Are we really educators who make a difference? Here are six tips for making that difference.
If to be Christian means to have ‘Christ in,’ then Christian education is a ‘Christ-in’ education—one in which Christ is seen more than heard, practised more than preached. This means that the educator must have ‘Christ in’ before he/she can give ‘Christ out.’ To have Christ in means to see Christ everywhere. How can we make this happen?
Perhaps, the first step is to visualise Christ in others—students, staff and parents. “I see Jesus in every human being,” said St. Teresa of Kolkata, “I say to myself, this is hungry Jesus, I must feed him. This is sick Jesus. This one has leprosy or gangrene; I must wash him and tend to him. I serve because I love Jesus.” This is to be a mystic daily. It leads us to desire deeply their good and to bless them from the heart. Tshering Palden Thinley, a Bhutanese Buddhist alumnus of our college, remembers the respect, cordiality and acceptance she experienced which soothened the initial apprehension she had about joining a Catholic college outside her country.
The second is to bring into the campus the ‘joy of the Gospel’ through one’s joyful life manifested in a smile. I can still see the smiling eyes of Sr Cyriac CMC of happy memory, who taught us science in middle school. The contents may be forgotten, but not her smiling countenance. A smile does the magic of putting others at ease. “We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do,” said St Theresa of Kolkata.
Fr Tomy Augustine SDB
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