Why educators need to cling to their hope in God

Being a teacher can be a depressing profession, as everything you ever do appears to hit a brick wall.

It’s not easy being a teacher in today’s world, especially as young children are living a distracted life, always wanting to be entertained.

It can be tempting as a teacher to throw up your hands in frustration and to quit.

In truth, the only way to be an effective educator is to foster the virtue of hope.

Hope

Pope Benedict XVI expressed his concerns at the state of education in a letter he wrote to the Diocese of Rome in 2008:

Educating…has never been an easy task and today seems to be becoming ever more difficult. Parents, teachers, priests and everyone who has direct educational responsibilities are well aware of this. Hence, there is talk of a great “educational emergency“, confirmed by the failures we encounter all too often in our efforts to form sound people who can cooperate with others and give their own lives meaning.

The good news that Pope Benedict XVI shared was that whatever difficulties we endure, they are not insurmountable:

Do not be afraid! In fact, none of these difficulties is insurmountable. They are, as it were, the other side of the coin of that great and precious gift which is our freedom, with the responsibility that rightly goes with it.

Above all, Pope Benedict XVI urged educators to foster the virtue of hope in their lives:

[T]he soul of education, as of the whole of life, can only be a dependable hope. Today, our hope is threatened on many sides and we even risk becoming, like the ancient pagans, people “having no hope and without God in the world”, as the Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians of Ephesus (Eph 2: 12). What may be the deepest difficulty for a true educational endeavour consists precisely in this: the fact that at the root of the crisis of education lies a crisis of trust in life.

He then ends his letter reminding all educators to remain steadfast and to trust in God:

I cannot finish this Letter, therefore, without a warm invitation to place our hope in God. He alone is the hope that withstands every disappointment; his love alone cannot be destroyed by death; his justice and mercy alone can heal injustices and recompense the suffering experienced.

Hope can help us brave any storm, knowing that we are not in control and that the seeds we planted will bear fruit in due time.