Today is the feast of Don Bosco, one of the giants of Catholic education. In today's episode I share a simple quote from him that reminds us of the very purpose and essence of all Catholic education.

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Well, hello everybody.

Jonathan Doyle with you.

Once again, welcome friends to the Catholic teacher daily podcast,

wherever you are in the world.

And you are everywhere in the world, wherever you're hearing this.

There are so many interesting, different places and people.

That are caught up in this great journey of Catholic education.

Happy feast, stay friends.

Today is the feast of one of the great saints of Catholic education.

John Bosco often referred to was Don Bosco.

The founder of the Salesians.

We'll talk about him in a minute.

Uh, yeah, I love being Catholic.

I love praying the divine office in the morning because you get a, you get all

the saints, you get sort of each day, you get to read about the different,

incredible men and women that have.

Um, paved the way for us that have, uh, shown by their heroic virtue.

What's possible for us.

I really love that.

Often when I'm speaking on stage to teachers, I make the distinction that

the Catholic church does not make saints.

It's not as if there is a committee in the Vatican and they sit around and they go.

Uh, I guess we better roll out a few new ones.

Anybody got new ideas?

In the beautiful language of the church, the church doesn't

make saints or create saints.

The Saint, the church ready for it.

Recognizes saints, recognizes them.

It's a, it's simply under grace, the church as the great mother that keeps

the children together on the journey.

She, she presents to us, the men and women.

Who, uh, who have shown us sort of the path ahead.

What's possible.

Such an incredible diverse mix.

So we're going to talk about Dom Basco in a second.

What else?

I'll tell you a couple of things.

I've um, yesterday.

I got really stressed.

I don't know about you.

I'm sure for you as a Catholic teacher, you don't get stressed.

You know, burnout.

Either sit around every day, drinking daiquiris, thinking to yourself, this

is the greatest vacation in the world.

It's just easy for you.

But I've got to let you in on a secret for some of us.

We get stressed.

There's a lot going on.

And yesterday in our three kids.

Uh, back at school school started again today.

And it's a mix of kids that are going to school and kids were homeschooling and.

And I am.

I just have a low threshold for complexity and stress.

I just, I just don't have, you know, I just don't.

It wasn't born with it.

Does.

As I get older, I'm learning about the distinct personality.

The good Lord created me with.

So what happened was I was feeling pretty frayed.

And.

Like you'd relate to this, right.

Because a lot of the time you've got so much that you have to do.

The classic.

Engine of stress, the cause of stress.

If you ever heard of the UX Dodson curve, it's like a.

Stress happens because we perceive.

Oncoming.

Drawdowns oncoming drains upon our available resources.

Basically stress happens because we believe that there is more

coming at us than we can handle, and we get a stress response and.

Sometimes to me, it feels like that's every day, but anyway, here's the

point of this somewhat drawn out story.

Is in my brain.

I was like, okay, now I'm stressed.

It was like 10 o'clock.

I'm like, right.

I'm stressed now.

I got this, all this stuff on my plate.

And I just kind of realized that I had to just get to work or stuff,

but you don't want to actually did.

Was that stressed?

I jumped in the car.

And I drove to the cathedral because I spent I'm usually there

most days, I always pray best in churches, beautiful churches.

So I sat in the back of the cathedral with my apple AirPods, max.

Uh, playing rain sands.

I have an app, the place, right?

Sans course, this is a very.

This is a very revolutionary podcast today.

Isn't it.

You're getting an insight into the complexity of my day.

Because I love the silence and.

I had this incredible time of prayer, just sort of sitting in silence and telling the

Lord what I was experiencing and feeling.

And.

And I would say.

A lot of us, I don't believe I hear God speaking to me a great deal, but

I just had this strong sense of the beautiful scripture from Matthew's gospel.

You know, come to me all you who labor and are heavy burdened.

And I opened my Bible and I sat with that.

And it was profound and, you know, I left there and all the challenges and

complexity and problems were still there.

But I was kind of different and the journey that I'm on at the moment.

Which is the one I want to invite you all on is just this gradual ongoing.

Descent into trust.

Into slowly letting go of the belief that I have to know.

How everything's going to turn out.

That I can be sure of everything and also being purged of the belief

that if I just try harder and work harder and push myself harder.

Then everything will work out.

So this ties into the second thing I wanted to share, which was we've

been watching the chosen as a family.

Each night and we've, you know, we've been watching it on and

off for a couple of years.

And recently the series C season three was on at the theater.

So into the cinemas and what's that.

And.

I think we've got one episode left to watch tonight and just.

You know, I just watched that, uh, Same with Jesus has commissioning

the 12 shout out to my good friend, Michael Lind Costa Hercs.

He put that in an email to me the other day reminded me of it.

And there's just, this it's beautifully down.

If you haven't seen it.

It's Jesus actually sending the 12 out.

And it's so human.

I think what the chosen does really well is that.

Is, it gives us that very human insight.

You see these men and women basically.

Trying to.

I guess.

In interpret what the presence and action of.

Jesus and their life means.

And some of them in that scene of worried about death, some of

them are worried about rejection.

Some of them are worried about, you know, being away from other

priorities and commitments.

It's very human and.

All of it, both their journey.

And also the way that Jesus has presented is this constant.

Refrain around trust.

You know, Pope Benedict used to say that that the ultimate identity of

Jesus in his earthly journey was.

He is revealed as the son of the father.

And his identity was so utterly rooted in that reality.

Which led to this profound trust.

You know, which makes the agony of the cross itself so extraordinary.

Right.

And find out my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

If Jesus is complete, identity was rooted in sun ship.

What it must've been like to, to feel that, um, That that break.

Anyway, I digress, but my point is.

The both in yesterday's stress.

And in the lives of the greatest saints, the apostles.

We're all on this journey of invitation to deeper and deeper trust.

You got to catch yourself in the moment.

You got to catch yourself in the moment.

Constantly.

Catch yourself in that moment of self-reliance and

I'm just learning to do it.

I'm just going, Lord.

I trust you.

I'm going to trust you.

I trust you.

This is hot.

All right.

So what I want it to do is just share with you a beautiful

quote from, uh, Don Bosco now.

Sorry.

So John Bosco had Don Bosco as he was, uh, named.

What makes him so interesting is I said to my son that I was driving him to school.

He started the eighth grade this morning.

And we're chatting away and I'll tell him, I said, you know what?

My.

And I jumped bus guy said different was.

Education before that.

At least formal structured education, the dominant form of pastoral care

was basically beating students.

Right.

And I know there's a couple of you listening right now thinking, oh, I wonder

if we could go back to that now you can.

All right.

Drop that you can't.

Yes, it may be effective in the short term, but now you're not

allowed to do that's terrible.

Stubborn.

Go to confession.

Yeah.

You know, really for.

Before John Bosco and some of the other great sites of that

educational revivals, such as say Marshall and chimpanzee as well.

Children where we're really second class citizens in many way.

They, they, you know, they could be beaten regularly.

And so a lot of the times students were beaten into submission.

Even my own father, who's been dead for a long time.

He was left-handed in the 1950s and was constantly beaten.

Bye.

Um, by religious brothers at the, at the school he was at, he was

beaten for the great sin of being left-handed because at that time

they often thought it was demonic.

So what makes Bosco so amazing is that he believed that the best

thing you could possibly do was love your students, was to love.

Students.

And to act to them with great patience and kindness.

And today in the divine office, I read this letter and it wasn't a great sort

of theologian or writers, very simple what he writes, but he's like, we have

to, you guys, we're going to sometimes we'll feel angry, but we need to

moderate it and we need to love them.

We need to be gentle and kind and friends.

That's really revolutionary.

So the simple quote that I found here, because there's not a lot of them,

there's not a significant number of quotes attributed to him, but there's one here.

That's quite beautiful where he says the school.

Was not the end.

It was rather the instrumental means for improving the way of life.

You know, Marsalis champagne.

You said that the purpose of a, of a Christian school was to create.

Uh, good Christians and good citizens.

It's a beautiful, simple concept.

And you know, you can see Bosco.

He is saying that.

I didn't create schools because I wanted to be able to sit at dinner parties

saying, Hey, I created the school.

He asked what I do in the school, create a.

He didn't do that.

The school was simply what he says here.

The instrumental means the vehicle for improving the way of life.

So students trapped in poverty.

Could improve the way of life through education, through learning,

they might have more options.

But also improving the moral character.

The sense of justice and decency and the virtues, the theological virtues, the

Cardinal virtues being formed in students.

So friends in summary, that is what you are part of.

Isn't it great to realize that you are.

When you get to heaven, you are going to meet people like John Bosco.

I mean, you know, I mean the mystical body of Christ.

We will know each other and you know, you will meet these people, but you'll realize

in many ways how similarly you were.

That you, maybe you don't haven't started a school.

Maybe you don't think you're going to be a great Saint.

But the fact is that each day that you show up and try and care for young

people and improve their way of life.

Their kindness, their, their, their respect, the decency, the

patients, their care for others, the love of Christ, the love of the

sacraments, the love of the faith.

Each of those things is improving their life in profound

ways that you may never see.

Amazing.

Alright, that's it.

I'm learning slowly to know when to stop.

It's 11 minutes.

God bless you.

Uh, send me an email.

If you want to say hi, Jonathan.

One Catholic teacher.com.

Look in the next few months.

Oh, I'll get them start.

Give me some access to a whole bunch of stuff that we're doing.

In terms of curriculum resources for schools around the world, that's going

to be really developing for us with.

We doing some amazing work with many dioceses around the world.

So.

I should be more diligent in putting that on your radar.

So I'll do that.

But for now, God bless you.

Thank you for listening to the daily podcast.

If you like it, just subscribe to it and, and grab the link wherever you listening

and send it to a few Catholic teachers.

It's a huge blessing it's growing.

It's just great to say it's touching.

He Touches one more life one more teacher around the world that's called

thing god bless everybody my name is jonathan doyle this has been the

catholic teacher daily podcast and you and i are going to talk again tomorrow