January 27, 2019

3^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time ( C )

The Task of Building...Nehemiah and our Schools

Msgr. Thomas Gervasio

Nehemiah is not a prophet we go to very often in our liturgy. His book describes a key moment in the life of the Jewish people—when they returned to Jerusalem after their 70 year exile in Babylon. Upon their return they found a decimated city and the holy temple in ruins. His was a mission of building and rebuilding. Nehemiah called the people to reestablish the life of Judaism both physically and spiritually.
 
The city, its walls, and the Temple had to be rebuilt but the people needed to rediscover their spiritual roots, their identity because in many ways they had forgotten who they were. In today’s reading Nehemiah recalls the great day when Ezra the priest read out the Torah (the first five books of Scripture) to the assembled people who stood from daybreak to midday to hear the word of God!  And we think that 10 minute homilies are long! The people’s reaction? Not frustration or impatience but a joy that brought them to tears. Why? Because they heard their story. They were rediscovering who they were and this encouraged them to build and rebuild their life as individuals and as a community.
 
Nehemiah has set a good course for my homily today as we gather for our prayerful beginning to Catholic Schools Week. The mission of a Catholic school is essentially that of building. It is given the sacred task of passing on the story of salvation, that is to say, transmitting the Faith, so that students will have the strength and courage to build their lives—not upon the shifting sands of our culture but upon the solid rock which is Christ.
 
Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia is a very serious writer about our culture. He writes: “[The] stubborn refusal to see anything beyond the horizon of this earthly life fills the air we now breathe. As St. Augustine said in his sermons, it’s no use complaining about the times, because we are times. How we live shapes them.
 
And when we finally learn to fill our hearts with something more than the noise and narcotics of the wounded societies we helped create; when we finally let our hearts rest in God as Augustine did; then—and only then—the world will begin to change, because God will use the witness of our lives to change it.” [Strangers in a Strange Land, 2017 p. 15-18]
 
I should like to think that in so many ways the Catholic School, our school, provides such that witness.
 
That was the belief of the late British Cardinal Basil Hume whose early priesthood was devoted to “school mastering.” He called it a “difficult art and also a noble one.” He also wrote that “...schoolwork is teamwork—the whole community must feel collectively responsible for all that goes on in the school. The community must be made to feel that they are part of the ‘show.’”[The Intentional Life, 1977 pp.102-103]
 
This is why we celebrate here...in the Lord’s house which is the home, the center, the heart of our parish. Every parishioner is part of the “show,” the mission of our school.
 
That mission is carried out generously and lovingly by our great principal, Maureen Tuohy, our faculty and staff. Today we salute them together with our PTA and School Board for all they do.
 
Ever confident in the Word of God, the power of his grace and ever joyful in what we believe as a Church, we humbly ask the Lord to prosper the work of our school. We cannot fail in turning to our Patroness, Our Lady of Sorrows, that she keep our students and alumni in her loving care. May the prophet, St. Nehemiah also come to our aid so that everyone involved in Catholic education may be great builders so that every student entrusted to our care can “learn, serve, lead and succeed.” [2019 Catholic Schools Week Theme]