Lessons From a Not-So-Wise Missionary

A few days ago I was in the staff room talking with another teacher and he was telling me that he could get the students excited for anything. I was taken aback at first by what seemed to me as arrogance, but  I smiled and said “can you get them to love Jesus? Heaven knows they need Him.” He looked at me and said “Miss, are you in love with Jesus? How can you expect them to love something you don’t?” I replied by saying “well, I guess, yes. I am.” He then pushed me further and said “does everyone who knows you know that you are hopelessly in love with this guy? If you aren’t sure, than you can bet your students aren’t sure.”

Aaaaaand cue freak out.

He wasn’t being arrogant, he was trying to make me think about my own relationship and if it matched with my expectations that I have for my students. I walked around for about a day and a half thinking, “can they tell? Do they know? I hope they know! How can I make them know? Should I carry my rosary around? Is that false piety? I should just ask someone, no that would sound ridiculous…I really do love Jesus. But I am so human, so full of misery.” It was as if every sin and mistake I have ever made came rushing to my mind, and I was horrified. Am I doing anything for these kids here? I don’t even know if I am right for this, they need someone holier than I.

After a few days, I calmed down, prayed a lot, and came to this conclusion: I am never going to love Him enough.  Now, that doesn't mean that I just live my life passively and and stop trying. But if I start to think of showing others that I love Him, it will become just that, a show. Love isn’t a show, it’s a quiet trust. A trust that says “I know You are in control, do with me as You will. I know You love me, use me to draw others to Your Heart.” One of my favorite quotes from Blessed Mother Teresa (I have many) is: “Give yourself to God, He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you trust much more in His mercy than in your misery.”

Another thing I learned from this conversation was that we need each other’s holiness. I was first introduced to this concept when I read Dostoevsky’s “Brother’s Karamazov.” Father Zosima, a wise elder, tells Alyosha (one of the brothers) “if you had been better, your brother would have been too.” He doesn’t say this to make Aloysha feel guilty or distraught, but to awaken him to the reality of the connectedness of sin and that, as brothers and sisters, we have a responsibility to each other.  This conversation brought to my mind yet again that God wants me to be holy, not just for me but for others as well.  I’m not trying to say that if you make a mistake than the people are around you won’t gain eternal life, because that would suggest distrust in God’s mercy, but your good actions (and bad for that matter) have an effect on people whether you intend it or not.

This was precisely the point that the other teacher was trying to get across to me, my students need me to be holy and I need them to be holy.  Being a good religion teacher requires that I strive after God and live a life worthy of love. Is that daunting? Yes.  But it’s also true.  How incredibly humbling it is when I encounter Christ through one of them, or when I learn more about God through their words or actions. Here I am, trying to teach them theology, and He is teaching me more about His mercy. Praise God.