Our Catholic faith is more than feelings and sentiments. Our faith has a content. It has truth. And that truth has a name: Jesus!
In celebrating National Catholic Schools Week, we are reminded that the deepest aim of Catholic education is to help our young people to know Jesus. This is our deepest and most important aim because when we know Jesus, we meet the living God. And when we meet Him, we find the answers to the questions that are born in our hearts: who am I? where did I come from and where am I going? what should I be living for? what is the ‘good life’ and why should I even want to be a good person? what is it that God wants from me and from us? what path should I and we follow to find happiness?
So, Catholic education starts with Jesus and the Truth that He reveals in His Gospels. He does not teach us science or grammar. He does not teach us how to specialize in a certain profession or how to use technology. What Jesus teaches is more fundamental: He shows us that the world has an order, that the world has a purpose, and it has a design. And Jesus shows us that we are made for greater things, that we are all made for love and holiness and glory.
Let us rejoice in this: Jesus teaches us that God has the plan for our lives. He teaches us that every one of us is a child of God, made to love and serve Him and to serve our brothers and sisters with a generous heart.
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La “primera misión” de nuestra escuela parroquial es (y debe ser) un encuentro personal con Jesús y la salvación de las almas. Nuestra escuela es académicamente excelente, pero tomamos en serio nuestra obligación de enseñar y proclamar el Evangelio de Jesús con la aplicación del rigor académico. En vez de operar simplemente como una escuela privada con “algo de sabor religioso,” estamos convencidos que nuestra escuela debe ser un lugar de aprendizaje donde se aprenden distintos puntos de vista e ideas, respetando la libertad religiosa, pero sin comprometer las creencias católicas.
