We Stand Under the Angels: True Education

Last updated on: August 25, 2016 at 7:05 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

We Stand Under the Angels: True Education 2016-08-24T23:37:03-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Meister_von_Cefalu_002_detail_opt True education begins in the fear of the Lord and ends in wisdom. Amongst other things, the fear of the Lord is the reminder that He is God and we are not. God knows all things and we do not. God is wise, virtuous, and full of joy and too often we are not.

This is not discouraging if we realize that education is moving toward being like God. While we will never be all knowing, we can know more. We will never be there, but for all eternity will come closer to the Divine. This is wonderful.

I go to work every day with souls created in the Image of God, teaching souls created in the Image of God, surrounded on every wall by images of godly men and women.

Oddly, when I say this sort of thing, people say “get real,” but this is reality. All the professional development, as good as it can be, is in service to these basic truths. We are God’s children teaching God’s children. God help us.

The Saint Constantine School has four pillars that hold up the central skylight. Each contains a great soul that inspires us: Anne, Lucy, Helen, Elizabeth. This is an outer sign of the reality that a great crowd of witnesses uphold real education daily. We do nothing new, but follow in their steps or we are getting lost.

This is real.

I do not dare suppress wonder in students or teachers, because wonder is the result of the fear of the Lord!

Of course, most people who say this sort of thing act as if the implication is an unstructured mess. Nothing could be further from the truth. As we follow in the footsteps of the great saints who pray for us, then we end up moving up toward paradise. There we find rank on ranks of angels. Angels come in orders, because they are organized by their deepest natures. When you begin to “know yourself,” then you find your real place in the cosmos. This is never imposed on you, it is you. Education is finding what God has done.

Men become men as they are, not as culture says they are. Women become women as they are, never in cultural boxes. We become ourselves, because we find the natures God made.

There is another side to this: we are broken, unable to fix ourselves. We need mercy and grace to become the men and women that God made us to be. The very best secular education sees the good God put in humankind, but refuses to see the bad. Nobody has all the right impulses, inclinations, or habits. As a result, to be ourselves, we must ask God to have mercy and heal and redeem our fallen natures. We must rise to reality and not wallow in what we are.

What is is not what should be. What should be is what will be when God finishes with the time in which we live. True education prepares a man and woman for the company of angels and the worship of the Almighty. It is fallen, but it gets up by grace alone, through faith alone, by Christ alone. Such a soul is never alone because that process has been followed by the pillars of education, women like Anne, Lucy, Helen, and Elizabeth, and glorified by the heavenly orders. We don’t just rise up . . .we ascend to a higher plane than we have known!

Saints ground us in what God did for them, leading us to angels who push us forward q until we see beyond the Heaven and the furthest star to God.

This is education: saints of the faith praying us forward, wonder produced by the fear of the Lord, looking up through rank of ranks of angels there to protect and cheer us, to God: the Virtuous, the Wise, the Joyful.

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