Education Week in the Church Calendar

The saints this week seem to draw our attention to the search for wisdom. Sunday showed us the three wise men who bowed to the infant savior. They looked for him first in the palace of King Herod, but weren't too high and mighty to bend the knee before the baby enthroned in a feedbox for animals. What does that tell us about wisdom? It's humble.

My favorite pictures of the three kings illustrates an elderly king, crown removed, kneeling and kissing the Christ Child's foot as if to say, like St. John the Baptist, "I am unworthy to go higher than the sole of his foot." We grow in wisdom through humility.

Then on Monday and Tuesday the Church sets before us St. Elizabeth Seton and St. John Neumann, pioneers of Catholic education, especially for the poor. Education in the faith is crucial, these saints show us, to grow in wisdome and holiness in imitation of Christ. Then tomorrow we are brought back to humility with the optional memorial of Bl. Andre Bessette, a humble brother who could barely read or write. He was the doorkeeper for 40 years at the College of Notre Dame and then at St. Joseph Oratory in Montreal for the rest of his life. He was so sought after for spiritual counsel that he was assigned secretaries to help him answer his correspondence. This teaches us that education is not primarily a matter of degrees, but of humility of heart. The charwoman who cleans the college offices may be theologically smarter than the apostate head of a Theology Department or the Catholic Theological Society.

St. Raymond of Penafort is the final saint for the week. He was a brilliant Dominican priest who was an authority in canon law and a college professor. At the time, the writings on canon law were confusing and contradictory. St. Raymond's work was so clear that the pope declared in a papal bull that they should be the only ones taught in the schools. (Doesn't this remind you of the battle in catechesis with the coloring books published by Benziger and Sadlier with the marshmallow Jesus who taught about luv, without doctrine?) It was at the suggestion of St. Raymond that Thomas Aquinas wrote the Summa Contra Gentiles.

With all these wonderful saints, this week is a great one to contemplate the importance of Catholic education and to remember that fear of the Lord (being humble before God) is the beginning of wisdom. These saints had different talents, but they used them to advance the knowledge and understanding of the faith. Wouldn't they be great friends to take into final examinations?