DEDICATION OF FATHER LOPEZ CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL - August 2008
Today, the Church celebrates the Transfiguration of the Lord – as we have heard described in the gospel reading from St. Matthew. This is a particularly apt day for us to bless and dedicated the new facilities of Father Lopez Catholic High School – which as you can see has undergone its own transfiguration.
St. Thomas Aquinas, a great doctor of the Church and a Dominican – like the Sisters who first taught at Father Lopez fifty years ago – in writing about this event in the gospel in which Jesus showed his divinity to his apostles said:
“At his Transfiguration, Christ showed his disciplines the splendor of his beauty to which he will shape and color those who are his own. He will reform our lowness configured to the body of his glory.”
Catholic education, at its best, tries to do the same thing. Catholic education wants to shape and color our students in the image of Christ. We do this by showing the splendor of his beauty, the splendor of his truth.
It is a formidable task – especially given the increasing secularism of our culture. And of course, precisely because of the secularism of our culture, it is a vitally necessary and indispensable task. As I have said, the task of Catholic education is to teach “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. When society reduces faith and religion to the private sphere, to a matter of individual subjectivism, it denies something of the whole truth about man: the truth about his purpose and reason for existence, the truth about his destiny, the truth about the necessary means for human flourishing.
Catholic education is valued and treasured because it can teach the whole truth – and in doing so hopes to form and shape the whole person. Our High Schools send 98.8% of their graduates to college. We teach our kids how to do well; but, more importantly, we are also teaching our kids how to do and be good.
No one needs to tell you how difficult the mission of Catholic Schools is in today’s world. To accomplish our mission we swim against the stream of our culture; and we do so at great expense and sacrifice. Today this new school has come about thanks to the generosity and sacrifices of many, many people. And parents must continue to sacrifice – tuition is not cheap. It is a great investment – one that will pay rich benefits in this life and hopefully in the next; but I do not deny that it is a sacrifice. And though the larger society benefits, to date a prejudiced understanding of what “separation of Church and state” means denies a whole series of assistance, like tuition tax credits, vouchers, subsidies for books, etc. to parents who chose to educate their children in Catholic schools. In November, two amendments to the Florida Constitution are proposed – amendments seven and nine – that may rectify this injustice, an injustice codified in the State of Florida’s Constitution when a hundred years ago it incorporated the anti-Catholic language of the so called “Blaine Amendment”. I hope everyone here helps assure the passage of these amendments.
Pope Benedict XVI last year gave us his second encyclical, Spe Salvi, (On Christian hope). In this beautiful letter, he reminds us that a world without God is a world without hope. He has put his finger on the crisis of modernity: in exiling God, in sidelining him so that we pretend to live as if he did not matter, people lose sight of the future, they will not sacrifice or risk themselves today for a tomorrow of promise. They have lost hope. As Catholics we are called to be witnesses to hope. And Catholic education, in the words of Thomas Aquinas, in shaping and coloring those who are our own in the image of Christ, prepares students for a future of hope.
Jesus’ transfiguration on Mount Tabor came shortly after Peter’s profession of faith and Jesus’ prediction of his passion and death. The Transfiguration prepared Jesus and the disciples for the journey to Jerusalem where he would suffered and be crucified. He gave them a glimpse of his future glory so that they might endure the trials of the present with hope.
And that is precisely what the liturgy does for us as Catholics, which is why the Eucharist is the source and summit of Christian life. As the ancient Fathers of the Church taught, the Eucharist is a foretaste, an anticipation of future glory. The liturgy, especially the Eucharist, makes the future present today. And that future is not one of calamity and death but one of hope and life. In Christ, we are made one; in Christ, barriers and walls are taken down; in Christ, the ancient and present foes of humankind – the devil, sin and death – are overcome.
Faith is lived in charity, in love – for a faith without works is dead. And what you have done here in bringing to completion this new campus for Father Lopez Catholic Prep has been a labor of love and a living out of your faith.
But hope gives it all context. Hope tells us that faith has a future, that love has a destiny.
August 6, 2008 |
