Fr. Ricardo
translated from Cristo Vive Aleluia!
Nº 157, p. 24 (2007)
Who are we and why we educate? |
In an address given to the educational personnel of the San Jose de la Palabra de Dios School, Father Ricardo made reference to the value of an education put at the service of man as creation of God and oriented to the accomplishment of his/her life in love. What follows is a synthesis of which he exposed in that opportunity.
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"Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show his works by a good life in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. Wisdom of this kind does not come down from above but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every foul practice. But the wisdom from above is first of all pure, then peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without inconstancy or insincerity. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for those who cultivate peace" (Jam 3:13-18). In the middle of our neopagan and relativist culture, human identity and the meaning of life become diffuse, obscure, confused. For that reason when speaking of education, we begin with human identity and a Creational Anthropology. We locate ourselves in an elementary and fundamental experience: nothing exists that has not been created or made. Everything exists because somebody has done it. The world has had a beginning and somebody is its Creator: a Creator with capacity to produce such a thing as the Universe. Echoing what science postulates, we could say that 14,000 million years ago (or more) took place an explosion that originated the expansive development of the universe. Biblically we could say that the big-bang of Creation is an immense and simple explosion brought out from nowhere by the creative power of an omnipotent being, that we call God. Creation begins by a spark of the "creative spark gap" of God (cf. Rev 4:11b). In the evolution of Creation or the universe, we found the singularity of the human person: a created being who is conscious of his/her existence and that directs its life doing history of a whole Humanity. The singularity of the human being consists of being similar to its Creator; in being image and similarity of God. To be image is to be person. God has created a Nature which expresses by physical and biological laws… But with man, God creates a personalized nature. It is a free and conscientious subject that can or cannot orient his nature according to the moral laws that God has put in the person. In the first case, to assume the will of the Creator is to assume oneself as creation of God, and thus to be realized. In the opposite case, the trascendent sense of life is become deformed and arrives to deny, to reject or to ignore God. The moral laws (vgr. you shall not kill) orient the course of life and express the will of God. For that reason when the person assumes them, that is to say, makes them his own, is realized in the love to God because it accepts the human identity that is to him own. Thus he has access to the grace of salvation, and the Holy Spirit can fill it of him, who is the Love of the Trinity Community. To be person is to be image of God and to live to similarity him. The man as person has freedom. Without freedom he could not assume himself and be realized in love. It would be a robot like the other beings who are not persons. Freedom is for being realized in which one is, and it does not consist of a physical or biological accomplishment, but a personal and spiritual one. It is a so important accomplishment that includes the communion with God. Nevertheless, man can be mistaken, and for not to be mistaken and to do wrong, he needs to know the truth. It is the reality as God created it. He is the only owner of creation, man and nature. The human being was created by God for an accomplishment that is eternal. God can judge the good and bad in the behavior of people. It is right that things are made as God wants; it is unjust the desire to remove God so that things are made otherwise, as man wanted them. The happiness of man is in the plenitude of God, and when God reveals his identity, we found a newness. God not only isn't an impersonal and vague entity, as pantheism and the New Age could announce, but it is a tripersonal being. As Christians we spoke of the Divine Trinity. |
God is a Trinitary Community. This has importance for human identity. Because man is image and similarity of a Community-God. This means that a person cannot accomplish alone but with others. It depends on a communitarian accomplishment (of family, society, church) and the communitarian accomplishment depends on the people who integrate it. By this we say that man is person in community: person, as own and different; in community, that is to say in entailment, in agreement with unity and common good. Man expresses itself not only at a personal level, but also at social and cultural levels. There is a cultural and social responsibility in the humanity. The person is a being in entailment and is called to live linked with others. And this is only possible by love. Love fulfills the person; rejection and aggression destroy its life and make it unhappy. And for this, the person needs to learn to live, needs to be educated and not simply bred. To link itself is to leave itself and share. Thus the human community is made. Community requires personal maturation, that is to say, capacity to live in communion with others, but differentiated (being different from others), without amassing itself. God, as Creator, loves what he does: He has created by loving. He is source of Justice and Love. Justice in that we must live and act, and love in the possibility of giving ourselves and of encountering with Him and the others. The love of God can trascend his justice and, then, it is transformed into mercy. It will be part of the dignity of human being to respect and to cultivate itself in the development, maturity and inner perfection as person. And, simultaneously, to live and to coexist in respect of the others to walk in the unity of a same human race towards a horizon of universal brotherly communion. The dignity of human being also includes the respect of man to nature, to the cosmos created by God and governed by the laws that he has given to it. A wise scientific knowledge of reality leads to the discovery, admiration and praise of the Creative God. From this creational and anthropological perspective, man as person remains open to two dimensions of life: justice and love. God calls us to live the meaning that he has given our life. And that meaning is in his Love overflowed towards us. It is necessary, in life, to discern what God wants, for not to be mistaken and to harm itself. All rights and obligations can synthesize in this mandate of the Creator, revealed through the apostle John: Walk in love. Love is the original mandate of man and the fullness of law and justice. As a synthesis, we can say what we understand by educative task. From this perspective and, when speaking of education, we talk about:
Thus the educative institution is discovered as a laboratory of life and of formation of human persons for life, according to the creational identity. |
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© The Movement of the Word of God, a Roman Catholic pastoral community of disciples. This document was originally published in Spanish by the Word of God's Publishing House and can be reproduced on condition that its origin is mentioned.
