No One Left Behind
Rev. Fr. Fesniak, honored parents, families and guests, my fellow TFP members and those that teach at Saint Louis de Montfort Academy, students now graduating and underclassmen.
By its very nature, education deals with the imparting of knowledge.
We are now celebrating a great milestone in the lives of our graduates who have just finished twelve long years of imparted knowledge.
You are entering a new and important phase of your lives and, while I celebrate with you, I would also like to remind you in these brief words that this is not all we celebrate.
Alas, we live in times where quantity rules and we tend to think of education almost exclusively in terms of units of knowledge and grade point averages.
You, as graduates, have felt the full fury of this concept of modern education over the years. Your curricula were full of state-required subjects with their numerical credits. Your years were harried by rigorous testing. You felt the pressure to achieve academic success at all costs.
Far be it from me to criticize the importance of knowledge in education or the need to verify progress. I have only the highest praise for the achievement of academic excellence. However, we need to affirm that this quantitative view of education is not the only prism through which things should be judged.
To use the distinctions made by Catholic author Josef Pieper in his book, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, he passionately insists: Don’t call teaching knowledge, education, call it training. Don’t call knowledge without culture, education; it is but mere instruction. He claims what we mean by education is being capax universi, that is, men capable of grasping the totality of existing things.
Throughout your years at Saint Louis de Montfort Academy, it is my hope that you have become capax universi for you were not trained like technicians or instructed like specialists, you were educated as Catholic gentlemen.
What we celebrate here today is this difference between instruction and education, between specialist and gentleman. We celebrate a different concept that goes beyond the popular notion that education’s primary and sole function is to impart knowledge so you might be made useful members of society.
What is that difference? What are the things that marked this education and should not be forgotten? That is what I hope to speak about now.
In our times when modern education strives to leave no child behind, I would like to address the things you must not leave behind in the years ahead.
Addressing the Whole Man
And so my first words to you as graduates are: do not leave behind the profound notion of education that you learned at Saint Louis de Montfort Academy and made you different from the rest.
That difference is the conviction that any education must deal with the whole man – addressing both his material and spiritual needs.
Indeed, it is not foreign to our American tradition to affirm that every man is a unique and “spiritual creature with spiritual needs and spiritual desires.”
All fields of human endeavor especially education must consider this spiritual side of man.
You have received an education that considers this spiritual side. However, by spiritual education, I do not necessarily mean only religious education. I do not mean an occasional rosary inserted into the schedule or a catechism class between math and history.
Spiritual education means imparting those unquantifiable permanent things that build character like tradition, honor, respect, purity, love of family and country and heroism. And these are not found in lesson plans or syllabi but in souls awaken in the desire for the good, true and beautiful.
It is from this firm foundation that spiritual education leads to religious devotion to God, His Church and the Blessed Mother.
It is this totality of spiritual reality, values, principles and devotions that I ask you to take with you in the years ahead.
The second thing I would ask is that you take this principle yet further. Carry with you the conviction that this spiritual side is the superior side of man’s nature; if your spiritual things are in order, all is in order.
Spiritual education is never an elective; it is always core curriculum.
Thus, an education succeeds only when it tailors itself primarily to this spiritual side. It succeeds when it helps each soul develop its own potentialities.
Education fails, if you think, as I so foolishly did when I graduated, that your future will be solely determined by SAT scores. Education fails if it ignores a moral law that regulates and tempers your disorderly passions.
Do not leave behind the conviction that this is the most important part of your education. Continue to cultivate this part as you advance to your next step in life as Catholic gentlemen.
But this is not enough.
We live in a world hostile to all things spiritual. I wish I could speak to you of a less complex world. There were calmer times when graduation speeches exuded optimism and rosy promises for the future.
But we live in turbulent times of wars and instability. We live in polarized times where the very spiritual matters you learned are put into question.
It is not enough to hold spiritual values learned. For of what value is this spiritual education if it is not defended?
Wherever you went with the academy, you were confronted by those who asked you who you were. They asked because they saw you had the rare courage to stand out by the practice of the Catholic faith, by your bearing and self-discipline. Now is the time to put what you have learned to the test.
You, members of this small yet significant class of 2008, have been prepared at Saint Louis de Montfort Academy to stand out and defend yourselves in the modern world.
You have already campaigned on university campuses (and even on the street of Europe) on the burning issues of the day. You have already manned the trenches in our nation’s cultural war in so many protests, marches and demonstrations. You have metaphorically and quite literally learned to parry and thrust in our peaceful and legal bouts in defense of Christian civilization.
You were educated in the tradition of the great Marian saint Saint Louis de Montfort who with a fiery voice cried out to all Christendom: “if anyone has the Lord’s cause at heart, let him stand side by side with me. … come and join us for in unity, there is strength and with the Cross as our Standard, …let us form a strong host… against thy enemies.”
You were influenced by the great Catholic thinker, Plinio Correa de Oliveira, founder of the TFPs of which I am proud to be part and who is the inspirer of your very Academy. His life was, if not anything else, a call to defend ideals in what he so fittingly called a modern crusade.
My message to you is that throughout your life: Do not leave behind this crusade.
These are the basic premises that we are celebrating today. We are celebrating the graduation of those who have striven to be capax universi – those who understand the totality of things. And may this celebration encourage you to continue along this same path.
Your courage to continue will be sorely needed by our nation. It is a tragic thing when a child is left behind, but yet more tragic is when so many souls are left behind.
In our headlong rush to leave no child behind, we have left behind those spiritual values that once influenced our country. We are where we are today because we have put too much trust in our quantitative education and chosen not to consider the most important spiritual side of man’s soul.
Above all, for all our instruction and training, we lack the education to use the moral compass that once guided us and which must be consulted anew if we are to weather the storms ahead.
And so my message is simple: Take with you the spiritual and religious values that were part of your education. Esteem this part as the most important part. Defend like a crusader those values you learned.
And so I conclude saying: let these things be the measure of your success.
But… there is one final thing I would ask you to remember – an afterthought – perhaps something I might have left behind. It is a commentary that departs from the rigid script but which I felt I must say.
I fear with all this talk about the theoretic and spiritual, I might not have left you with anything practical to grasp. I fear that for an academy so linked to the Blessed Mother, I would be amiss if I did not in some way mention her central role.
And so in this addendum, forgive me if I add a lesson that is at the very core of the workings of the academy. It is a lesson, I myself have seen in the miracles Our Lady has wrought right from the beginning in establishing and maintaining her academy. You yourselves have experienced it in your consecrations to her.
That lesson is, of course, Have confidence! Whenever you have a problem, no matter how small and insignificant it may seem, have recourse to the highest of all possible advocates – Our Blessed Mother. In the worst of afflictions, when all seems lost and miserable, remember to call upon Our Lady and she will find a solution.
Remember that she is a mother and never was it known that she has ever left any child behind.
