“Teach the Truth”

Click here for the Prologue to this post.

The screen door slammed behind me as I carried my coffee and breakfast onto the porch and settled in with my dog Deke on the old wicker sofa. I had just gotten home from Sunday Mass and opened the church bulletin to look it over as I ate.  I sipped my coffee and casually turned the pages of the bulletin, scanning for anything of interest.

I must say that this was not at all typical for me. Typical was to see something interesting in the bulletin that I might want to sign up for only to be disappointed that the event had already occurred, not because of any misinformation, but because I rarely  - pretty much almost never - read the bulletin until decluttering mode set in!

Divine Providence prompted me to pick up that bulletin from the kitchen table that morning.

Because as I flipped through and perused the pages, on a right-hand page I saw that my parish’s school was looking for a teacher.

At first I thought that I couldn’t leave my current teaching position because I truly knew that God had put me there. In the last couple of years,  He had even worked it out so that I taught all of the fifth graders social studies. How could I leave that and Bible Club?

But then I felt the stirring of the Holy Spirit

and began to cry, again the consolation kind of crying that God uses to guide me. It is the crying which often comes with the overwhelming love of God and of Our Blessed Mother, probably what she means when she says if we knew how much she loves us we would cry of joy.

I knew in the same way that I had known about my call to Medjugorje that I was supposed to take this position.  I then had the thought that I might have to get a second job, a thought that I fully, yet surprisingly accepted since I consider my summers to be sacred and restorative. This thought had come in the exact same way that the thought about packing up my classroom had come with the revelation of my recent call to Medjugorje, so it was clear.  I cried for what must have been fifteen minutes, but at the same time I couldn’t stop smiling! This was so much like my call to go on pilgrimage a few short months earlier!

And then I remembered what I had heard: teach the truth!

So this was what the Lord had meant when He had said “teach the truth.” This was what He meant when He told me in prayer that He was giving me a new team and needed me to lead with grace. The Lord had prepared me to recognize that this was definitely from Him!

The previous week, I had woken up around 3:30 A.M. at my camp and heard the words “teach the truth.” It wasn’t necessarily an audible voice, but I recognized it as the voice the Lord had used one other time to wake me in the middle of the night when He seriously needed to get my attention.

In the next several minutes, more of the Lord’s truth followed to continue the deep level of healing that He had brought me through the day before. He often called me to my camp in the mountains, where He could speak to me in the quiet of solitude, speaking truth in love and revealing the root of the lies from which I had lived so much of my life.

Of all the other things our Lord had revealed to me that night, I had pondered those words about teaching the truth the most, searching for their meaning. I had thought perhaps it was about the primary sources I used to teach social studies to fifth graders at the public junior high where I had been teaching for almost 16 years, primary sources like the letters of William Penn where God was mentioned everywhere.

But it wasn’t. It was to prepare me to take this job! Why hadn’t I thought of it before? Teach the Truth was the foundation that my friend had started for tuition assistance for families wanting to send their children to Catholic schools. Hearing “teach the truth” was clearly about teaching in a Catholic school!

The Lord gave me those words ahead of time because He knew that I needed to know this was truly from Him in order to make the decision to leave my longtime public school position.

I remembered something else from my pilgrimage that I hadn’t quite figured out: the box of books!

The morning I left for Medjugorje a friend who owned a Catholic store had called to say that an order I had placed with her for several copies of a book had just arrived. She asked if I wanted to pick it up. I had placed the order for a friend who was giving me one of the books, and since her store happened to be on my way home from dropping off Deke to his sitter that morning, I had stopped in quickly to grab the box.

I questioned the seeming coincidence of the books arrival on the day I was to depart for my trip for Our Lady, wondering whether I was supposed to take my copy with me. Since it was a large and heavy book, and my luggage was already full, I didn’t think I was to pack it, but still the fact that the books had arrived that same day had felt significant.

Now I understood the connection and timing of the arrival: the name of the book was Fatima Mysteries: Mary’s Messages for the Modern Age, and the day that I read the bulletin was the Feast of the Assumption of Our Blessed Mother.

And the name of the Catholic School with the open position?

Our Lady of Fatima!

The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, was calling me to Catholic education.

...more to come.

If you would like to support the Teach the Truth Foundation, you may do so at teachthetruthfoundation.org.