Monday Week 1 OT Catholic Schools Week January 27, 2025
Fr. Alexander Albert Vermilion Catholic, Abbeville
500 years ago, a young Italian woman named Angela traveled over 300 miles to visit Rome. Why? Because, 1525 was a jubilee year – just like this year 2025 is a jubilee year – and those who visited the Major Basilicas in Rome were offered special graces. By that time, she was already a well-known teacher and the Pope tried to get her to stay in Rome and run a school. She refused, preferring to return home to Brescia and continue to teach the young girls there. 10 years later, 12 women had joined her efforts and they founded the Ursulines. This was the first order of women’s religious in the history of the Church that was specifically dedicated to education of children.
Though St. Angela Merici died in 1540, the Ursuline order she founded went on to teach around the world, having an especially profound impact on New Orleans and the entire state of Louisiana through devotion to Our Lady of Prompt Succor. When other religious orders of women started to focus more on teaching – orders like the Carmelites – they adopted some of the same practices used by the Ursulines.
So, it’s a fitting thing that we celebrate St. Angela Merici at the beginning of Catholic Schools Week. As our psalm tells us, we should “sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous deeds.” Inspired by St. Angela Merici’s example and supported by her intercession, we carry on an important mission here at Vermilion Catholic: the mission of Catholic education.
But what is that mission? To defeat the devil. Or rather, to allow Jesus Christ to defeat the devil in us and for us. Satan is real and he’s really smart. He does not sleep, does not give up, and we cannot out-maneuver him. He is the strong man Jesus talks about in his parable. What we need to defeat him is someone stronger. Jesus is that someone stronger. Jesus is the one who ties up the strong man Satan and then “plunder[s] his house.” And what is this plunder, what exactly does Jesus steal away from the devil? Us. We are the “property” that the devil is trying to hold on to.
If it shocks you to hear that we are the devil’s property, then you’re right. That idea is supposed to be unsettling because the devil works very hard to stop us from realizing it. You see, sin is the devil’s personal inheritance. Anywhere there is sin, the devil gets to stake a claim. When Adam and Eve sinned, they effectively surrendered the entire human race in the devil’s control. But God saw it coming. He was prepared and he wasn’t going to just let that happen.
Which brings us to Jesus Christ. If the devil gets to claim things through sin, Jesus gets to take them back through mercy. I hope you realize, though, that mercy is not magic. God is merciful and just and true. He created a universe that made sense. He designed human beings to be like him, to have integrity and be conformed to the truth. That means that human beings and all of creation follow a design that makes sense. Cause and effect, choices and consequences, action and reaction.
That’s why God’s mercy doesn’t just magically bypass the effects of sin. If someone sins, there is a consequence. One of those consequences is that the devil gets a hold of us. God doesn’t just ignore the consequences or magically bypass them. If he did that, we wouldn’t even need Jesus to be born. No, God plays by his own rules. God follows his own logic. God keeps his promises. God’s design makes sense and is reasonable, even if we don’t always grasp how. That’s why, instead of just ignoring the Truth as he designed it, he sent his Son to take the situation and transform it.
The devil got control of human beings through sin. So, God sent his son to be a human being without sin. Sin has consequences. It has a cost and human beings simply don’t have what it takes to pay that cost. So, he sent his son, God-made-Man, to pay that cost for us. That is literally the original meaning of the word “redeem.” It’s to pay off the debt for something so you can take it back.
There’s so much more that can be said about that cost and why God did it the way he did – that’s why we have so many years of religion and theology classes after all – but suffice it to say the cost of sin is paid in blood. Our first reading is describing the fact that, unlike sinful human priests who offer the blood of animals, Jesus offers his own blood. Unlike sinful human priests who use symbols and rituals, Jesus Christ goes to the reality. The Old Testament tabernacle and altar and temple are all symbols of the invisible reality of heaven. So Jesus doesn’t use those. Instead, after he rises from the dead, he goes to heaven directly.
As a human being, Jesus gets to act on our behalf. As God, he has what it takes to pay the debt of sin. As God-made-Man he enters into heaven and offers his blood to pay the price of all sins, to redeem, to take back the human beings the devil has claimed.
There’s only one thing missing: our acceptance. The fact is that we are still persons, we still have free will. Just as God does not magically ignore the consequences of sin, he does not magically override our free will. I can offer to “redeem,” to pay off the mortgage on your house or the loan on your car, but if you still refuse to live in the house or drive the car, I can’t make you. That’s why, even though all the debt of all the sins has already been paid, we can still find ourselves in the devil’s possession. If we do not accept that redemption or if we accept it and then reject it again with new sins, the devil still gets his claim. That’s what makes a sin unforgiveable, if we refuse to accept forgiveness.
And that’s why we need Catholic Education. Not to make Catholic lawyers and doctors and athletes businessmen, as much as we love to have that, but to save souls. Everything I’ve just described is complicated – kind of like mortgages and car loans – and if there is no one to explain it, it’s easy to stay stuck in debt, stuck in sin, and completely unequipped to escape the devil’s power.
As any educator knows, it’s not as simple as telling someone one time. Human beings are not just computers with data. We are persons with bodies and souls, with emotions and desires, with habits and inclinations. To educate someone is to address the whole person. So our Catholic School aims to not only give you the knowledge of what Jesus has done for you, but to equip you with the habits and virtues that make freedom possible, to train you in the sacramental way of life that overcomes sin, and to integrate you into the community of faith that is the body of Christ.
So, thank you St. Angela Merici, St. John the Evangelist, and all the great saints of education. Thank you dear Carmelites. Thank you teachers and parents and clergy and donors who make Catholic Education possible here at Vermilion Catholic.
As for you, dear students, you have entered to learn Christ and his salvation. By his grace, you will leave to serve him. I hope you know how much we love you, how much I love you. The devil is after you, but do not be afraid! We are here to protect you and set you free from his power. More importantly, Jesus Christ is here working in us, through us, and despite us to set us all free. So long as we let him, so long as we remain united in Jesus Christ, this house shall not fall.