The Catholic Teacher, Doing God’s Will And Why It Matters

The Catholic Teacher, Doing God’s Will And Why It Matters

What is it exactly that God wants you to do in a Catholic school? In today’s episode I discuss the simple thing that God wants every single Catholic teacher to do on a daily basis. The good news is that this simply action will also have a big impact upon every student. I also talk about the relationship between the Duke of Wellington, the Battle of Waterloo and its implications for Catholic schools.
going deeper catholic teacher formation

Author

Jonathan Doyle

Jonathan Doyle

Jonathan Doyle is an international speaker, author, businessman and executive coach who has spoken around the world to more than 400,000 people on topics related to personal development, peak performance, leadership, Catholic school evangelisation, relationships and much more.

His recent keynote addresses include the NCEA National Convention in St. Louis Missouri to 10,000 delegates and he is a frequent keynote speaker in the US, Asia and Europe.

He is also the founder of an influential education and media business that delivers training content to hundreds of organisations and thousands of individuals around the world on a weekly basis.

Jonathan holds an undergraduate degree in education from the University of Canberra, a Masters Degree in Leadership and Management from the University of Newcastle and has also undertaken post-graduate study in philosophical anthropology.

He is the author of numerous books on relationships and peak performance and each day shares these same ideas with a large global audience via The Daily Podcast with Jonathan Doyle.

New Book Out Now

Make sure you grab a copy of my new book Finishing Strong. Just click the book image on the left and it will take you straight there.

Finishing Strong is a loud and clear call for every young person to make the very best of their final years of school. Based on hundreds of seminars around the world to a huge number of students Jonathan Doyle offers powerful, practical advice that can make a major difference.

Each chapter offers inspiring stories, clear principles and actionable steps for identifying and moving forward in study, life, friendships and each key area of life.

Jonathan also includes journal questions and guided reflections at the end of each chapter to maximise learning and ensure the ideas and principles can be made real, personal and achievable.

If you want to help your child or students make the very best of their final years of high school then it;s time to help them finish strong!

10,000 Teachers Have This Book Already!

How can we help teachers avoid burnout, cynicism and exhaustion?

How can the Catholic teacher live their vocation more fully, share the faith with young people and a make a difference in the world?

Over the last two decades, Jonathan Doyle has reached hundreds of thousands of Catholic teachers and leaders around the world with a message of hope and encouragement.

In Tools and Fuels, Jonathan offers a compelling vision of what Catholic schools can be in the 21st century and practical and inspiring strategies about the way each Catholic teacher can play their part in living their vocation, reaching young people and saving the world.

Find out more HERE

tools and fuels book

TRANSCRIPT

Catholic Daily Dec 3 2020

The Catholic Teacher, God’s Will And Why It Matters

📍 Well, Hey everybody. Jonathan Doyle with you as always for the Catholic teacher daily podcast. The semi daily podcast, depending on what’s happening at any given moment, I’m still in that season with three young children. So I was up early this morning. Got my prayer time in. And then I had a training ride, had to cut that short race back across town.

Pick up my 11 year old son and take him to drum lessons. And uh, sitting in the driveway. So he’s got a private drum teachers I’m sitting in the driveway. Reading the daily readings. If you’ve heard me on stage, always know that I talk about the crucial importance of getting some daily scripture into your life.

So, uh, I’ve got the app on the phone and, uh, uh, sort of put the Bible in the car. And then found that sort of 10, 15 minutes of waiting time. Just a good chance to get that scripture done. So again, as I always say, I’m not saying that to try and convince you, I am pious. People who know me well know that I like to make that point. It’s not about being pious. It’s about using the helps of the faith.

And in our busy, busy lives, we need to get those in. Uh, wherever he can. So I got my rosary in, on the way to and from cycling. No, not while I was writing while I was driving there. And, uh, you know, sometimes I have more time than others, but I guess what I want to share with you is that it’s just crucial for us, whatever.

Vocation, whatever ministry we have for us, it’s mostly, you know, for most of us it’s Catholic education. And we’re busy and we’ve all got many different commitments, but we’ve got to make time. For those daily practices. So, uh, got the scripture and today I’m going to share a little bit of that scripture with you.

And also I’ve been reading. Um, I’ve just got rod Dreher, his new book, regular listeners know that I’m a voluminous reader. So I’ve been reading Ross Douthat’s book. Uh, the decadent society. So Ross is the ostensibly the only Catholic at the New York times left. And it’s interesting. He hasn’t published much in the last few weeks. I hope everything’s okay there, but he’s a.

R U S Catholic public, intellectually rods, really well. So I spoke about his book, the decadent society, uh, recently, um, I’m about three quarters of the way through, so. I really recommend getting a look at that. It really talks about. How societies like ours eventually run out of energy. They run out of, uh,

Energy and, uh, As I said in that previous podcast, I think that’s kind of where we’re at and that’s why the fight is so important. That’s why, you know, Christ is going to use us to rebuild a that’s what happens throughout history at St. Francis? It’s all sorts of. Other great men and women that are at different times have played an incredibly important role.

In rebuilding. The faith now.

I was talking about rod driver because I’m reading his new book. Uh, which is cold live, not by lies. And it’s about the growth of soft totalitarianism in modern culture. So I’m looking forward to reading that the reviews are excellent, but I was reading his blog this morning and he. Made a quote that stuck with me. And I like to think this is how the Holy spirit works in our lives. We, we read good stuff. We try and stay attentive. And then the Holy spirit plants a thought or an idea, and reading the blog this morning, he made the, uh, he referenced the famous comment made by.

Uh, Wellington, the Duke of Wellington. The iron juke. Who of course, uh, defeated Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo in 1815, and Wellington made the point that you said that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. So Eaton of course is the extremely famous and ancient Catholic private school.

In, uh, in London or just outside of London. And, uh, He made the point belong to my saying that the, the leadership. The tenacity, the resilience, the courage, all of the things that became crucial in the battle of Waterloo, he was alluding to the fact that those skills. Had been bred into the warrior class of the British empire.

Through that public school system. Now let’s not pretend for a moment that eaten by our modern standards was a particularly pleasant place to be. There was enormous amounts of, uh, Challenging behaviors and all sorts of things that today would be deeply disturbing for us. But he’s point still stands that the schooling system was turning out a class of people capable of doing particularly useful things to particularly useful moments in history. So when.

Empires were rising and falling. The kind of people that you needed. We’re coming out of that school system. So the playing fields of Eton were no doubt, very tough places. Where people learned about, uh, you know, failure and success and courage and teamwork and all those sorts of things. So what’s it got to do with us in Catholic education? Well, here’s what I’m thinking.

I think that we, uh, at another pivotal moment in history, and I’m curious about the impact of our Catholic schools. In turning out the kinds of men and women. That we’re really going to need in this next historical moment. So. I think that’s a really interesting question. My experience over the years, traveling all over the world and meeting hundreds, literally hundreds of thousands of teachers, but literally.

A huge number of leaders and bishops and archbishops and, uh, and principles. And Vic is for education. Here’s my take on it. I think it’s utterly a case by case basis. I think there’s some magnificent schools. That do an incredible job. Uh, because they have great passionate Catholic leaders and principals, um, who care for their own staff and encourage faith and godliness and growth in spirituality and a great servant heart for young people. And that culture builds into the school culture. And we get some really fantastic kids coming out of that as those sorts of schools.

The God’s really going to use in, in effecting culture. So as I’ve said in so many episodes, our culture is a reflection. Of the formation of our young people. And again, I was reading something recently that said that you get the way you get cultural death. In terms of the values and the traditions at a significant and a culture, the way that you lose them is simply by them not being passed on from the older generation. So an older generation.

Loses its own conviction, loses, loses its own passion and belief that what it’s doing. Is so important. And then that is lost in that next generation and it can happen so fast. So basically for Catholic school to be effective, it has to have the kinds of men and women. Who are doing, who are passionate about their faith, and then they transfer that to young people.

So I would say on a whole, I think that is not happening. I think at least in my country. Large sections of Catholic education have been utterly hijacked by. I think the kind of socio cultural, uh, ideology, that’s just so pervasive. I mean, You know, What a house can I say this?

Many young Catholic people get far more. Formation on issues of. Plastic environment. Ideology whole bunch of stuff than they do about their own faith. I mean that we can’t really sugarcoat it. Can we, I think we’re at the point where we just need to say what’s actually happening. And that’s happening for complex reasons. I think the culture has become more secular. I think that, uh, formation institutions. So at least in this country, the bulk of teachers coming into the system, usually coming.

From secular universities. Um, a few come from the one sort of Catholic university we have here. So the formation of our young teachers is relatively lacking in the faith and kind of cases so that they find it hard to pass that on. Now before you lose your mind, there’s many exceptions to that. But my experience of it increasingly in this country is that.

It’s really being Autologic ideologically hijacked. So I think if you’re the kind of person who listens to this kind of podcast, then, uh, you know, well, if you’re not, if you’re hearing this for the first time, you’re probably listening to me for the last time. Because I believe this passionately. I do. I don’t believe we’re there to audiologically manipulate young people with the sort of stuff that they can get on.

The internet or news any day of the week, we need to be a place of radical difference. A truly Christological place where Jesus is at the forefront and center of everything we do. And that does not preclude, as I have said a million times, it does not preclude the fact that that also includes academic excellence, you know, and I’ve got this feeling lately that.

That academic excellence. Is often a byproduct of a deeply Christological Catholic school culture. Why? Because any principal or any teacher with a deep Christological sense? Is going to love young people and they’re going to want to see God’s plan and the potential of each young person come to life. And that will drive audiological excellence. I think a lot of principals are driven by fear. They’re driven by the fear that.

What drives academic excellence is the fear that if scores fall off the cliff, You know, they’ll lose enrollments. So. There’s nothing new under the sun. I think the deeper we go with Jesus, I think the deeper, the more courage we have informing great Catholic schools and great Catholic teachers. The other stuff just flows along with it.

So that’s the comment from L uh, the juke, the. The Duke of Wellington on the, uh, the battle of Waterloo being won on the playing fields of Eton. So I think the cultural battles of the future. The, the value of human life, uh, questions of political economy and all the different things that shape up a vibrant public square and shape a healthy successful.

Culture. Uh, really going to be developed by the young people that were forming. So if you’re still listening to me at this point, I just wanna encourage you because your faith, your relationship with Christ is just so crucial. All right. The last thing I want to say. Is today’s reading is from Matthew we’ve tipped over into advent. So we’ve got the new cycle of readings and it’s Matthew chapter seven, where Jesus is talking about the tree and its fruit and how you’ll know the tree by its fruit. And then he goes on to talk about the.

The wise and the foolish builders who built the houses on rocks and sand, you’ll be familiar with that. But I wanted to pick up on this line, which echoes something we talked about last week. This is in Matthew seven 21, where Jesus says not everyone. Who says to me, Lord, Lord. Will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he no wishy.

Who does the will of my father, who is in heaven or more time, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father, who is in heaven. That’s pretty powerful stuff. When I read that this morning. I had a sense that. In a lot of Catholic schools, Jesus has kind of vaguely presented as another wisdom teacher and other sort of smorgasbord choice on the great.

Post modern cultural, religious, theological, smarter smorgasbord. But. Jesus is making a pretty powerful point in here. I think in some schools, we kind of think that we can just present Jesus to young people. Is this interesting person. And, uh, we’ve got to try and be nice cause he was nice. But Jesus is saying something very important here and he’s going, you don’t go to heaven just because you’re nice.

You don’t go to heaven because you sorta think Jesus is a good guy. Jesus is saying that there’s only one kind of person who’s going to heaven.

Only is he, this is his words. It’s not mine. So if anyone’s losing their mind, He says, not everyone who says to me, Lord Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only Jesus has would only, only there’s only one kind of person going to heaven. And who is it? According to Jesus. She’s the person who does the will of the father.

I mean, what is Jesus’s entire mission on earth? What’s the incarnational about what’s all of it about. People say well, it’s to rescue sinful humanity. Yeah. But why did that matter? Because it was the will of the father. See everything that Jesus does. And he’s very clear about it. He says, I come not to do my own will. I’ve only come to do the will of the father.

So if we’re going to be like Jesus, and if we want to get home to heaven, With the people we love and those that we evangelize and teach and meet. Then what we have to do. There’s two parts to this. The first is that we have to strive to do the will of the father. And what’s the will of the father will the will of the father is to love his son.

And to receive his Holy spirit and to do what his son does. It’s the will of the father. So I think that’s what we have to do as educators. So as we seek to love Jesus, as we seek to grow in our faith, as we go deeper into the life of faith. We’re doing the will of the father. And through that, he will use us to do what to help young people do the will of the father.

I mean, ultimately what’s the ultimate goal of education of said it a million times. If we get every kid into Harvard, we haven’t won. You know, every kid becomes a rocket scientist and makes a huge amount of money and has a nice life. That’s that’s a good thing, right? Like it’s not a bad thing. But that’s not what we’re being asked to do were at being asked to help young people do the will of the father to know it.

And then to do it, which means what. We need young people. To love. Jesus because that’s what will of the father is the father loves his son and he wants us to love his son. So as you go about your work today in Catholic education. I really want to encourage you to be praying about the will of the father becoming real in your own life.

And courageously encouraging our students. To know Jesus and to do the will of the father. Now that we’ll, we’ll also include a school culture where there is patience and gentleness and kindness, and, you know, We’re bullying. Isn’t a massive issue where language is used to bless and build up so we can build these kinds of school cultures as we do the will of the father.

So I’m just convinced after all these years of we keep our eyes on Jesus, the other stuff works itself out. You see. If we have our eyes on Jesus will be different, will be reached, seeking his grace and asking for him to bless us and change us and resource us and strengthen us. And that will make us different teachers.

And through that we’ll have different Oh, gosh, there’s a lot in that. Do me a favor, send this to somebody who completely disagrees with everything I’ve said.

Just to, uh, just to liven up, they’d die. Well, How about Beth on cheese day and I’m getting older and I’m thought, you know what? This is on my heart. I just don’t want to spend any longer, trying to make 📍 everybody happy. We’ll make Jesus happy. Because I’ve got to answer to him, you know, and, uh,

And I want to get as many people home to heaven as I can, or I have friends, listen, God bless you. Uh, please make sure you’ve subscribed wherever you’re hearing this Spotify, Google, Apple podcasts, anywhere else. Please hit the subscribe button. It’s a big blessing. Uh, do that for me and, um, everything else on the website, one Catholic teacher.com one Catholic teacher.com. Just go there and go to the resources page gravies, solve the completely free trial of the going deeper resource. That would be an awesome thing to do. So do that one Catholic teacher.com.

God bless your friends. My name’s Jonathan Doyle. This has been the Catholic teacher daily podcast. And I’ll have another message for you tomorrow.

Don't Miss The Next Podcast With Jonathan Doyle

You Can't Do A Supernatural Task With Only Natural Resources - Sign Up Here And Never Miss an Episode

Listen to the Latest Catholic Teacher Podcast On

apple podcasts icon
Google podcast icon
spotify icon
rss icon

Latest Podcasts

Being The Light Of Christ In A Catholic School

Being The Light Of Christ In A Catholic School

Paul VI once commented that people listen to witnesses more than they listen to those who simply speak about something they have heard elsewhere. In today’s episode I want to share several important insights about what it means to be a genuine, daily witness to the impact that Jesus has had upon our lives.

Comments

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

The Podcast

About

Resources

Our Clients

catholic schools diocese of palm beach
catholic schools center of excellence
community of saints
catholic schools office diocese of lismore
catholic dioceses of arlington

Welcome To One Catholic Teacher

Each day you do remarkable work as a Catholic teacher transforming the lives of young people. This website exists to encourage and support the thousands of 'one Catholic teachers' who wonder if their work is making a difference. A great place to start is by checking out an episode of my daily podcast. Use the button below.

What People are Saying...

Jonathan Doyle has worked with parents, teachers and students in schools of my Diocese for five years. He is exceptional in his ability to communicate the good news of Jesus Christ and His Church to each of these different groups and to inflame their faith.

Dr John Graham

Assistant Director, Catholic Education Office, Diocese of Lismore

Jonathan Doyle is our go-to-guy for the latest evidence-based content and pedagogy on Christian education in sexuality and relationships. At a time when young people are immersed in popular (anti-)culture like never before, Choicez Media is working at the coalface with the message of love and responsibility.

Ian Smith

Director Evangelisation and Religious Education, Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta

Jonathan Doyle is one of the best Catholic communicators in Australia and I strongly recommend his seminars for Catholic educators. It is a unique opportunity for all your staff to deepen their understanding of the Catholic faith and the Church’s mission to the world.

Professor Tracey Rowland

Dean – , Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family.

ABOUT

One Catholic Teacher exists to inspire, encourage and support Catholic teachers around the world. Each day Jonathan Doyle offers a short dose of formation and encouragement via The Catholic Teacher Daily Podcast. Jonathan is also a global speaker and author on all issues related to Catholic Education.

GET ON THE LIST