When Our Students Suffer
By Amelia Hejna
I can’t count the number of times that I have worried about a student. Maybe it was the high school freshman who worked so hard to hide the cut marks on his wrist, the student who slept during every study hall and any class she could because she was dealing with untreated mental illness and an unsupportive family, or the sweet, insecure kids who dilly-dallied on their way to lunch because they didn’t feel welcome at any table. Gosh, they steal our hearts, don’t they?
I’m pregnant now and expecting my first biological child, but I feel like I’ve been a spiritual mom to many, many kids over my past eight years in the classroom. My own mom, a teacher at heart, although never professionally, has often reminded me that the greatest suffering is Mary’s suffering: standing at the foot of the cross and watching her beloved Son die. Our Lady must have felt so powerless, absolutely powerless.
“How have you made it this far?” I’ve asked some of my more well-seasoned colleagues, pros who have been teachers for decades. It’s hard for any of us to put into words what keeps us going when we’re powerless against the suffering of someone we love, even if we’re not related by blood. Pope Benedict, in his address to Catholic Educators at the Catholic University of America in 2008, said it’s all about entrusting ourselves to God. Of course, in entrusting our own hearts to God we can give Him everyone on our hearts, including our students and their families.
I love how Pope Benedict put it:
“Yet we all know, and observe with concern, the difficulty or reluctance many people have today in entrusting themselves to God. It is a complex phenomenon and one which I ponder continually. While we have sought diligently to engage the intellect of our young, perhaps we have neglected the will. Subsequently we observe, with distress, the notion of freedom being distorted. Freedom is not an opting out. It is an opting in – a participation in being itself”(9).
Yes, we are all scared to entrust ourselves to a God we can’t see or hear. Sometimes it’s almost impossible for us to believe that He is a good God when we see the most vulnerable get hurt; yet, Mary believed He was always good, even when she held her dead son in her arms. Meditating on the Pietà or praying the Stations of the Cross or the Divine Mercy Chaplet offer us pathways into this deep, mysterious faith, a faith that is now gloriously radiant in the Queen of our Resurrected Lord, our Regina Caeli.
As educators, it’s tempting to use our freedom to opt out rather than opt in, to hold our students and their families at an emotional arm’s length because there is so much to suffer when you teach and share life with 20 or 120 students. But no, we must freely choose to share their struggles with them. We’re not the Savior (and never will be, thank heavens!) but we know the Savior, and we can invite Him into whatever our spiritual children experience.
Pope Benedict closed his address by saying:
“To all of you I say: bear witness to hope. Nourish your witness with prayer. Account for the hope that characterizes your lives (cf. 1 Pet 3:15) by living the truth which you propose to your students. Help them to know and love the One you have encountered, whose truth and goodness you have experienced with joy”(20).
Yes, we must pray each morning so that we go to school nourished and ready to witness. We must let Jesus encounter us again and again, especially in the questions and the aches that accompany all parenting, spiritual and physical. Most of all, we must account for the hope that characterizes our lives: namely, that He has risen, He is alive, and He walks with us and our students every step of the way.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Meeting with Catholic Educators: Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI. Apostolic Journey to the United States of America and Visit to the United Nations Organization Headquarters, 17 April 2018, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC. Address.
*In-text citations refer to paragraph numbers added by this author for ease of location.
You may find the full address HERE
