This evening, my wife and I just finished praying a rosary. She asked me if I would talk about a subject that came up in one of her theology classes that she’s currently taking at Catholic University. She was actually reading something from St. Augustine, assigned to her, discussing weariness in the work of teaching, when teachers or catechists become weary, when they just get tired. And the work of teaching really becomes difficult. She asked me if I would talk about it because it’s obvious that that’s one area I don’t think I’ve struggled with. I see other teachers, other Christians, other parents struggle with it. I think I know what the cause of that trouble is and how to avoid it.
I’ve talked about this a lot through the years. But when I read questions and comments from parents and hear things other Christians say, I know that the message I’ve shared doesn’t get through very well. It’s just that the truth on this subject is almost too good to be true. Parents and teachers bring misery on themselves because of what is really a false idea about teaching.
So again, the question my wife asked me to talk about was, how can teachers, catechists, and parents avoid growing weary in their work, in their teaching, in their catechizing, in their parenting? How can they avoid getting weary? And I’m not talking about physical weariness. I’m talking about just emotional and spiritual weariness. How can that be avoided? And if it’s too late to avoid it, if someone’s already stuck in it, how can they get themselves out of it?
I’ll admit there are times where I just feel a little bit weary, but I can quickly rouse myself out of it because I know what to think about. And that’s what I’d like to talk about tonight. The problem has to do with a teacher’s understanding of the goal of teaching. Understanding the goal of teaching, understanding the goal of catechizing, understanding the goal of parenting, and I’m going to explain this. Most of the people who listen to it are going to say, “Oh, yeah, I know that.” And then they’re not going to practice it. And that’s the difference.
It has to move from being something that we acknowledge, even understand, to something that we actually practice, something we actually do, so that we can enjoy the fruit of it. It doesn’t matter if we’re familiar with the idea. Doesn’t matter if we can repeat it. It matters if we do it. If we actually allow the idea to work itself out in our lives, in what we do, in what we think, and how we act, in what we try to accomplish each day, and so on. If we understand the true goal in teaching, catechizing, and parenting, it’s within our power to achieve. We can be certain that we’ve achieved the goal. We can go to bed at night happy, satisfied, feeling that gratification, knowing that we’ve achieved our goal.
So, what is the goal of teaching? When I set out to teach? When I wake up and think about the work of the Classical Liberal Arts Academy? When I think about conversations that I have with people through the day, when I think about parenting my own children, what’s the goal? This is what makes or breaks teaching. What makes or breaks catechizing? What makes or breaks parenting? What is the goal?
To get started with this idea, I’d like to go back to an Old Testament passage that I talk about quite a bit in my talks. It’s from the prophet Ezekiel. In the Old Testament book of Ezekiel, the prophet, there’s a passage where God calls to the prophet. He calls him the watchman of Israel, the watchman. So, we’ve got to get this image in our minds of what a watchman is. Think of a man, let’s say on a tower, along the walls of the city, or maybe out on a hilltop. And his duty is to watch. When other men go to sleep, when other men aren’t paying attention, when other men are busy with just the ordinary affairs of life, the duty of the watchman is to keep watch, to keep his eyes out, to make sure that an enemy doesn’t come upon the people by surprise. That’s the duty of the watchman. And it’s an important image because it shows us the spirit that a preacher, teacher, catechist, or parent is supposed to have. We are called in this prophetic aspect of our Christian lives to do the work of watchmen, to watch. And we’re exhorted and warned to watch all through the Scriptures to the very end. Be sober, be vigilant, be watchful, for your enemy the devil prowls about like a roaring lion. We’re told to be watchful, to be circumspect, to be constantly paying attention, not to get caught up fooling around, distracted by all kinds of cares of this life, but to be watchful.
We’re called the watchmen as far as we have a prophetic duty as Christians. God calls to Ezekiel calling him a watchman. And he tells him that it’s his duty to say to the people, if you don’t turn away from your sins and do what is good, you will perish. It’s the duty of the watchman to warn others of the danger that they’re in. The watchman keeps watch and warns the people when he sees evil coming or when he sees them doing something foolish, he’s to warn them. He has a duty to warn them.
There are a number of possible situations that arise in light of this duty, I would say four possible outcomes. The first is that the watchman does his job, fulfills his duty, and warns the people of trouble, of a need to repent, to be obedient. The watchman faithfully fulfills his duty, the people or person hears the watchman’s warning and amends his life. That’s the best situation. The watchman gives the warning, the person hears and repents, and then saves his life. God tells the watchman that he will be rewarded for his faithfulness, and the man who turns away from his sin will also be rewarded.
Option number two is that the watchman faithfully carries out his duty and warns another person and the person ignores or refuses to heed the watchman’s warning. He goes on in his evil doing and perishes. But God tells the watchman that because he issued the warning and did his job, his soul shall be spared. He will not be held accountable for the sin, the persistent sin of that person because the person was warned and the person chose to persist in disobedience. The watchman did his duty and saved his soul.
The third option is that the watchman does not do his duty, does not give the warning. But this other person on his own or maybe inspired by God’s grace or moved by someone else or something else, turns away from sin. That man will be rewarded for his repentance and the watchman may be punished for his failure to discharge his duty.
The last and worst of all circumstances is that the watchman fails to give the warning, the man persists in his sin, the man perishes in his sin, and the watchman also perishes and is punished because he dies with the soul of that man led to his charge. This is the message that God gives to the watchman. And it’s important because it reveals to us the duty of the watchman. It helps us to understand what God demands of us and what God does not demand of us, what God holds us accountable for and what God does not hold us accountable for. And it’s very important.
Our duty is to preach, our duty is to teach, our duty is to warn. And that’s it. The active work of teaching or preaching, or exhorting. That’s our duty. And this is why I said before we can go to bed at night knowing that we’ve done our duty. God never really asks of us anything difficult, anything too hard for us. It’s not difficult to teach the truth. It’s not difficult to preach the gospel. It’s not difficult to warn people of the need to repent. Our duty is not difficult. What makes it feel difficult is other problems in our lives, in our spiritual lives, in our desires that get in the way. We might desire some outcome, some other thing. And we think, “Oh, if I teach this or say this, then I might lose this.” That’s the problem.
So what God asks us to do if our hearts are right, if we’re thinking about things we should be thinking about, desiring the things we should be desiring, living in simplicity, like Jesus says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” if our treasure that we seek is in heaven, the work that God asks us to do will not be difficult. It’s difficult for those who are divided, for those who are conflicted in their desires. We can go to bed at night knowing that we have taught the truth, we have preached the gospel, we have warned against disobedience. We can go to bed, close our eyes, and rest in peace because our duty is to preach, our duty is to warn, to teach. Our duty is not to actually produce the outcome. That’s not our duty.
Man is a creature composed of body and soul, made in the likeness and image of God. His likeness consists primarily in the soul. This likeness primarily consists of the fact that the soul has understanding and free will. All obedience, for it to be obedience, must come
in freedom. And so that’s why our duty is to preach, to warn, to teach, and leave the response with the hearer knowing that we are not accountable for the choices and decisions that a person makes, provided that we have taught the truth, preached the gospel, warned them of disobedience. We’re not responsible for the decisions that others make. We’re not responsible for the outcomes of others’ lives. The work we’re called to do is simple: to preach, to teach, to warn. That’s our duty and we can discharge that duty quite easily as long as our desires are right.
Now, this is part of the duty of a teacher. The duty of a teacher is to teach the truth, preach the gospel, and warn of the dangers of disobedience. And we can do this and we can know that we have done it. And we can rest in peace with a good conscience knowing that we have done our duty and that the Lord can be expected to say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” We’re not responsible for the outcomes chosen by other human souls. Now, if a person chooses to throw away the doctrine of free will, which is very common in modern society, if a person chooses to ignore free will and try to take control of another person, like a parent who tries to live vicariously through his child and force the child to be something that the child hasn’t chosen to be, there can be an appearance of success for a time. And the parent can say, “Look, I know that this behavior is God’s will. And therefore, I think that by whatever means, I cause my child or my student, or my fellow Christian, my neighbor to do this. That’s my job.” And that’s false. That’s false because God Himself respects and really is the source of man’s free will. God wants man to choose to follow him out of love and gratitude and trust, not out of fear, not by force, but by love, and gratitude, and trust. And God does enough in every man’s life to earn that love, and gratitude, and trust. And therefore, any man who chooses not to obey, out of love and gratitude and trust will be given what they desire, which is eternal separation from God, which is what hell is. God respects human freedom so much that he will comply with a man’s desire to separate himself from God forever if man so chooses. That’s how important free will is.
So, as teachers, as catechists, as parents, we are not responsible for the outcomes, which are controlled by the free will of other people. That includes our children, that includes our students, that includes our closest friends, relatives, neighbors, and so on. We’re responsible to teach, we’re responsible to preach, we’re responsible to warn, we’re responsible to model right behavior. And all of those things we can do. But we are not responsible to force outcomes. And the attempt, the misguided attempt to force outcomes is what worries, what exhausts, what discourages and depresses teachers, and catechists, and parents. The attempt to force outcomes and to imagine, wrongly, that God holds us accountable for the outcomes of other people’s lives, that is the source of weariness, of exhaustion, and so on.
This is why I say if we think rightly about teaching, about the goal of catechizing, about the goal of preaching and parenting, if we think rightly about the goal, we should have a positive attitude. We should be confident, we should be happy because, again, as long as we’re not overwhelmed and pulled aside by some disordered desire. What God asks of us is really not that difficult.
It’s also good, you know, we thought about the watchmen. It’s also good to think about the image of a Christian as a messenger. If I am talking to someone about the Christian faith, and they get upset with the content of what I’m sharing with them, I can put my hands up and say, “Look, there’s no point getting angry at me. I’m not the creator of the world. I didn’t design these things. I’m not the judge. I’m not the lawgiver. I’m just the messenger. If you have a problem with this commandment, if you have a problem with this teaching, that problem is ultimately between you and the source of that teaching, the source of that commandment. That’s not my problem. I’m just the messenger. I’m just the mailman delivering the mail.”
Through history, the messenger had a very significant role. It’s a pretty radical job if you think about it. Imagine there are two kings, and they’re at war with one another, and they bitterly hate one another. I mean, murderously hate one another. They’re engaged in a terrible battle between their two kingdoms. They’ve got tons of men on both sides being killed. There could be all kinds of atrocities and terrible things going on, just total war conditions. And the messenger was sent from the one king to the other to stand before his face and deliver messages that were not necessarily pleasant. And that messenger understood that his role as a messenger was protected. Messengers were not considered responsible for their message. They were just the carriers of the message. But nevertheless, a messenger had to travel from one king to the other, knowing that what he had to share was going to make that other king’s blood boil, possibly insult the other king.
A good example of this, and again, I mention this film, this play all the time, is Shakespeare’s “Henry V.” If you’ve never read the play, that’s bad enough. But if you’ve never seen the film by Kenneth Branagh, you have no excuse. You need to watch it. It’s a great film that presents Shakespeare’s play “Henry V,” a play about a famous Catholic English King, Henry V. In that play, you get to see the role of the messenger going back and forth. And you can see that the messenger, you know, he’s not responsible for anything going on. And he consequently is supposed to be protected. But still, the messenger puts himself in some dangerous situations.
We, as Christians, are the messengers. We bring the message from the king, as it were, to his people, and we’re there to constantly remind everyone of what the king has said. This is why Jesus refers to his followers as the salt of the earth and the light of the world. They have this effect wherever they are. They’re the watchmen, they’re the messengers. They’re the eyes and ears and mouthpieces of the king. And sometimes when we share the message, and let’s be honest, if we don’t share the message like a messenger, we can be annoying. And if we’re annoying, if we present the message as if we’re the source of the message, or as if we ourselves don’t also need to be careful to heed the message, then somebody could punch us in the mouth. And that’s not persecution. That’s provocation, that’s not Christian suffering. We should have the disposition of a messenger. We should be indifferent. We should be straightforward, simple, humble, and so on. There’s no pressure. We’re messengers.
Again, if we understand the goal, what our objective actually is, it’s an easy one. And it’s one that we can go to bed at night knowing that we have fulfilled, and we won’t grow weary. We won’t grow weary from serving as messengers in the sense that I’m talking about this spiritual, emotional weariness in Christian teaching, or catechizing, or parenting. We won’t grow weary if we understand what our job is. In fact, it’ll be joyful because we’ll know that we’re being faithful and obedient. We’re being good and faithful servants, we’re being the watchmen and the messenger, we’re being the salt of the earth and the light of the world. We’re doing our job. And that gratification that we feel as a result of doing our job should make us happy and should be a source of energy for that work.
This weariness of soul, this emotional weariness, spiritual weariness, is usually caused by us having some goal that is not proper for teaching. We’re concerned about outcomes, we’re trying to force outcomes. And that can’t be done. And sometimes, you know, if a person is working for a school, or working for a church, volunteering as a church, if the administration puts a lot of pressure on outcomes and puts all that pressure on the teachers, doesn’t put that pressure on the students, doesn’t put some of that pressure on the parents, doesn’t put some of that pressure on themselves, so that each person involved is doing his own job, but leaves it all on the teachers, so that everyone stands around criticizing… I’m sorry, leaves it all on the students or the teachers, that can become very worrying. But that’s the sign of a poorly administered school where the administrator himself has things upside down.
So, bad schooling, a bad school model, a bad school administrator, a bad curriculum, a bad school mission or vision, a church ministry or faith formation program that’s disordered, all of these things can put burdens on teachers that God himself doesn’t put on any teachers and can just wear them out. And that could be what we felt or what we feel when we have this sense of weariness.
As I said, sometimes I’ll experience that for a brief time. Because this is one concept that’s clear in my head as a teacher. I know what my job is. And I know what’s not my job. But usually, when I do start to get frustrated or feel myself discouraged as a teacher, it’s because I’m trying to control outcomes. And there’s just no way to do that. You can fake it, you can cheat, you can help a student more than you really should. But if that student is acting like a piece of driftwood, you can’t fool yourself for long. That student is going to have negative consequences to deal with. And they’re going to be that student’s consequences. You’ve got to make sure as a teacher, as a parent, as a catechist, you have to make sure that
you do your job. You prepare everything, you present everything, you explain everything as best you can. But then the student has to be taught very clearly that the outcome is going to be his decision. He’s going to choose what the outcome ultimately is.
I find that in my teaching, in my parenting, in my discussions with other people, when I have that attitude, when I show that I respect the other person’s will, and when I show and communicate that not only do I respect the person’s will, but I also leave the consequences hanging on that person’s will, that actually makes other people take their will and their decisions more seriously. I see parents who try to do schoolwork for their children because they want their kids to appear to be smart or successful. And I see those parents get frustrated and I see those kids get worse, rather than better. You can fake it, but only for a while. And you know the saying, “Your sins will find you out.” That’s why it’s better to practice the truth than to try to seek appearances.
So, I would argue that the cause of the weariness in teachers is usually, almost always, not having a proper sense of the goal of teaching or catechizing, or parenting or preaching.
Now, I mentioned before, there is one other source of trouble, and it’s sin. It’s sin in our own lives. It’s having a divided heart. It’s trying to do two things. For a teacher, for example, it could be trying to make more money through teaching and feeling like your students are in the way because they’re not working. And so you’re not going to get your promotion or your raise or your Teacher of the Year award. Because these dumb kids are in the way, well, yeah, that’s the whole problem. That’s why we have teachers in the first place. So you can see that an ambition for money or for honor, that’s really not appropriate for a teacher, not supposed to be the end sought by a true teacher, that will be a cause of vexation, which will lead to a sense of frustration, discouragement, weariness, anger, depression, and so on. And the problem is actually not in the students. The problem is in that divided teacher who really doesn’t understand what a teacher is.
A person may be cowardly, may be afraid to teach what’s true, may not have the right personality. To be a teacher, you’ve got to have a certain personality, you’ve got to have some backbone, you’ve got to have some social skills, you’ve got to have some humor. You’ve got to be respected by the students. There are many teachers that are just nerdy, awkward people who are socially unable to influence students. They should not be in teaching. But when we have schools like we have that are just hiring hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people for these jobs that they call teachers, you end up with all kinds of people standing in front of students who have no chance of teaching them effectively. Again, that’s another problem with the school administrators and the school models, and so on.
So, there are legitimate problems. If you’re a person who is in the position of a teacher, and you know you don’t have the character to influence other people, you should find other work. Because teaching is a vocation that, as I said, requires certain characters, certain personality, certain sociability. And if you don’t have it, yeah, you’re going to be exhausted because you’re just not where you belong.
So, there are problems caused by sin, by getting into teaching for the wrong reasons, by trying to do things that really aren’t appropriate for teachers, by not having a right disposition of a teacher, by not having the right character to be a teacher. These are things that we need to discern. But most often, the cause of weariness is that people who do have the ability, who do have the character to be good teachers, to be good preachers, to be good catechists, to be good parents just have their hearts fixed on a goal that’s not appropriate for such. And they’ve got their hearts fixed on trying to force an outcome out of creatures that God has made with free will. And it just can’t work.
I always tell parents, look, if I had the ability to take a kid and turn him into a saint, I could charge a million dollars for tuition. And you would be sinning if you didn’t pay it. That’s just not the role of a teacher, not the role of a parent. Our job is to study as diligently as possible in our own pursuit of wisdom. We’re to study to possess understanding ourselves, to seek to be the best students ourselves, to understand, to learn, to be able to articulate all of the concepts that need to be taught. We need to study. And again, one of the signs that a person is called to be a teacher is their love of study. I love to study. If I happen to be good at teaching, it’s because I love studying. And I figure things out for my own sake and then just talk about them and share them. But I don’t do it for the students. I do it for myself. And I just share what I found, what I’ve learned, how I came to understand this passage that I read that helped me to break through this one concept that I couldn’t understand, and so on.
So, we have to study. We have to be writing and organizing and researching, practicing teaching and teaching and teaching. And we’ve got to deliver the truth accurately to our students. We’ve got to present the truth with a certain fervency and warmth and joy. I think I communicate my fervency. As a teacher, my students know that I love being a Christian, that I love studying. So, we’ve got work to do. But as long as we understand our goal, this work won’t get weary. We won’t get weary, I should say, in this work. And if we are feeling weary, I think usually, we need to make a good confession, get our spiritual priorities back in line. Maybe we’ve just kind of let things slide. Get back to our first love, which is the pursuit of wisdom and devotion to God, and remind ourselves of the goal.
And I’ll share one last thought to wrap up here. Whenever I get discouraged or frustrated in teaching, I think of Christ as the perfect teacher. I think of Christ as the perfect teacher, and I think of Judas as one of his disciples. And the thought that Christ Himself, the perfect teacher, literally, if God was a teacher, Christ Himself was Judas’s private tutor for three years. And Judas ended up an unbelieving suicide. Now, it’s terrible for Judas’s sake. But that reality of the fall of Judas is, for me, the most encouraging message about teaching. Because it shows me that even if Christ Himself was the teacher, the student can reject it all and throw it all away and totally shipwreck, even if Jesus is the teacher.
And so, if Jesus could teach and not bring about the results, doing infinitely more than I can ever do, I mean, performing miracles, teaching with an air of authority that everyone recognized was supernatural. If Jesus could teach with such power and grace and not control the results, not control the outcome, then that cannot be the goal of a teacher. What Jesus did for Judas was faithfully warn him, accurately teach him, and model the life that he called him to. Jesus introduced Judas to the kingdom of God, introduced him to the power of the age of the church, revealed His glory to Judas, let Judas see and hear everything. And Judas, in free will, threw it all away. And Jesus carried on his ministry.
And so, the story of Judas, for a teacher, is greatly encouraging because it shows us that the outcomes are not in our control. They’re not our responsibility. Man has free will, man is going to choose his end, and God is going to allow him to choose his end. We can hijack another person’s life, we can’t kidnap people, we can’t tie ropes around their necks and drag them around where they need to, we can’t. And it’s not our job to do so. It’s our job to teach the truth. It’s our job to faithfully warn them of the danger that they’re in when they’re disobeying. It’s our responsibility to study, to understand, to be able to articulate things, to answer questions, to help them when they do ask for help, which very few do. I’m yelling at kids and parents all the time to ask for help. Help is available, the inbox is empty, the chats are quiet, my phone’s not ringing. You can’t control the outcome as a teacher, and that’s not your goal. The goal is to simply be a faithful watchman, a faithful messenger, a faithful disciple who shares the King’s message and does so to the end. If we have that understood clearly, we won’t be weary. In fact, we’ll be joyful, gratified, and full of hope, looking forward to our future.
I hope that’s helpful. God bless.
Mr. William C. Michael, O.P.
Headmaster
Classical Liberal Arts Academy
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