When I was in second grade, my teacher, Sister Mary Timothy, asked me one day if I could stay after school and help clean up the classroom. I was the kid who was going to be a priest. I was so good — when I was in school.
After the desks were all straightened out and the floor was swept, Sister Mary Timothy thanked me and told me I could go home. I walked to school and lived about a mile away (uphill both ways, of course). So, as I began to walk home, I saw that the doors to the church were open. Being that I was going to be a priest, I went inside. I stretched out in a pew and fell asleep.
Father Charles Lachowitzer
I woke up to the sound of voices. One sounded like an angel and the other sounded like my mother. Sure enough, as I sat up in the pew, Sister Mary Timothy, a police officer and my mother ran over to me. Sister Mary Timothy was thanking God I was found. My mother grabbed me by the arm and, because we were in church, whispered all the ways I could be punished, including eternity with the devil. Sister Mary Timothy must have felt sorry for me because she brightly whispered, “Oh Mrs. Lachowitzer, think of Charles as being like Jesus. When Mary and Joseph thought he was lost, they found him in the Temple, too!”
My mother thanked Sister Mary Timothy and the police officer. Then my mother, because she did not drive, walked me home. One mile. Uphill. Both ways. My mother waited until we were across the street from the church, so that she didn’t have to whisper, and then yelled, “Don’t get any ideas in that head of yours. Your parents aren’t Mary and Joseph and you’re not Jesus!”
My life in a Catholic school was a world of feast days, the seasons of the Church and the lives of the saints. By the time I was in seventh grade, I was a police boy and because I was still the kid who was going to be a priest, I was also president of the altar boys. The duties of training and scheduling servers were in the midst of a major change from Latin to English. Nevertheless, I was a leader in a child’s world.
The adult world of the late 1960s was in chaos. There were protests, riots and assassinations. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet made sure that our school was in a different world — a world of order, discipline and learning — all interwoven into our faith and our Catholic tradition.
To this day, the central characteristic of a Catholic school is a child’s world where there is an environment conducive to excellence in education, the formation of conscience and the development of moral character.
For me, a Catholic school is symbolized by that scene of my mother, my teacher and a police officer joyfully finding a lost child in a pew, albeit relieved from a fear I did not know. Parents, teachers and the leaders of our communities work together to ensure the safety of our children by establishing rules that govern right behavior and create the most positive experience possible. Discipline is discipleship in a school that follows Jesus.
This is why a Catholic school doesn’t just put values on posters to hang on classroom walls. In a Catholic school, we proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ and by these truths, our children learn what to value and why. Our children learn the virtues and are given the skills to live them out.
Today, the world of adults is still a challenging one. Oh sure, there is a lot of good in our world, but in the unpredictable nature of national and global events, keeping our children in a child’s world where they can discover and grow the gifts God has given them is the one sure way to prepare them for an unknown future. With God’s grace, they will even be the ones who help shape this future.
To all our school staffs, my heartfelt gratitude to God. It is a season of heroes who persevere in service. I hear from principals and teachers that these are difficult days. If it was just a job, or even a career, some would have left already. But, as we approach National Catholic Schools Week, let us remember that working in a Catholic school is a vocation, and all of our teachers, educational leaders and volunteers have our admiration, renewed support and many prayers.
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