Potential versus Progress

Are we asking God for the graces we need to tap in to our potential as His holy servants? Lent: Pray = good morning prayer with St. Casimir and daily Mass, Fast = Mom fasted from her common tendency to get distracted from her duty to manage household properly. Give = here at home and outside the home...we all need to work harder to do a little every day in our home, while also setting aside time and energy to give to others. Let's give more effort to our community involvements (various: our neighborhood, friends and family near and far, Challenge, our parish, TORCH, BSA).

Scientia potestas est. "Knowledge is power." This was our Latin quote for the day. I was taken back to all that literary deconstructionist jargon of my college days. How beautiful to be a Catholic and to no longer be saddled with all the immediacies of Marxist, feminist literary criticism and its companion ideologies. Whew! How I hungered and thirsted for truth in those days and was so impressed, and so often misguided, by my instructors and professors in the ivy league.

Dr. James Leek, who wrote Our Roman Roots, commented in the teacher's manuel that "Knowledge is power" could be a dangerous maxim. So true! Why? As happens often in my discussions with children, we came up with a short "answer" to a social ill: Our Lord does not need a microscope to see a molecule. He created everything from nothing! The pride of our modern, and post-modern, scientists and social scientists is so evident from the perspective of faith. Faith is potentially the freedom from the burden of sin. Grace is power. I am new to Latin, but I think that this might be expressed, Gratia potestas est. We will be buying a Latin dictionary soon.

Learning notes: It is nice to make some progress. Like many educators, I am sometimes frustrated when I see the untapped potential of one of my scholars. As their mother and primary educator, the untapped potential of the person relates to the whole person, not just to the scholar as scholar. Academic pursuits are part of a larger vocation. It is hard for me to manage the entire range of my children's daily duties. I try to pay particular attention to their personal habits, as so many youth, at present, have atrocious personal habits. Sin and sinning are deeply ingrained in our nature and manifest in habits both large and small. Our God-given temperaments are such gifts, and we must see ourselves as created good by a good God, while, at the same time, we all wrestle with our sinful nature, a consequence of that first fall of mankind. I think it was Cathy Duffy (others too, probably) who called homeschooled children "hothouse flowers". We are not truly in that category, as we have been in and out of both private and public schools. No matter where a family has been with regards to education, grace can perfect nature. Grace is so powerful. We need to ask our Lord to bless the little knowledge we have and to direct it to His Will.

This is countercultural. The modern (post modern) media often desires idolatry, particularly the idolatry of self. Toward what are we progressing? Is God's Love our ultimate goal? Do we desire, with all of our heart, to bring others into Christ's Kingdom? He wants us to live in His Kingdom now, as a foretaste of the eternal beatitude we will experience with Him in Heaven. Dear children of mine, you are heirs to life and love now. Do not miss even the smallest opportunity to grow in union with our Savior. Peace.