Day Fifteen: The Paschal Mystery, Part One

“What is the last thing someone did that showed you they Loved you?” Hidden in this starting question is the goal of rethinking what Love is and what it looks like. I give students a minute to respond to this question.

I ask students to open up to 1 John 4: 18-19 in Bibles or on their devices. To be honest, I do not go around and make sure my students have actually opened their iPads or computers to the verse at hand. I don’t police their actions in my classroom. I invite them to try. I invite them to be open to ideas that may be new to them. I have observed teachers whose strategy is to create habits in their students and they do this with negative reinforcement… a tongue-lashing, a finger-wagging or a detention if they are not on the right website or right page in the Bible. This may work, I suppose, but in my classroom, it seems to have worked just as well to simply ask my students to respond to this simple request, especially if this simple request is part of the routine of the class whenever we read Scripture. They may not respond to my invitation the first nine times, but the tenth time is when they choose freely to respond; and they get it. My goal is for them to at least know they have an invitation to encounter God in Scripture.

I call on a student to read the passage:

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love. We love because he first loved us.”

St. Mary's Pro Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland. The Paschal Mystery, we will see in this lesson, is the ultimate act of Love as it is an act of fearless, self-emptying. (photo P. Smith)

“What is Love?” I ask my students. Prayer, here, is conversation…it is dialogue where we seek to understand what Love looks like, or, in this case, what Love does not look like. Some students automatically respond by saying “Love is not hate”. Sure. Basic. Others, if they have been trained in their literature classes say “Love is not apathy”. That’s deep. But I am looking for that student who can read this passage and see that “Love is not fear”. Love is action done without fear of looking powerless or weak. Love is action done without fear of pain or suffering. Love is action taken without fear of poverty, whatever poverty means. Love is action without ego. I ask students to think about their Bellwork for a moment and consider the last thing someone did for them that was “Love” and to relate that act of Love to fearlessness of losing what we will list as wealth, pleasure, power, or honor. “What was that person not afraid of losing?” I ask my students: “Wealth? Pleasure? Power? Honor?” Love is greater than fear. Even if you have to sacrifice a great deal for another, Love will give you courage and power to do so. But we have to learn how to Love first. That takes a relationship with God. We end the prayer and then answer the question.