Why Every Catholic Teacher Needs Daily Time With Scripture.

Well, hey there, everybody. Jonathan Doyle with The Catholic Teacher Daily Podcast. Hope you’re doing well wherever you are in the world. Thanks again to everybody for your wonderful prayers. If you’re not aware, I had a very bad accident just on two weeks ago. Just been in the hospital for a long time. Still can’t really use my hands, but I’m able to walk again, which is great. Just grateful to God for the gift of being alive. I wake up every day in the morning and I look outside and I just think, “You know, Lord, what a great gift to be alive.” I could have been killed so just great to be here with you on the planet. God’s good. The best is ahead. And I want to share some things with you today and your amazing work as a Catholic educator.

Do you know how proud of you God is? Do you have any idea? I know that you get up and it’s hard and you go into the classroom and sometimes it can be exhausting. He’s so proud of you and the Holy Spirit is just right there ready to take your entire vocation to a whole new level in Him.

And gosh, I was talking to a friend on the weekend about that, that the Holy Spirit, friends… I keep saying to people, in the Roman Church, we don’t have a big Holy Spirit thing for complex historical reasons. I always joke that the Holy Spirit’s like the strange uncle we only see at Christmas. We’re like, “Hey, we should catch up.” And we don’t sort of have the Holy Spirit so central to our life.

But in the Orthodox churches, the Holy Spirit’s incredibly important. So part of my mission is bringing the Holy Spirit back, like He needs me to do that, right? Like He needs me to do that. I’m pretty sure He can cover that on his own, but I’m just really passionate about sharing the graces of the Holy Spirit with Catholic educators.

Listen, I want to share something with you today. I’m very carefully picking up my phone with my very busted hands. But I’m huge on prayer, right? I talk to Catholic teachers all over the world about this. I’m always big on prayer. Now I’ve got a busy life. I’ve got a busted body right now, but when it’s not so busted, I’ve got a very busy life just like you. I’ve got three kids under the age of 12. All that I do, but morning prayer is so central for me.

And as I’m up early and given that first time of day to God every day, and one of the parts of that is I read the daily readings. And I want to share something with you today because I’m always saying to teachers that you’ve got to be spending a little bit of time each day with scripture every single day because if you don’t do that, then He can’t speak to you through His word.

Listen to this beautiful line today. This is from the readings today for Mass. And so, in the Book of Wisdom 6:11, listen carefully. Therefore, set your desire on My words. Long for them, and you will be instructed. One more time. Therefore, set your desire on My words. Long for them, and you will be instructed. So there’s a promise there, right? This is the Holy Spirit speaking through the writer of the book telling them that if we set our desire on the word of God, on God’s words, then we will be instructed.

I don’t know about you. Do you want to be instructed? I do. My life is complex and yours, no doubt, is very complex as well. So what I always try to say to Catholic teachers is that as you spend a little bit of time each day just reading the daily readings, there’s so many apps now in the App Store you can get that are just so good.

He wants to say things to you. And what’ll happen is that as you soak in that word for a few minutes each day, you’ll find that as you go into the classroom, you’ll get these promptings. You’ll get this idea. You’ll be reminded of a gospel story or a scripture or something. And that’s the power of this stuff.

Now, I want to finish by something that I often share in live seminars as well and it’s a beautiful quote from one of the Second Vatican Council Documents, [Dei Verbum 00:03:40]. Now listen to this. It’s very beautiful. Here it is. For in the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven meets His children with great love and speaks with them. And the force and power in the word of God is so great that it stands as the support and energy of the Church, the strength of faith for her sons and daughters, the food of the soul, the pure and everlasting source of spiritual life.

That’s pretty good, huh? Isn’t that amazing? Listen to those words, strength of faith, food for the soul, the Father wanting to speak tenderly to his children. So all of that’s an offer, but it can’t happen if we’re not actually there making that time each day.

So, that’s my encouragement for you today, to spend time as a Catholic teacher each day, each morning, however you can do it, whether you’re listening on an app, whether you’re just reading in some quiet time before you go to school, whatever it is. But today He spoke to me. Today, reading that line from Wisdom about desire and being instructed by His word, the Holy Spirit just told me to share that with you and I never would’ve done that if I hadn’t made the time.

So, God bless you, everybody. I hope that’s an encouragement to you. Please make sure you’ve subscribed to the podcast. Would you do that? Apple podcasts, Spotify, wherever you’re listening.

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Now, Facebook group, Passionate Catholic Teachers, come and follow us there. And if you want to find about how to book me to speak or take the free three week trial of the Going Deeper Program, I want you to go to BeingCatholic.com.au and you’ll see there, staff seminars. Hit that tab. You’ll find all about me. You can see me speaking live to 10,000 teachers. And also, take that free trial of the Going Deeper Program.

All right, friends, listen. I just want to say, God bless you. Praying for you. Thank you for what you do every day in Catholic education. My name is Jonathan Doyle. This has been The Catholic Teacher Daily Podcast, and I’ll have another message for you tomorrow.