From IHM School

Sister Maria Philomena, M.I.C.M.

Toward a Deeper Understanding of the Powers of Life as They Transcend the Material: The Acquisition of Wisdom and the Transmission of Culture

by Sister Maria Philomena, M.I.C.M.

[This talk was given at the 2009 SBC Conference, October 31, 2009. It was very well received (with a standing ovation). What is posted here are my notes from the talk. I have written out the quotes, for which I used books during the talk; but, otherwise, very little editing has been done. It was written to be spoken, not as an academic paper. To really get the presentation (inflections and all), it is recommended that you get a copy of the CD or DVD (see video clip here), or download the MP3 file, from the bookstore. This posting would helpful for those who wish to re-read certain quotes, etc.]

Good Morning! After fifteen years of attending conferences, it is rather overwhelming to be included in the list of speakers.

This is a good day to be talking about education.

Today’s saint, Saint Wolfgang, was an excellent educator. It was his reputation as an educator that led to his appointment as Bishop of Ratisbon. He thoroughly reformed the clergy and religious of his diocese (this was in the 900′s), and he inspired so much confidence in Henry, the duke of Bavaria, that the duke entrusted him with the education of his four children: one of whom is known to us as St. Henry the Emperor. St. Wolfgang did such a good job training the four princes and princesses that they were known — in the words of Father Butler — for their virtue and eminent qualifications . . . leading to a sort of proverb of the time: Find saints for masters (teachers), and you will have holy emperors.

HAIL MARY

June 2008 - Brother Francis with Sister Maria Philomena's Juniors & Senior

The Powers of life: Anyone who has taken at least part of Brother Francis’ philosophy course knows that man has twenty six powers or faculties. The highest two he shares with the angels: intellect and will. Then there are twenty-one powers that man shares with sentient (or animal) life: these include the inner and outer senses, the passions, and locomotion. The last three powers are found in all material living things (whether plants, animals or men): nutrition or assimilation, growth, and reproduction. Nutrition is the assimilation of matter outside of ourselves so that it becomes part of us. Growth is the process of reaching maturity; Reproduction or Generation is the ability of a living being to reproduce its kind. These three, nutrition, growth, and reproduction, are the powers referred to in the title of the talk. (board) We’ll keep coming back to them, so it is important that you have them memorized. Would you please say them with me? NUTRITION ** GROWTH ** REPRODUCTION

The following was not given in the talk but might be helpful to the reader:

The soul is “the principle of life in a material being.” In plants, this principle has three powers: Growth, Reproduction, and Nutrition (or Assimilation). In animals, sixteen powers are added to these first three: Locomotion, the five outer senses (Taste, Touch, Hearing, Sight, Smell), the four inner senses (Memory, Imagination, Instinct, Common Sense–a central communication system for all the senses), the Concupisible Passions (Love, Hate, Desire, Aversion, Pleasure, Pain,), and the Irascible Passions (Hope, Despair, Fear, Daring, Anger). Man has twenty one powers: the three we share with plants and animals, the sixteen we share with just animals, and two more: Intellect and Will (which we share with the angels . . .”made in the image and likeness of God”).

A native New Hampshire mushroom

Let’s move on to culture.

Culture: This term can be used in many ways (references to uses by other speakers), but I am going to use it as a noun with the following definitions. First, a culture is an environment that sustains life. If you want to grow mushrooms, you must have the right environment: the right soil, the correct temperature, the right amount of light.

A little current events note: Right now NASA is blowing up rockets in the craters on the dark side of the moon, trying to find pockets of frozen water on the moon, left by crashing meteors. They say that they need the water for future colonization. The whole project is ludicrous, in my opinion, for it’s complete lack of proportion [besides costing tax payers millions of dollars]. But it does illustrate the fact that water is an essential element of any culture; any environment that sustains life needs water in some amount.

So, culture is an environment that sustains life. However, the term culture can also be used to mean: an expression of life.

If you are approaching an individual that you have never met before, what is the first thing that you notice? Probably the things that you can see: how does he look, what is he wearing, how does he do his hair, how does he walk, etc. If someone approached you all in black, with chains hanging everywhere, with black nail polish, and spiky hair: you immediately know something about him. His culture, his environment, is an expression of his life. You could probably guess at his manners, his lifestyle, his music, and, if he is an integrated person and not a person in costume, even his philosophy (or lack of it).

So culture is either the environment that sustains life or an expression of that life.

Now that we’ve discussed culture, let’s go back to man.

Man is a creature composed of body and soul and made in the image and likeness of God.

The highest power in man is his intellect. What is the highest power in animals? Instinct. Now, instinct is one of the inner senses I mentioned a minute ago, and man does have this power, but it does not have to do for us what is does for animals. Man has to be educated. Let me explain.

Please don't leave me without education!

How much training does a bee need to build a hive? I remember Brother Francis pointing out that you don’t notice any variations of style among bee hives or birds nests! How many of you have seen a Tudor Gothic bee hive? Or an Romanesque robin’s nest? A baby turtle, just hatched, doesn’t need any help to know in which direction to find water (indeed, how does he know that he needs water at all?), doesn’t need help to swim, or to find food. But try taking a baby or even a three year old and expect it to survive without outside help: just with instinct. It won’t happen. A child needs to be taught just to stay alive. Let’s call this first level: survival education.

This is the level at which the missionaries found many of the Indians in America – or Africans in Africa – or any of the primitive peoples of the world. These people were intent upon surviving – and it was these skills that they made sure to pass on to their children: how to hunt, what foods were poisonous and what could be eaten, how to prepare hides for clothes . . . the list goes on and on. We’ll come back to this.

The next level of education comes in when someone wants, for himself or his children, to “get ahead.” To have a better place in society (whether that means becoming a lawyer, an engineer, or perhaps – among the Indians – a chief, or medicine man), to get a bigger pay check, to make life a little easier for his family, to be respected by the neighbors . . . whatever the reason (good or bad) – this person needs to be taught more things than he needs just to survive. Let’s call this vocational training — material or servile education (because it is train man to provide some service to society). What these things are depends upon the society in which he lives. For Sister Lucia’s mother in Fatima, Portugal, the fact that she could (and did) read put her head and shoulders above the other ladies in her village. They came to her for help with correspondence and wise counsel in all kinds of situations. For someone in our society, a degree in his field may mean the difference between a promotion or none.

The third level of education is when an individual is taught, not just to stay alive in this world, not just to advance in society, but when he is taught to be a complete human being, when all his powers of mind and body are developed to their fullest potential. This kind of education can be called human or liberal (meaning freeing), because it is the training of man as man, not man as an animal or man as a servant.

So we have three levels of education: survival, material (or servile), and human (or liberal).

I have not yet brought the Faith into the picture, because I want us to see clearly that as far as man goes, education (that is being taught an amount of knowledge) is necessary for life, and that there are different levels of this knowledge.

There is one more aspect of man’s knowledge that we have not yet discussed.

Man has an immortal soul, Man desires to know, Man can think about thought. These are things that animals do not have and cannot do. By his unaided reason (that is, the exercising of his intellect), man can get only so far before he needs Revelation to achieve his goal. And revelation must be made visible, taught to us, revealed.

Sister Marie Therese gave a talk on the Catholic Origin of Cultural Integration

The Faith comes by hearing (Rom 10:17) . . . If we want our souls to be alive, in a state of grace, we must be taught the Faith and then receive the Sacraments. Here we have life, education, and culture. If we want to live the life of grace, we must be taught the faith, and then we must live it. (Reference to Sister Marie Therese’s talk.) So, not only is education necessary for the natural (survival, servile and liberal educations) life of man, but if we want a Catholic life, we must have Catholic education. To some, this may seem a bit of a jump, but please keep an open mind until you hear the rest of my examples.

Until now we have been using education as synonymous with being taught a certain amount of knowledge, but I think that we are ready for a more formal definition. Some years ago, Sister Marie Therese had me do the research to come up with “our” definition of education. As with culture, there are probably hundreds of definition for education, certainly dozens. Talk about variations on a theme! After much discussion, we combined a couple of definitions to come up with one that would include all the levels of education that I’ve already mentioned. Education is the acquisition of Wisdom and the transmission of culture. (board)

Let’s break this definition down a bit. Wisdom is defined by Brother Francis in two ways. I wanted to use his long definition, but there is so much depth in it, that it really deserves a talk of its own. I have included it with other quotes that I wasn’t able to fit into my time today, so if you are interested, you can take a copy and study the long definition of Wisdom at your leisure.

For now, I will use Brother’s short definition. Wisdom is the science of salvation (repeat) — that is, the knowledge that makes saints. Why did God make us? God made us to know Him, to Love Him, and to serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next. This entails the training of the intellect (to know) and the training of the will (to love) and their manifestation, which is service. To do this with God as the object (the goal) is Wisdom.

So, education is first the acquisition of Wisdom, that is the student learns truth and how to live by it. To acquire something is to make it one’s own. (board)

The Conference Round Table Discussion - a forum for acquiring wisdom

The other half of the definition of education is the transmission — or passing on — of culture (remember? the environment necessary to sustain life and the expression of that life). (board) So, in educating for Wisdom, the student is placed in the environment most conducive to sustaining the acquisition of Wisdom, and then the student is also given the tools to express that Wisdom in his own life and convey it to others.

We should all be “acquiring wisdom and transmitting culture” our entire lives. Education is for everyone and we should never stop learning (I’ll explain why in a minute) . . . however, there is a time in our life when learning comes easier. In fact, during this time, human beings are sponges — soaking up knowledge — everything is new and wonderful — learning is almost as easy as breathing. You know what time I am speaking of: childhood — youth.

Vladimir Lenin once said: “Give me a child until he is nine and you will have a Bolshivik for life.” God’s enemies know the value of education.

Holy Scripture says (Proverbs 22:6): “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” This is why parents are the primary educators of their children. And, if parents are raising children of God, what kind of environment, culture, should their homes be? But this is matter for another talk.

As a child grows older, his world expands as does his knowledge. Man is a social being. There are radiating levels of society. On the personal level, culture is going to be the environment that helps (that allows and sustains) him to live according to wisdom. Then that environment is enlarged to incorporate others in the broadening levels of society. And within these levels of society, the process of acquiring wisdom should continue until death. Here’s why:

St. Therese in our Convent Chapel

Do you remember the story of how little St. Therese asked her big sister, Pauline, why God doesn’t give an equal amount of glory to all the saints in heaven? She was afraid that some of them wouldn’t be entirely happy. Her sister explained the answer to her by taking Therese’s tiny sewing thimble and their father’s large drinking glass and filling them each to the brim with water. Neither vessel could hold another drop, but one obviously had a greater capacity. In a similar manner, there are “big” saints and “little” saints. All of them are perfectly happy — completely united to God (can’t hold another drop), but some of them have more capacity — more room — for happiness (union with God) than others.

What determines the capacity of a saint? The theological answer is: the degree of charity he has exercised. We are given this life in which to serve God — and what matters in not how MUCH we do, but with how much LOVE we do it. The more love, charity, with which we act, the more our vessel grows. The level of charity we have reached by the time we die determines our capacity for all eternity. Whether we are a thimble, a drinking glass, a bucket, a barrel, depends on our cooperation with grace. Our capacity for happiness in heaven is based on our love . . . and you cannot love what you do not know. And that knowing, loving, and serving God is the purpose of education.

So what have we learned so far? The powers of life, the highest powers of man, the definition of culture, the definition of wisdom, the definition of education, and the (three) levels of education. Now, hopefully, we have a foundation — a clear picture of certain terms — upon which to build. Let’s take the levels of education and see how the Church has engrafted to each Catholic education.