, so Our Lady represents and figures the new Eve, the mother of all the living who partake in the fruits of this one sacrifice. In offering of her Son to the torments of the Passion and the death of the Cross, she merits in a secondary manner the fullness of the merits of her Son.
And it is exactly on the Cross that Our Lord will recognize her merits and her intimate connection with that one sacrifice: Mother, behold thy Son. [Jn 19,26]. And in order to show us that all the graces that Our Lord won for on the Cross must pass also through her maternal hands, He then says to St. John: behold thy mother.
The reality of grace, in our present condition, cannot be separated from the reality of suffering, my dear faithful, especially in the work of education. Original sin has created a disorder in our nature that must be brought back into harmony with the original plan of God, and this disorder can only be reestablished by grace which flows from sacrifice. With every act of virtue there is something of a martyrdom and passion, that is to say, the death of sin so that grace might reign. Just as on the Cross the fault of the old Adam was washed away, so also by our daily mortifications and struggles our faults and imperfections are also slowly cleansed. And just as at the Cross, there stood Our Lady, so also in our carrying of the Cross in imitation of Our Lord, there must also be Our Lady, standing by and encouraging us.
IT is especially Our Lady that will remind us that learning and study is often not very pleasurable, and that it is in some ways very painful. And yet the rewards are infinitely greater than our meagre inconveniences. It is true that putting into memory all the facts and figures, and trying time and time again the same exercises with so little to show for it can be frustrating and even painful. And yet it is only painful if we try it without Our Lady. It is she that makes the Cross, by her presence alone, not only understandable, but even a paradise, for it is there that we receive her as our mother. It is there that she shows us the sweetness of love, a sweetness that flowers by what it offers, namely itself.
And so my dear students and dear faithful, let us put into practice this mystery of Our Lady by constantly reminding ourselves of her presence in the times of difficulty, and to call upon her aid. By this act of consecration we will, like the Apostle St. John, receive her unto his own. [Jn 19,27]. So then, in imitation of the great St. Bernadine of Sienna, and hoping likewise that Our Lady's intercession produce also extraordinary fruits through our school, let us pray to her, let us love her, let us do all through her through whom we have Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who liveth and reigneth world without end, Amen.
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