Faith Filled Disciples

Colleges and high schools are preparing to receive students over the next few days and weeks. Some of our Marist Schools, i.e. Marist Chicago and St. Joseph's in Browsville, Texas have already begun. Locally at Central Catholic we will present our new teachers with two days of orientation beginning today. It's hard to believe that our vacation is over "already" as we all keep saying, and equally hard to pull ourselves from vacation mode to work mode. It's not that we don't love what we are doing, but it's just the knowledge that for the next nine to ten months, school can and will overpower our lives, consuming almost every minute.
Our theme at Central Catholic for this year is appropriately, "Faith Filled Disciples." Today we will look at the lives of the two men whose faith made our school possible, St. Marcellin and Br. Florentius, and find inspiration and guidelines on how to grow in our own faith so that it will inform and influence the way we deal with each other and educate our students. It's an on-going process, as we see even in the lives of the first disciples and apostles. A three-year training period, of ups and downs, and if we look specifically at Peter, BIG ups and BIG downs! Even an eleventh hour denial, not once but three times. Yet Jesus continued to have faith in him, forgave him and called him to love and leadership among the rest. That magnanimous gesture is most reassuring, for none of us "has it all together" as our "downs" seem to dominate our "ups" and we find that truly "our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth." (Ps 124:8)God stands besides us reminding us, as the song goes, "I am here standing right beside you. Here am I." Without his presence, we'd be stuck in our "downs" but like Peter, we can feel him lifting us up from the waters. It is at those moments when we know we are faith-filled disciples.
Bro. Rene