A charism is a gift of the Holy Spirit. It is not a natural gift or natural talent, like a musical talent, or a talent for mathematics, or writing, etc. Moreover, a charism is not the same as charisma; for some people have natural charisma. Rather, a charism is supernatural, a gift of the Holy Spirit, that is, a particular way the Holy Spirit manifests Himself through a person, for the building up of the Body of Christ (Church).
I'd like to begin by quoting one of the great Cardinals of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), Cardinal Suenens, who speaks of the charisms of the Church in one of his Council speeches. He writes:
The time of the Church, which is on pilgrimage through the centuries until the Parousia of the Lord, is the time of the Holy Spirit. For it is through the Holy Spirit that the glorified Christ unifies the eschatological people of God, purifies them, fills them with life and leads them to all truth, and this in spite of the weaknesses and sins of this people. The Holy Spirit is thus the first fruits (Rom. 8, 23), the first installment of the Church (2 Cor. 1, 22; 5,5), in this world. Therefore, the Church is called the dwelling of God in the Spirit (Eph 5, 22).
It follows from this that the Holy Spirit is not given to pastors only but to each and every Christian. "Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Holy Spirit dwells within you?" says St. Paul to the Corinthians (1 Cor 3, 16).
In baptism, the sacrament of faith, all Christians receive the Holy Spirit. All Christians, "living stones", as they are called, are to be built into a "spiritual dwelling" oikos pneumatikos (2 Pet 2, 5). Therefore the whole Church is essentially a truly "pneumatic" or spiritual reality, built on the foundation not only of the Apostles, but--as Ephesians 2, 20 says --also of prophets. In the Church of the New Testament God "gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some pastors and teachers" (Eph 4, 11; see 3, 5).
The Holy Spirit shows himself in the Church in the great number and richness of his spiritual gifts, gifts which Scripture calls pneumatika (1 Cor 12, 1; 14, 1) or charisms (Rom 12, 6; 1 Cor 12, 4, 9, 28, 30f; 1 Tim 4, 14; 2 Tim 1,6; 1 Pet 4, 10). Certainly in the time of St. Paul even very extraordinary and marvelous charisms such as "ecstatic utterance" (1 Cor 12, 10, 20, 30; 14, 18, 26; Acts 19, 5) or charisms of healings (1 Cor 12, 9, 28, 30; see 1 Cor 12, 10, 12, 28f; Gal 3, 5), were shown forth in the Church. But we should not think that the charisms of the Spirit consist exclusively or even principally in these phenomena which are more extraordinary and marvelous. St. Paul speaks, for example, of the charism of wise speech and knowledge (1 Cor 12, 8), of the charism of faith (1 Cor 12, 9), or the charism of teaching (Rom 12, 7; 1 Cor 12, 28ff, 14, 26), of stirring or comforting speech (Rom 12, 8), and administration (Rom 12, 7), of the charism of distinguishing true spirits from false (1 Cor 12, 10), of the charism of helping others and guiding them (1 Cor. 12, 28) and so on.
Thus to St. Paul the Church of the living Christ does not appear as some kind of administrative organization, but as a living web of gifts, of charisms, or ministries. The Spirit is given to every individual Christian, the Spirit who gives his gifts, his charisms to each and every one "different as they are allotted to us by God's grace" (Rom 12, 6). "In each of us the Spirit is manifested in one particular way, for some useful purpose" (1 Cor 12, 7) for example "to build up the Church" (1 Cor 14, 12). Each and every Christian, whether lettered or unlettered, has his charism in his daily life, but--as St. Paul says--"All of these must aim at one thing; to build up the Church" (1 Cor 14, 26, see 14, 3-5).
Listen again to the Apostle who says "Within the Church God has appointed, in the first place apostles, in the second place prophets, thirdly teachers.... Are all apostles? all prophets? all teachers?" (1 Cor 12, 28f).
A statement about the Church, then, which would speak only of the Apostles and their successors and fail to speak about prophets and teachers would be defective in a matter of the highest importance." 29-32.
What the Cardinal said at this time in history was quite revolutionary; for there was a minority of Cardinals at the Council who continued to see the Church as first and foremost clergy, that is, priests, bishops, cardinals, and pope. But Cardinal Suenens emphasizes that the Church is the entire people of God, and that each one of the baptized has charisms given for the building up of the body of Christ. Teaching is one of those charisms.
Teaching is a labor. It is not easy, especially high school. There are days during my retirement after doing some emergency supply work when I said to myself: "I can't believe I did that for 32+ years". There's a tremendous amount of stress involved in teaching. My first teaching position was in the heart of the Jane and Finch area of Toronto, which was a rather difficult area in which to teach. We had many wonderful students, but we had some rather challenging students over the years--there's no doubt in my mind that these difficult years made me a teacher. The founding principal (Father Gerald Fitzgerald, CSSP) made sure to hire a staff who were committed to his vision for the school, which was to serve those students in the area who could not find acceptance to the nearest Catholic high school. He made sure we celebrated a first Friday Mass every Month followed by a staff social, which served hot food and alcohol. My early years were wonderful years, but Father Fitzgerald soon retired and was replaced by one who did not have quite the same vision, and he hired staff who were not necessarily committed to the same mission of service. Hence, the ethos of the school began to change.
I had some very good friends who were my colleagues, very dedicated and hard-working teachers, but it was easy for them to become bitter as a result of the changes--which were not for the better--, and I knew I did not want to become cynical; for it is very difficult not to bring that cynicism into the classroom with you. I was also fortunate that a priest of the religious order of the Salesians of Don Bosco was hired as our school chaplain, and it was through him and other priests of that Order that I began to learn about the spirituality of St. John Bosco, who was given the title Friend of Youth, by Pope Pius XI. Don Bosco's three principles of education are: reason, religion, and kindness. Not anger, not passion, but reason, and of course religion must be the center around which the education system revolves, not to mention the center around which one's personal teaching life revolves, and then finally, kindness. St. John Bosco lived during the time of the Industrial Revolution. The rise of Industry led to the development of the urban areas, and young boys would come from the rural areas into the urban areas to find work, and of course there was one job for every dozen or so kids looking for work. Hence, the very low wages and poor working conditions, long hours, and a large number of young boys living on the streets. John Bosco was a priest who had a tremendous love for the youth, and he devoted his entire priesthood to the service of the young. He would go out into the streets and actually gamble with them, win their money, and of course he would return his winnings to them and let them know that they could use the Church's playground any time and invited them to catechism classes. Eventually a large piece of land was donated to him and he established an Oratory, where these boys could prepare for the rise of industry, learn a trade, and receive religious instruction as well as other subjects and trades. He befriended thousands of young people throughout his life. Eventually he established his own religious order, the Salesians of Don Bosco. The Salesians have a genuine charism for working with young people that is remarkable to witness. I was very fortunate to have encountered such priests, and it was Salesian spirituality that helped me to resist a spirit of cynicism and the negative influence that we always encounter no matter where we go in the school system.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, in his semi-autobiographical novel Memoirs from the House of the Dead, writes about the nurses who cared for him and he makes the point somewhere in there that kindness and cheerfulness are more effective than the most effective medicines for bringing a person back to health. I knew immediately upon reading that line that this principle is equally applicable to the teacher as it is for the nurse. It is only when we have a loved one in the hospital that we begin to appreciate the value of a good and caring nurse. I remember the year my mother broke her hip and had to spend months in the hospital; the nurses, I felt, were not that kind, and they were certainly not that cheerful. I felt tremendous frustration with that situation, but when she got a cheerful nurse, we were so grateful. What was maddening about the situation was that such a nurse was temporary--one night only. Was there a way we could arrange to have her on that floor for the week? No. Instead, the other nurse would have to return, the one who was not very kind, not very thoughtful and certainly not cheerful. A teacher is very much like a nurse. We are dealing with broken students, kids who are suffering, who have difficulties at home that the teacher often knows nothing about, unless of course he or she makes the effort to find out. It is very easy to assume that the child in front of us comes from a normal home with devoted parents, enough food to eat when he gets home from school, is properly cared for, etc. But when we begin to inquire, or inadvertently discover something about that student from a guidance counsellor or a Vice principal, then the scales drop from our eyes. We begin to see the assumptions we had made. The kid comes to school hungry, because there is not enough food in the house; his parents were arrested for drug dealing, he has an abusive father, or she had been sexually abused by her uncle, or there is only a mother at home and she's struggling to pay rent, etc. We begin to see that some of these students are heroic just for coming to school in the first place.
American novelist Walker Percy once wrote that people are cruel because they love pleasure too much. There is cruelty in education, as there is cruelty in the medical profession, among nurses for example, or arrogant doctors, etc. We love pleasure too much. I recall a friend of mine who would always identify a good day with a smooth day. A bad day, in his mind, was a day with all sorts of frustrations, problems, and difficulties, while good days are smooth and pleasant ones. But a pleasant day is not necessarily the same as a good day. You can have a very pleasurable meal that is rather bad for you and a rather unsavory meal that is very good for you. A day full of difficulties might very well have been a fruitful day in which a great deal of good was achieved. Of course, this is not to suggest that a smooth day is always fruitless, but when our hearts are set on smooth days, it is easy to become cruel, cynical and relatively abusive to students when they get in the way of the realization of a pleasant and easy day. Pleasure is in you, it is in me, so if my life is centered on pleasure, it is centered on the self. One's teaching life becomes self-centered, not student centered. The result is a very unpleasant and unmemorable experience for students, because their teachers are generally unhappy, joyless, overly serious, and hard.
American Trappist monk Thomas Merton once wrote: "Never seek rest in pleasure, for you were not created for pleasure; rather, you were created for joy, and if you do not know the difference between joy and pleasure, you have not yet begun to live". What the students need above all is a teacher who enters the classroom in a spirit of joy. I am not here referring to a natural disposition, like a bubbly spirit; rather, I refer to the joy that is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. In Confirmation, the graces we received in baptism are strengthened, that is, confirmed. We are sealed with the Holy Spirit: a sacramental seal or character is imprinted on the soul of the Confirmed. The graces and charisms that we received in Baptism are strengthened so that we may faithfully live out the state of life that is brought about by the sacrament, and Confirmation brings about a spiritual adulthood. We become prepped for a mission. We are given the power to witness to the risen Christ, not necessarily with words, but with the power of divine grace which radiates. One of those charisms that those called to be teachers would be given at baptism is the teaching charism (Rom 12, 7; 1 Cor 12, 28ff, 14, 26).
As I said above, a charism is not the same as a natural talent. A charism is a gift of the Holy Spirit. But there are two types of gifts of the Holy Spirit: the seven personal gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the charisms. The personal gifts are given for personal holiness, but the charisms are given for the building up of the Body of Christ, the Church. The personal gifts are wisdom, which is profound insight into the things of God; understanding, which is an understanding of the mysteries of our faith--this does not necessarily mean you can write an essay on them, but a person has a certain understanding of the mysteries, such as the Incarnation, the Eucharist, Sermon on the Mount, etc., that is not possible without the illumination of faith. The gift of knowledge is an awareness of the hand of divine providence in your day-to-day life, a genuine sense of the divine. Next is counsel, which is the ability to discern the best course of action, the one most in accordance the will of God. Piety, the gift that moves the heart to love God with the love of a child for his or her Father (even Mother), an intimate love that expresses itself in a spirit of devotion, that is, a prayerful spirit. Such a person loves devotionals, the rosary, the chaplet of the divine mercy, and there is a deep love of the liturgy, a love for the Mass, a desire to spend time before the blessed sacrament and so on (note: a life that is almost exclusively made up of acts of piety is seriously deficient, a kind of bourgeois Catholicism that lacks an orientation to works of justice and mercy). Fortitude is supernatural courage. One is given the courage to actually do what God is calling one to do--without that gift, it would be very difficult if not impossible. Finally, the fear of God. This gift is divided into two: servile and filial fear. Generally speaking, fear of God is really the fear of offending God through sin. I knew some criminals who had no fear of God whatsoever, that is, no fear for the loss of their souls. Servile fear, the lowest of the two, is the fear of sin due to the fear of punishment for sin; filial fear, on the other hand, is higher or more noble; for it isn't so much that this person refuses to sin because of a fear of punishment, but a fear of offending God because this person loves God intimately. This is comparable to the difference between a child who chooses not to steal from his mother's purse for fear of getting caught and punished, versus the child who chooses not to steal from his mother's purse because he loves his mother and would not want to hurt her in any way.
These personal gifts grow within us to the degree that we grow in supernatural charity, which is the love of God under the aspect of intimacy and friendship.
Charisms are different. They are gifts of the Holy Spirit, but they are given for the benefit of others, that is, for the building up of the body of Christ. A person can have many charisms, powerful charisms, and still not be a very holy person. The charisms, as we said above, are manifestations of the Holy Spirit: word of wisdom, word of knowledge, the charism of faith (which is different from the theological virtue of faith), the gift of healing, the gift of miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, speaking in tongues, and interpretation of tongues.
My spiritual director has a tremendous word of knowledge charism; one can sit down with him for Confession and he will know things that he could not possibly know about you. Words will often come to him and he speaks them, and asks you to corroborate. St. Padre Pio had a strong word of knowledge charism. He also had a healing charism, the charism of miracles, and prophecy. As an example of prophecy in his life, a young priest came to visit Padre Pio at the monastery of San Giovanni Rotundo, Italy, the monastery that he never left. He spent all night with this young priest discussing and praying. He told the young priest that he would be pope one day, and that he'd be a good pope. Padre Pio died in 1968, and this young priest became Pope in 1979, Pope John Paul II
The teaching charism is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the classroom. A colleague of mine was technologically challenged; formulating an email was always a difficult ordeal. The most my friend achieved in terms of technology was an overhead projector, and yet he was the most influential teacher I know. The line up on parent/teacher interview night was longer than any other; parents lined up to thank him for what he'd done for their son or daughter, and he would always have former students returning to visit.
How does one explain such influence? He employed none of the latest methods in teaching; he wasn't interested in the latest educational trends. He just loved the students and he prayed for them, spent time in the chapel every day, and he had a devotion to the Blessed Mother. His influence was the result of the charism. Methods are useful, but they are secondary. Technology is useful, but secondary. How you relate to students is primary. What you allow God to do through you is primary. All the best methods in the world and the best state of the art technology are not going to keep students interested for long; that eventually wears out. I explained this to a principal and VP friend of mine after they'd spent thousands of dollars on a SmartBoard for my classroom. One day I had to use a wide chalkboard at the back of the classroom, so I had the students turn their desks and chairs to face the blackboard at the back. I had their attention just as much as I had when using the SmartBoard. Eventually, the novelty of the SmartBoard wore off, as all technological aids do in time.
A person who is called to be a Catholic teacher will be given all the gifts and charisms he or she needs to carry out what God is calling that person to do. The Holy Spirit will manifest himself through the teacher who is open to the Holy Spirit, who dies to the illusion that he can accomplish anything of lasting significance on his own strength, and he or she will not necessarily be aware that anything extraordinary is happening. In their minds, they are just ordinary, dull, boring teachers, but the students see things otherwise. And such teachers won't know what the reason for it is, but that is the teaching charism. Like any gift, however, one has to open it. If you keep them wrapped up and under the tree, they're no good to anyone, and I would say that most people keep them wrapped up. But if you unwarp them, open yourself to the Holy Spirit, give yourself entirely to the Holy Spirit, He will use you and manifest Himself to others, your students, through you.
And joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit; this is not the joy of winning a lottery, nor the joy of hearing news of an engagement or some other piece of good news. It is the joy of the risen Christ, the joy of knowing that you are loved by the One who alone matters, namely God Himself. It is the joy that comes from the supernatural hope of eternal life, that salvation has come to you and is yours, not by virtue of anything you might have done, but as sheer gift. It is the joy of having died with Christ and rising to the new life of grace in Him and with Him. Father Romano Guardini wrote that before Pentecost "the disciples had lived 'in the sight' of Christ; now they lived in him; before they had spoken about him; now they spoke through him."
There is no resurrection without death. The child dies in baptism, dies to the old Adam, and rises with the new life of grace. The grace of baptism makes one different, that is, one is divinized without ceasing to be human; in fact, the more one is divinized, the more one is humanized. The crucified and risen Christ lives in you, until you or I drive him out through a life of sin and indifference. But he lives, acts, and teaches in you, gives you the words to give to the students, if you allow him. And of course, his joy becomes yours, and that increases as you draw closer to him.
The key to joy is, ironically enough, a spirituality of the cross. Christ said: "Anyone who wishes to be a follower of mine must take up his cross and follow me. Anyone who loses his life for my sake finds it, but anyone who saves his life loses it". This really involves a commitment to put the students ahead of yourself. Teaching is a sharing in a certain aspect of Christ's life. Christ was a teacher (Sermon on the Mount), and he was a healer, and he was an exorcist, a miracle worker, and he suffered and died (redeemer); he was a priest, the eschatological priest, the final priest, the lamb of God, whose sacrifice reconciled the world to himself. He was the lamb that every Old Testament sacrifice pointed to and foreshadowed. Although all of the baptized share in the priesthood of Christ, some people are called to share in the office of Christ's ministerial priesthood; some are called to share in his healing ministry; some people, such as the innocent who suffer from clinical depression all their lives, share in the moment of Christ's anguish on Holy Thursday night in the garden of Gethsemane; and finally, some are called to share in his life as teacher. That is you. Teaching is holy. It is a sacred vocation. When we walk into a classroom, we must remember that we are standing on holy ground. These young students are entrusted to us by God for us to love, to teach out of love for them, we are called to be Christ for them, so that every day, in relating to us, they relate to Christ, without them knowing it necessarily. That happens to the degree that you and I decrease so that he can increase. The more Christ increases in you, leaving you in the background so to speak, the more these kids have Christ as their teacher. It's a very noble vocation, very ordinary from one point of view, but extraordinary from another point of view.
But, because it is a sharing in an aspect of Christ's life, it is a way of the cross. It is difficult. It has its joyful moments, its glorious moments, and it has its hard, difficult and trying moments. It is a way of the cross, and this is how we share in Christ's redemptive work. The only thing that will get us through those difficulties is a deep and devoted prayer life, a life centered around the Eucharist, and regular confession, and of course an understanding that suffering is part and parcel of the vocation of teacher, just as it is part and parcel of the vocation of married life, and part and parcel of the vocation of priesthood. Suffering and difficulties are not anomalies. They are the normal course of things. Many people today go into marriage, or teaching, or the priesthood, with a very Romantic vision of how things should be, and when they do not turn out that way, when trials and difficulties enter the picture, they fold; they collapse, they run: "This is not what I signed up for," they say to themselves. But of course, this is precisely what we signed up for, if we signed up for teaching, or married life, or the priesthood.
Without divine grace, the supernatural strength, given by God, we will soon become a burden to our students, not a blessing. We might be a very knowledgeable teacher, but not a very memorable one. I recall one teacher who at the beginning of the school year, within the first week, would enter the staff room and announce how many days to the Christmas holidays, and after Christmas would announce how many days to the March Break, and after the March Break, announce how many days to the summer holidays. Such a teacher just did not like being in school, and so of course students pick that up. Is it any wonder that they did not like being in her classroom? Such a teacher does not connect to the students, because the teacher's body is in the classroom, but her heart is at the cottage.
Eucharistic adoration is such an important source of strength for a teacher, not to mention devotion to Mary. It is also important to look for a saint to connect with. We believe in the Communion of Saints; we profess it in the Creed. They are our siblings. We have the same blood running through our veins, namely, the blood of Christ. The saints are so diverse and their lives are so interesting. When I was a teacher, I would often visit my friend who is a priest of a nearby diocese, and I'd stay the weekend and preach for him to give him a break. I'm an early riser, so I would get up at 5 a.m. On this morning, I went down to his living room to pray my breviary. Once I finished, I looked up and saw, on this large bookshelf, the famous four volume edition of Butler's Lives of the Saints. So, I walked over, closed my eyes, randomly selected a volume, opened it up and put my finger on a page. Wherever my finger landed, I would read the life of that particular saint. I randomly chose a third century saint I'd never heard of before. I read about her life, which was about a page of that volume, but afterwards I felt so uplifted, so inspired. I put the book back, closed my eyes, and did it again. This time I got some unknown fourth century saint, and his life was very different from the previous, but also very interesting and above all inspiring; I felt it in my body, as though I'd just drank a large glass of orange juice. Hollywood has convinced us that goodness is boring, and evil is interesting. But it is the reverse; evil is empty. It is dull. It's the same old. Everyone seems to be interested in exorcisms. If you look up Fr. Vincent Lampert on YouTube, you'll see he's a wonderful priest and exorcist, and he packs university auditoriums with students interested in the diabolical. But the diabolical is all the same. There's nothing to it. It's very much like true crime: repetitive and nauseatingly dull. Evil is a false promise. It promises to be interesting and mysterious, but in the end, it is an empty casket of decaying flesh and bones. Goodness, on the other hand, is very interesting, and it is inexhaustible, mysterious and exhilarating. But the media is generally not interested in goodness, only evil. Call up a newspaper or radio station and tell them that your students raised over 50,000 food items for the poor at Christmas and they're not interested; call them and tell them that a person from another school walked into your school and stabbed a student in the leg and walked out, and it's on every news channel by 6 o'clock.
The lives of the saints are truly inspiring. On Netflix, there is a new version of Our Lady of Fatima. The life of St. Padre Pio is rather fascinating. I was giving spiritual direction to a woman who was having genuine diabolical encounters that were destroying her life, and I advised her to pray to St. Padre Pio. She had never heard of him. But she did what I asked. The following week she told me that she felt a tingling in her palms when she prayed to him. I asked her: "Do you know what that means?" She did not. But he had the stigmata; the wounds of Christ on his feet, hands, and side, from 1918 to 1968, the year he died. I told her that this is a sign from him that he's heard your prayer.
There are so many different saints with completely different personalities, abilities, and stories. We have genius saints, saints who were great scientists, great philosophers, great poets, we have saints who were homeless, great saints who suffered from clinical depression or any other mental illness consistent with holiness, saints who were not brilliant academics but had extraordinary charity, etc. There are more female saints than male saints, some great female doctors of the Church, such as Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Therese of Lisieux, and Saint Hildegard of Bingen. St. Thomas More, Patron of Lawyers and Politicians, is a great and inspiring saint. He became Chancellor of England in the 16th century, but he got his head cut off by Henry VIII for refusing the take an oath that pledged allegiance to Henry as head of the Church of England. He would not say why he would not take the oath, for then they could charge him with treason and have him executed. But Richard Rich perjured himself and testified that he had a conversation with More while visiting him in the Tower of London. According to Bolt's play, A Man for All Seasons, Richard claimed that Thomas told him that the king had not the competence to declare himself head of the Church of England. Of course, Thomas did not tell him that, although he certainly believed that to be so. Hence, he was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. His last words were: "I die the king's good servant, but God's first". I believe his best writing came from his time in the Tower of London. He had a tremendous influence on western civilization; he was a leading pioneer in education for women; he encouraged his daughter to study Greek and Latin, literature, philosophy, music, etc. And he had great admiration for the vocation of teacher. Again, according to Bolt, he offered the young Richard Rich, the man who betrayed him, a teaching position, but Richard turned it down; he had his heart set on a career in politics. Thomas warned him that people are offered all sorts of bribes; a person should go where he won't be tempted. Thomas knew that Richard would not be able to answer for his soul so far as that very evening, and Thomas was right. He ended up getting a position from Cromwell, and he accepted his first bribe within the hour. And it was a bribe that persuaded him to perjure himself in court to get Thomas convicted; Richard was given the position of Attorney General of Wales. As he was leaving Westminster Hall, Thomas said to him: "Why Richard, is that a chain of office you are wearing? Attorney General of Wales". Then Thomas quoted Jesus who said: "What does it profit a man to gain the world but lose his soul. But you gave up your soul for Wales".
Pope John Paul II made him the patron saint of politicians at a time when, in Canada, our own Catholic politicians were giving up their deepest convictions for the sake of maintaining their office. Thomas More once said to Cromwell: "When statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duty, they lead their country by a short route to chaos". That seems to be the story of modern politics. For the sake of their pension, they forsake their own private conscience and take up positions that they know were immoral and unjustifiable.
It is a good idea for teachers to find a saint to get to know and pray to, one that he or she can identify with. And getting your students to do that is also a tremendous idea that will do incalculable good.