Teaching: helping others realize their potential

There is the example of the young Bishop Joseph Bernandin who was a good administrator but never learned how to pray. He was humble enough to ask his fellow priests "teach me how to pray." They allowed their bishop to attend their sessions of prayer, and gradually the bishop learned that the first step was to set aside time on a daily basis to be alone with God. His priests were his teachers, passing on information to make the bishop’s life prayerful.

In all matters of Teaching the one gifted assists another to acquire new knowledge, guiding them in new ways that will enhance their lives, helping them act in more effective ways, and providing information in an attractive way. What is in this for the teacher? A sense of satisfaction as one watches another develop spiritually, a deeper gratitude for God’s personal gifts to oneself, and an eagerness to continue passing on what was so freely given by the Giver of all good things. Even if one does not see the results of the Teaching, there is an inner sense of peace in knowing that one gave one’s best of what God gave so freely.

Teachers make a difference in the lives of those they teach. A couple who are former teachers delight in their daughter who has just received her teaching certificate and has a job awaiting her in the fall. She is not going to the big cities to share her new-found knowledge; rather she will take her skill and her love of music to rural America, in fact to southwest Kansas. This is an example of parents who are teachers passing on their own zeal to spread truth and enhance lives.

A Carmelite priest, Pere Jacques Bunel, made evident the charism of Teaching, a kind of teaching that required heroism during the regime of Hitler. Bunel’s student body consisted of Jewish children in his church school in France. He saw Teaching as a call to prepare his most unpopular students, Jewish youth, for their responsibility in what had become Nazi-occupied France. He proved by his example that Christianity and the Jewish notions of humility and abasement before God did not contradict the so-called courage of Aryan ideology. His creed was "death is preferable to dishonor." He taught this to his students when it was risky to even think such thoughts.

His methods were discovered, and in 1940 when French freedom collapsed, the priest spent five months in a prisoner-of-war camp. Three Jewish students were taken into Pere Bunel’s confidence; later one of them betrayed him. He was called to military service to defend France. He served as a mess officer in the France Army; but as ever the teacher, he met twice a week with his followers to discuss social and religious issues. When offered ransom money, he refused, saying that he was needed among the 2,500 French prisoners. He was allowed to celebrate Mass but his sermons were subject to scrutiny. Pere Bunel was moved to care for those in the infirmary, an infirmary that was more like a cage for dogs. But he was able to change it into an oasis of gentleness. Finally he was sent to a stone quarry where he died June 2, 1945, a victim of hard work and pneumonia, just as the American army moved in to liberate the prisoners. The master teacher had given his life for the less fortunate. "Whatever you do to the least, you do to Me."