I went to St John Lateran on March 1st. I wasn’t looking at art, I wasn’t meeting anyone, and I wasn’t even there for a religious ceremony. The diocese of Rome decided to organize a series of talks on handing on the faith called Dialoghi in Cattedrale (Dialogues in the Cathedral).
This first one featured a psychology professor and a priest famous for making mosaics on the theme of Conjugal Love as the Source of Educational Action for the Next Generations. The Legion encourages each one to investigate a topic or two of interest and mine is how we transmit the faith, so such a theme matches my interest. Both speakers grabbed examples from Italy and Europe, but their principles work for Canada and the US as well. Fr Mark Rupnik’s talk impacted me more, so I will share a few of his ideas.
“Life follows wisdom not theory,” he began. Education is about passing on wisdom not theory. The love of parents is the true wisdom that is most important to pass on. In almost every home today, the living room is the same: a couch and two chairs, all centered on the TV. Before a kid can talk, this symbolism teaches them what is important: bland entertainment and public opinion.
Growing up under Communism, he saw that all the teenagers with Communist dads stopped caring about Communism but the Catholic boys kept going to mass. And, why? These kids saw how much their dads sacrifice to go to mass and risk their jobs to do so; they saw that love was there.
Marriage is our point of departure “because it is the sacrament of love and the only truly educational point, everything else if not built on this foundation is moralism.” How easy it is to get caught in our theology, to get caught in all the numbers of the Catechism, and forget this love. In the end, as St Paul says, only love remains.
Let me end here with a manner of education which is so appropriate to an artist: “Beauty is love realized.”
(Note: exact quotes are a personal translation of the Italian text as printed in ZENIT.)
