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Article_'A Christ-centered education is a complete education'

Homilies | Monday, November 24, 2014

'A Christ-centered education is a complete education'

Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily Nov. 24, at the blessing of a new wellness center at Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart in Coconut Grove. 

In the first reading chosen for this Mass of blessing, St. Paul speaks of “gratitude in the heart” and of “giving thanks to God.” And this week’s celebration of that great American civic holiday of Thanksgiving is certainly about that. And, I hope you all are looking forward not just to “Black Friday” but to Thursday – and a delicious Thanksgiving meal with your family and loved ones. 

Of course, for those of us who are Catholic, the Mass is a “Thanksgiving meal” – the word Eucharist comes from a Greek word that means to give thanks – and in every Eucharist we give thanks for Jesus’ gift of himself for us – a gift we share in when eat his Body and drink his Blood in Holy Communion. We share in Jesus’ gift of himself so that we might make gifts of ourselves to God and to one another. 

And so, this morning the Carrollton family gathers together for this very special Thanksgiving meal, that is the Mass, and we do so with “gratitude in the heart” and “giving thanks to God” for those who have made this “Wellness Center” possible. This campus has always been a beautiful place – and the Wellness Center only enhances this beauty. This is a great addition to this school, a really great amenity to offer the students who study here. 

People want to living in communities with good education opportunities for their children and having a school like Carrollton in our community makes Miami a more attractive place for people to live and raise a family.

And so you don’t have to have kids here at Carrollton to recognize that this institution is a great asset for this community. Carrollton offers its students a solid platform for future success –but it does so because it offers a Christ-centered education.  A Christ-centered education is an education founded on truth. God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth – and how can we think that we are education someone about the truth – if we cannot speak about God?  

A Christ-centered education is a complete education, an education that prepares these children for life – and not only this life but also the next. Not to know that we were created for eternity is to be as ignorant as not knowing how to multiply fractions.  

Pope St. John Paul II once said that the Church “is the friend of every authentic search of human thought.” God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth. The Church serves both truth and humanity in her efforts to lead our youth to the knowledge of the truth.  

Today, more than ever, the world needs to encounter truth; the world needs to know that truth is knowable. The world needs to know its demands and know that its demands are reasonable. Without truth there is no freedom; without truth there is no hope.  

An education that does not acknowledge God will inevitably give students only stones when they are in fact seeking bread, and snakes when they are looking for fish. Parents want the best for their children – and the best in education is certainly at the top of the list. But, hopefully because you have invested in Carrollton, you understand that if you don’t give them God, no matter how much else you give them, you’ve given them too little.  

Jesus says in the Gospel today, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Here at Carrollton – because here education is centered on Christ – you can do just that, confident that you will be given not stones or snakes but the good things that our Heavenly Father promises us. 

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