Filipino Samaritan

Pete graduated from a Catholic school – having successfully passed all his religion and theology courses. He is certainly well-informed about the doctrines, practices, and rituals of the Catholic religion. According the educational standards, he is a full-fledged Catholic.

He is now in the corporate world and a successful executive. Very often, opportunities to be the Good Samaritan are thrown his way, but he ignores them, like the priest and the Levite in today’s Gospel incident (Lk. 10:25-37). He loves his own family all right, and a few selected relatives and friends, but he lacks that gut-feel for the many others who are in need of his help. He lacks that felt compassion that comes from the heart, which moves one to action.

Many, perhaps most, of the students who come from Catholic schools are like Pete. Praxis, more than all that intellectual knowledge about God and religion, is what students in these schools need most of all, as an intrinsic and central part of the curriculum.

Actual love of neighbor in action is not learned inside the classroom, even if one has gone through fifteen years of religion and theology classes, from grade school to high school to college.

Some Catholic schools have a token form of immersion program among the poor, or other related activities. But overall, this is just a drop in the bucket – and does not carry a lasting impact and moral conversion. When everything is said and done, intellectual knowledge and competence are still what matter most in the present educational system. One can pass all his/her religion and theology courses with flying colors – without loving the neighbor as a way of life.

Less classroom religion and more lived religion. This is what we need in our Catholic schools. This calls for a radical restructuring of the entire curriculum. It will involve a lot of creativity and political will. Most of all, it needs a spiritual re-conversion of the school administrators and the whole faculty, all of whom need some on-going immersion with the poor themselves.

Last but not least, the school must officially involve the active collaboration of the parents of their students. With formal and systematic planning, parents and their children can involve themselves as families in outreach programs for the poor, as an intrinsic part of the school curriculum. Or course, this will have to involve the spiritual conversion of the parents themselves. The school can initiate renewal programs for parents, if necessary.

A growing number of parents are already active in parish programs or Christian renewal organizations. Involving their children as officially supported by the school’s curriculum is what is needed. Quite often, though, such parents do want their children to be involved in their apostolic work, but the children – from grade school to college – have too much academic homework that no time is left for such outreach involvement, especially because such activity is not part of their school requirements.

As for the many more parents who are not yet apostolically involved, the school can thus mobilize them to do so, as part of their children’s school curriculum.

Is all this an impossible dream? Who knows? After all, with God’s intervention, nothing is impossible.

(The Jesuit Promotions Team invites male college student and young professionals to a Vacation Seminar, intended for those who are considering the priesthood or brotherhood in the religious life. The Seminar will be held on July 25, 2004, Sunday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM at The Garage, Sonolux Bldg., Ateneo de Manila University Campus, Quezon City. For more details, please contact tel. 4266101 (loc. 3408) or e-mail at [email protected]. Also the website of the Philippine Jesuits at www.ignaciene.oxg)