Not Your Everyday Teacher: She Directs Child Spiritual Direction

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 ! "

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