Being willing to try new things is a common expectation in job descriptions for educators in Catholic schools, whether stated explicitly or not. No one serious about working in a Catholic school would say, “I am unwilling to try new things.” Being willing to try new things from the perspective of instructional strategy comes with the territory for Catholic school educators today. Numerous educator-saints in our history have modeled for us the necessity of “innovation” if by that term we mean sharing the gospel message and its invitation to discipleship with the young in new ways that will draw them closer to Jesus. In this light, a school’s capacity for innovation is not merely a luxury. By studying the life and ministry of Jesus, innovation might be seen more accurately as a demand of the gospel.
This past summer, I had the opportunity to visit the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, NM. One of her pieces of art that caught my attention was her 1914 work Untitled (Horse), which was painted in the style of pointillism—using many dots of color that blend when viewed from a distance. For O’Keeffe, this experiment with pointillism represented an attempt to develop her own technique as a young artist. Considering O’Keeffe’s experiment as a metaphor for innovation, Catholic school educators certainly need to be willing to risk trying out new instructional and assessment strategies for students, particularly when those strategies are informed by research. However, there is a domain of innovation in Catholic education that remains relevant and at the heart of our mission, no matter what generation of students pass through the halls of our schools. This is the innovation animated by the Incarnation of Jesus. No innovation is more seismic in its impact than the “unique and altogether singular event of the Incarnation of the Son of God” (CCC 464). The lens of the Incarnation is a “first principle.” This fundamental innovation of Catholic education has enabled the Catholic intellectual tradition to wrestle with the relationship between faith and reason over the centuries. Such a dynamic has produced intellectual and spiritual richness that has shaped and molded countless individuals, entire societies and historical eras.
As important as innovative strategies are in the classroom and to the operational vitality of our schools, there is a need to constantly return to an innovative worldview made possible only by the Incarnation of Jesus. It is not just our instructional strategies that need innovation. Our way of looking at the world needs innovation. We do well to remember Jesus’s rebuke of Peter: “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do” (Mk 8:33). The Incarnation offers us the gift of spiritual eyes that change how we look at and live in the world.
The Incarnation allows those who work in Catholic schools to talk about the virtue of hope at the deep level of the soul that is in touch with the divine. In his general audience, Pope Francis stated:
“But the Birth of Christ, inaugurating redemption, speaks to us of a different hope, a dependable, visible and understandable hope, because it is founded in God” (December 21, 2016).
Hope is innovative because it is enabled by the Incarnation, allowing any vague preconceptions about this theological virtue to be transformed into something now accessible to us as disciples of Jesus.
Teachers in Catholic schools are uniquely positioned to lead their students to see the presence of the divine in the ordinary. A perspective that presupposes this sacramental orientation to the world is innovative in any generation. The countless opportunities to discover a loving and eternal God in the created world offer an understanding of innovation that far surpasses the most engaging instructional strategy. The impact of this Incarnationinformed understanding of innovation tests the limits of human imagination and is only fully understood in God’s Wisdom.
Teachers in Catholic schools are uniquely positioned to lead their students to see the presence of the divine in the ordinary.
Yet, innovation does not stop with a sacramental worldview enabled by the Incarnation. Pope Francis further notes in the same general audience that “for a Christian, to hope means the certainty of being on a journey with Christ toward the Father who awaits us.” The implications of such an innovation for our pedagogy in Catholic schools are truly endless since the innovation originates in an infinite God. A journey implies movement, not staying in one place. “Hope is never still; hope is always journeying, and it makes us journey,” the pope said. As daily life changes from one generation to the next, so must the need to “innovate” for the sake of the Kingdom.
In Catholic schools, we cannot be still. For us, the best innovation is that which puts the members of our communities in touch with the divine, strengthens their friendship with Christ and helps them see and cultivate the divine spark in each other and in our world. Being able to journey with Christ, the hope of all humanity, is itself a divine innovation, made possible by the Incarnation. Any strategy that draws us closer to him on this journey bears witness to hope as an innovation.
Chad Riley, Ph.D.is the principal at Bishop Lynch High School in the Diocese of Dallas.
chad.riley@bishoplynch.org