Redeemer Revelations

Faith is trust, and our Christian faith is the trust we place in Jesus Christ. Faith is a gift, and so can't be taught, but there are many different ways to form Christian faith, and it is an ongoing process throughout a Christian's life. Each month, Redeemer Revelations, will touch on four different dimensions to help form the faith of those in our school division:

Human Formation

In his, Against Heresies, St. Ireneus wrote, "For the glory of God is the living man, and the life of man is the vision of God," and this dimension of faith formation addresses those aspects of our humanity such as our wellness, virtue, living a good life, and even entertainment.

Intellectual Formation

To paraphrase St. Thomas Aquinas' take on love in his Summa Theologiae, "We cannot love what we do not know," and this dimension of faith formation addresses our knowledge of the Christian religion, Catholicism, and how it works with our knowledge of Creation.

Spiritual Formation

"No one comes to the Father, but by me," are the words St. John puts in the the mouth of Jesus in his gospel, and this dimension of faith formation addresses our personal relationship with Christ through prayer, liturgy, scripture and sacrament.

Pastoral Formation

In St. Luke's gospel, Jesus puts his audience into the place of shepherds who have lost a lamb and asks who doesn't "go after the one which is lost, until he finds it?" By virtue of our baptisms, we are all pastors to whichever flock we care for, and this dimension of formation is particularly important for those who work with children as it addresses how we meet the needs of those in our care.

The return to work after a break can be stressful. There is so much to do, and so little time. A great way to manage stress is to laugh. Laughter has a great number of physiological benefits (which you can read about in this article from the Mayo Clinic), but it also helps improve your outlook on things.

Laughter also creates great emotional experiences that help anchor what we learn into our long term memory. Think of some of the earliest memories you have and how they are associated with some of the funniest memories you have.

Laughter also helps us experience life the way it was intended by God; a joy, an abundance of life with our cup overflowing.

Make sure that you find some moments for laughter with your friends and colleagues as you start off this new school year.

St. John Chrysostom

Patron of Constantinople, education, epilepsy, lecturers, orators, preachers

Bishop and Doctor of the Church

Feast Day: September 13

John, the great preacher (his name means “golden-mouthed”) from Antioch, was brought to Constantinople after a dozen years of priestly service in Syria, and became a bishop under the cloud of imperial politics.

If his body was weak, his tongue was powerful. The content of his sermons were never without a point. Sometimes the point stung the high and mighty. His lifestyle at the imperial court was not appreciated by many courtiers. John deplored the court protocol that accorded him precedence before the highest state officials.

His zeal led him to decisive action. Bishops who bribed their way into office were deposed. Many of his sermons called for concrete steps to share wealth with the poor. The rich did not appreciate hearing from John that private property existed because of Adam’s fall from grace any more than married men liked to hear that they were bound to marital fidelity just as much as their wives were. When it came to justice and charity, John acknowledged no double standards.

Theophilus, archbishop of Alexandria, and Empress Eudoxia were determined to discredit John. Theophilus feared the growth in importance of the Bishop of Constantinople and took occasion to charge John with fostering heresy. Theophilus and other angered bishops were supported by Eudoxia. The empress resented his sermons contrasting gospel values with the excesses of imperial court life. Whether intended or not, sermons mentioning the lurid Jezebel and impious Herodias were associated with the empress, who finally did manage to have John exiled. He died in exile in 407.

Source: Adapted from Franciscan Media (https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-john-chrysostom)

Way back in 1995, Joan Osborne released her only hit song "One Of Us". Actually, it's also Eric Bazilian's hit song too; he wrote it. It's a catchy tune and ultimately was trying to get us to think about what it would be like if God were just one of us. It asks what we would do if God had a name, or what he would look like, and what kind of impact it would have on us if God were just a slob like one of us. It was a bit of a critique on God, since He is so often envisioned by those who don't know Him as being rather distant and unrelatable.

The reality is, naturally this is coming from a Christian perspective, that God is one of us; just a slob like one of us; just a stranger on the bus. That's the whole point of Christianity! The Word of God, the Logos, took on human flesh—incarnated (lit. in- + carne [meat/flesh])—and became one of us; fully human without losing the smallest amount of divinity. We like to say that he 'became fully human, in all ways but sin', but that qualifier isn't really necessary. Sin is entirely and utterly inhuman. Every sin we make, makes us less human.

We have to really keep this in mind though. God isn't so distant as we might imagine. He knows first hand what it is like to live a fully human life. The gospel of Luke tells us that, after Mary and Joseph found him at the temple, Jesus grew in wisdom and stature. (Luke 2:52) God emptied himself (a principle called kenosis in theological circles) to such an extent in the Incarnation that he had to grow in wisdom as a human child. For any of us who have taught teenagers (Jesus was 12 when he was found at the Temple) know just how much wisdom needed to grow there, and just how much of a slob Jesus might have been. Mary had her work cut out for her, certainly. Surely Jesus would have listened to his father and mother when they told him to clean up his room (see the Ten Commandments), to do otherwise would have been a sin, but that doesn't mean he would have remembered to do it regularly; a messy room is not necessarily a sin.

So then, if God is one of us, just a slob like me, what happens to my experience of God when I actually realize this and accept it? How do I feel when I realize that God struggled with human life? Knows the human condition as intimately as I do? Felt pain and isolation (nobody calling on the phone). Joy and laughter. The fun of a party (Jesus liked to drink ... see Luke 7:34 and John 2:1-12), and the grief of losing a parent at a young age. Do I realize that I don't have a God who is so distant from me? So unrelatable?

Do I realize what it means about me if God, in His divinity, took on my humanity?

1 World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation

2 Bl. André Grasset (Memorial)

3 St. Gregory the Great (Memorial)

4 Bl. Dina Bélanger (Memorial)

5

6

7

8 Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Feast)

9 St. Peter Claver (Memorial)

10

11

12 Most Holy Name of Mary (Memorial)

13 St. John Chrysostom (Memorial)

14 Exaltation of the Holy Cross (Feast)

15 Our Lady of Sorrows (Memorial)

16 Sts. Cornelius and Cyprian (Memorial)

17 St. Robert Bellarmine (Memorial)

18

19 St. Januarius (Memorial)

20 Sts. Andrew Kim Tae-Gŏn, Paul Chŏng Ha-Sang, and Companions (Memorial)

21 St. Matthew (Feast)

22

23 St. Pius of Pietrelcina (Memorial)

24 Bl. Émilie Tavernier-Gamelin (Memorial)

25 World Day of Migrants and Refugees; Sts. Cosmas and Damian (Memorial)

26 Sts. Jean de Brébeuf, Isaac Jogues, and Companions (Feast)

27 St. Vincent de Paul (Memorial)

28 St. Wenceslaus (Memorial) and St. Lawrence Ruiz, and Companions (Memorial)

29 Sts. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael (Feast)

30 St. Jerome (Memorial)

For Catholics, church isn't just a place we go to learn about God. For Catholics, church is where we have an encounter with Jesus Christ. We hear His words in scripture, we see His image and likeness around us when we offer peace, we build our own bodies with His substance. We go there to receive Him, in so many ways, so that His good news can sent out into the world. Ite, missa est.

Please make sure you go to church; start your week off at the source. There are so many times you can go, and there's no better spiritual formation. If there's something about church that you don't like, then get involved and make it better.

We should always try to support the church in our own parish, but that's not always possible. We're so spread out at CTR Catholic, and people travel, so I've linked the site below for you to find the times at churches, chapels, shrines, etc. closest to you, wherever you might be.

https://masstimes.org/

The Abolition of the Death Penalty

We pray that the death penalty, which attacks the dignity of the human person, may be legally abolished in every country.

• For all students and families in Catholic education: For a safe and fruitful school year, we pray to the Lord

• For Catholic Education: that our year of “Walking Together in Catholic Education” may be rooted in the synodal practices of listening, dialogue and discernment, we pray to the Lord

• For clergy and school staff: For love and grace to serve Catholic education with humility and zeal, we pray to the Lord

• For trustees who have been entrusted with the sacred gift of Catholic education, for their wisdom and their leadership, we pray to the Lord

Teachers are blessed with great opportunity. We have the ability to greet the very image and likeness of God into our classrooms when each and every child, parent, and colleague walks through the door. Yes, God took on humanity (see above), but humanity isn't so foreign a concept.

It becomes easier to be pastoral with those we need to work with when we see God's own image before us, even in the most difficult of our clientele. It gives us pause. It gives us a chance to reframe how we look at the situation. It gives us a chance to honour their dignity; regardless of how undignified they might appear.

Seeing people in this way doesn't mean that we have to get all soft. Many an image and likeness of God has made a poor decision in exercising their freedom. Rather it means that when we correct the image and likeness of God, we do so to help them see what they are for themselves. It helps us see their needs, not our own. It helps us meet them where they are, not where we might want them to be.

Look for God in all those you meet this new school year.

Christ The Redeemer (CTR) Catholic Schools operates in seven communities throughout the province of Alberta providing authentic Catholic education to students in 15 traditional schools, four Outreach schools and a distance education school.

Email: ggay@redeemer.ab.ca
Website: redeemer.ab.ca
Location: 23 Riverside Drive, Okotoks, AB, Canada
Phone: 403-938-2659
Facebook: facebook.com/CTRcatholic
Twitter: @ChristRedeemer1