By
Robert R. Schwarz
"The
bottom line: help students fall in love with God"
[Posted originally March 2, 2014 ]
The
teacher held a mirror up to the 6- year old student.
"Whom do you see here?" she asked the girl.
" Me,"
the girl replied . " And my name is Susie."
" And what else do I
know about you? "
"I live in Arlington
Heights, " the student said, no doubt wondering
where her teacher was going with this.
It was
the teachable moment all teachers wait for to drive home
an important point . In this case, it was the child's spiritual
formation. "You are Saint Susan of Arlington
Heights, " the teacher affirmed . "You are a saint- in-
the -making. "
The teacher, Mrs. Pat
Farrell, wanted her student to realize
that saints were normal people like this student and not "just someone up
on a cloud who always had the right answer." Pat is director of spiritual formation for k-8
students in the St. James Catholic
parish in Arlington Heights, Illinois.
 |
| A student and his "sketch" of her as his saint. |
Pat's next learning strategy
that day engaged a student in a role play to
help him form his prayer
life. After that, she led the class in an informal talk about God
and Jesus . It was a concerted effort—one she's been doing for the past 13
years—to bring children closer to a living relationship with the Holy
Trinity.
"
God is a God of relationship , and my goal, my mantra is to help these young
people become aware of the God within them and to relate to that
God," Pat explained during our recent interview in her
parish office . Asked if the concept of God being within one was too
abstract for a young student, she replied:
"You start of the see glimmers of this [ understanding ] when they
are in junior high."
"Teaching spiritual
formation is very different from teaching English, " she said. "Spirituality to me differs from theology
or religious education in that these are cognitive processes. It is that
relationship with that indwelling God….We have only to listen
with different ears, see with different eyes." At the 9 a.m. Friday
Mass she also trains her students to appreciate the church's
ongoing liturgy " Anyone is welcome
to come."
Pat,
a fiftyish woman obviously not
short-changed in either intellect—she also teachers critical thinking as an
adjunct professor at Roosevelt College— or expressive humor, sits at a small
desk top-heavy with papers. Her eyeglasses match her fuchsia colored
Celtic sweater with a golden-like Celtic cross on it. We are surrounded by teacher and church stuff: sacramentals, classroom props—and lots
of family photos . She likes to be precise when speaking.
 |
| The Farrell family in 2011 |
Pat has
observed that that many Catholics are
leaving churches today because, as
children, their faith was taught to them
intellectually and not by or through a personal
relationship with God. "There are so many challenges
today to raising a faith-based family ," she asserted . " And I'm
going through this too because I have teenagers and a young adult. " What
saddens Pat is "seeing the number of young people stepping away from their
faith . " Aware of those parents
who dismiss this fall-out by saying , well, that's what all the youth
is doing, she counters with: " We have to work a little harder to give
them reason not to ! This is why the archdiocese had indentified this year as
the "Year of the Strong Catholic Parent." Pat is doing her part by
giving spiritual direction to adults when they ask for it. Her academic
background also includes three master of arts degrees : from Loyola University
in religious education; Dominican University
in library and information science; and Northeastern Illinois University
in philosophy and phenomenology.
At a special ceremonial
dinner last month, Pat was one of 33
employees of the Archdiocese of Chicago Catholic Schools to the receive the
2014 Distinguished Service Award. The presentation was made by Cardinal Francis George and Sr. Mary
Paul McCaughey.
I
asked Pat to relate her life's spiritual journey . She talked about it with apparent
candor, confidence, and a knack for anticipating my next
question. " By the time I was three, I knew I was being called
to do God's work , " she began . It
was a calling she felt deep within her and one she soon shared with her
parents. "My parents were the
biggest influence on my life. They were people of great faith. My mother was
the quintessential volunteer with a strong sense of [Catholic] social justice
and mission. "
Her
father, who emigrated as an infant from Ireland and later
worked for the American Oil Company, would quote to her St. Thomas Aquinas and
St. Augustine. "My parents were devoted to each
other, and when Dad would put us to bed at night, he would always
say , ' Did I tell you today I love you ? ' He never left the dinner
table without saying to my mother, 'Your dinner today, my darling,
was delicious. ' " ( A plaque in Pat's home, from a
Lutheran friend, reads: The greatest
gift a father can give his children is to love their mother. )
"
While growing up, I did not want to be a nun ," Pat said . But after
graduating from Dominican University, she considered going into a
convent because she was still in awe of the Dominican sisters . She admits that these nuns " in a large
part made me what I am today ." Since then Pat has kept a strong relationship with the Dominicans and
today is a Dominican Associate.
When she decided to pursue that
childhood calling to do God’s work, she sought work with the lay ministry office of the Chicago’s archdiocese but was told she had to be a nun to qualify. So, she went to work for a medical society,
still feeling the call for church work. When several years later the archdiocese began
promoting lay ecclesial ministers for its Together in God’s Service Program, Pat applied . Her call had been answered.
Her "Call
to Adoption"
 |
| With son Patrick at age 5 |
Yet,
another call was waiting for Pat. She now had met Jerry , whom she married . Jerry today is the business director
for Queen of All Saints Basilica in Chicago. Now came the
tragedy of three miscarriages for Pat . Doctors told her that
because she and Jerry were genetically identical twins ( a rare occurrence of when
the DNA of husband and wife
match exactly ), Pat would never be able
to carry a pregnancy to full term. "I was dumbfounded, "
Pat said. " I was numb."
Before the miscarriages, Pat and Jerry had
talked about adopting children in addition to their
planned biological children. The couple now prayed over
adopting a child and were willing to accept a child of any race or with any
handicap. They contacted the former Family Counseling Clinic in Grayslake
and soon 11-day-old Ann
arrived in the Farrell home.
Ann, now
21 , will soon graduate from her mother's alma
mater and intends to pursue a doctorate in biomedical ethics. " She's very strong-willed, like her mother, " Pat said.
From the same adoption
agency , came 13-day-old Joseph, who today Pat describes as the family's "song and dance man" . Joe is a sophomore and a theatre major at Dominican University, where he has been cast
as a leading man in several Dominican
productions. "He plans to go on to graduate school in Social Work
and hopes to be a high school counselor and teach theatre," his
mother said. Explaining her son's dual
goals , Pat said that sometimes students
being counseled can better express themselves through drama. "Joe has a heart for this. "
Patrick, the third adopted child, arrived at the Farrell home when only three days old. When Patrick
attended the St. James school, Pat once described him as "the happiest kid in the world with
an incredible belly laugh I can hear half-way down the hall.
" He is now a high school sophomore and has told his mother he would like to work with animals. " That may be,"
she said, " because one of our family
dogs was born five months before Patrick
, so the two grew up together. "
All
three of Pat and Jerry's children are Afro-American. "The desire to adopt
black children was from the God deep within me, " Pat
said. " I had a gut feeling, a sense that this was the path I was supposed to be on. I did
not want children to look exactly like me." Then , speaking
slowly, softly, and with conviction, she
quoted a gynecologist : " You get
the souls that are supposed to be yours. "
"I
don't mean to sound arrogant, " Pat said , " but my kids
are very good kids. " She does admit, however, that raising children can make a mother lose
her temper now and
then.
Fourteen years ago, while
employed as director of research for the American Society of Plastic
Surgeons and also working part-time at St. James,
Pat faced another critical decision: whether she should leave
the surgeon society to work full-time for St.
James. Chuckling, she said, " I've always loved
medicine and considered being a doctor when I found out I couldn't be a priest.
"
Then
one day in church, after everyone had left the St. James Mass service and Pat was
sitting alone in the dark praying for
direction, she swears she heard a deep voice saying to
her, Do you not think that I will
take care of you ? It wasn't long before she had traded her research
tools for a full-time commitment directing student spiritual formation at St. James.
The Bottom Line: 'Fall
in Love with God '
 |
| Pat on her way to form a saint-in-the-making |
One
of Pat's goals today is to " deepen the parents' partnership " in developing their
children's spiritual formation. Asked to
make a pitch for a St. James school education as opposed to one in a public
school, Pat thought for awhile before replying with: " Look, the bottom line is that we are here [ at St.James
] to help students fall in love with God."
Can't public school teachers can
do the same? I asked. " Absolutely, " she said. " But at St.
James , religion is really well integrated into everything we teach.
" For examples, she cited that when
the students are learning about World
War II history, she'll walk into
classroom and teach about the church's
position on a "just war " ; or,
at Easter time , when the Jewish-Arab
conflict might again be in the news,
she'll '' form her students into
three groups and have them "decide" how they would divide the Holy Land into parcels for Jews, Muslims,
and Christians.
And
what of Pat's own spiritual formation ? Anything she's had to
learn the hard way ? "Pretty much
everything, " she said with self-deprecating humor. Then , turning serious, she added: " Trusting God, letting go…that's
something I've really worked on with my spiritual director. " Pat sees her
woman spiritual director "now and
then " , prays a lot
during the day, and attends Eucharistic Adoration . Does she always obey
God? "Yes," she replied. Then
offered a Farrellesqe retort: " But I may tap dance around Him for a
while. "
She goes to the sacrament
of reconciliation weekly or monthly —"depending on what I've done,
" she said grinning . " I couldn't do this work without it.
It's such a cleansing. I think it's the
most human of the sacraments. Heaven knows I make plenty of mistakes
every day." She shares some of her
convictions about confession with her
students. With people who may not be happy with what she does, she looks for
"common ground. "
Her favorite prayer
is from St. Teresa of Avila, her favorite saint:
Christ
has no body now but yours
No hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours
are the eyes through which He looks
compassion on this world
Christ
has no body now on earth but yours.
For
fun and recreation, she and husband ride their bicycles ; she
swims all year with her son Patrick in a Park District pool, attends
son Joseph's stage performances, and goes to some movies ( she wants to see
" Saving Mr. Banks " and " August:
Osage County "; she likes Meryl
Strep ) . She says reads voraciously , especially biographies like On Heaven and Earth, a
dialogue between Pope Francis and Rabbi Abraham Skorka. She likes to quote the 13th Century mystic Meister Eckhart : If the only
prayer you ever said in your whole life was 'thanks', you've said enough.
 |
| Teaching liturgy in the St. James chapel |
When I wanted
know what she would like to hear Jesus
say to her at the front door of heaven, her
one-liner was: " Come on in,
Pat " !
Pat's biggest personal challenge is winning the
daily battles of spiritual warfare. "I
do believe in the forces of evil, " she said. " When you are called to this work, you
are a target for spiritual attack .
" Most people don't sense
that this spiritual warfare is going on,
she added. Pat believes that for
everyone—to one degree or another—
spiritual warfare is a lifetime
deployment . " But it's a process
that deepens your faith, " she gladly added.
Apropos of
that, she claims James 2:18 as her favorite Holy Scripture: Indeed someone
might say, you have faith and I have works . Demonstrate your faith to me
without works , and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.
As
for those students whom Pat instructs to
look in the mirror if they want to see a saint-in-the-making, some child eager for affirmation of this is always stopping her in the hallway to
ask, " Mrs. Farrell, am I a saint-in-the-making, too ?" Pat's reply: "Oh, yes ! "
###
Your comments and questions
Also let us know any topic
or person you'd like to
read
about.
© 2014 Robert R. Schwarz
.jpg)
.jpg)
