Introduction

Our Lady of Sorrows is the title of Our Blessed Mother under which we recall the unity of heart that she and Our Lord had throughout His mission, passion, and death.  This unity of heart led to Our Lady’s first-hand experience of suffering due to His suffering.  In my fourteen years of involvement in Catholic classical education, I have come to see that this particular aspect of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s motherhood - that of her fiat to suffering and sorrow - is an essential lens through which we ought to see our role as teachers in a Catholic classical school.
 
As an image of what this fiat entails, a tale from my early parenthood is, I believe, illustrative. Allow me to share: As I counted down the months, weeks, and finally days before the birth of my oldest child (who is now 20), I devoured all sorts of parenting books and advice from sources that I thought trustworthy.   Because so much of the literature I read spoke so strongly of the importance of co-sleeping with one’s baby in order to form a proper attachment, this is what my husband and I went into parenting planning to do.  While I am not here to endorse or reject the practice of co-sleeping, what I can tell you is that it did not work for us!  Two weeks after the birth of my oldest, none of the three of us were sleeping well, and my husband and I were dissolving into the madness to which sudden and acute sleep deprivation can so often lead.  Nevertheless, I kept telling myself that I must persevere, protecting Catherine from separation anxiety.  I was terrified of laying her down on her own lest she might cry.  I was afraid to let her suffer because I knew how much suffering that would cause me.
 
My husband, in his wisdom, finally calmly and lovingly read to me the following scripture from Luke 2: And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. 
 
From the first moments of her motherhood, Mary provides an example to us of allowing Jesus to suffer so that he might fulfill His mission.  Surely she had no thought that a manger might be a comfortable, or even clean, space in which to lay the newborn King, but she did it anyway, not holding Him so close that He would not be free to become the fullness of what God asked Him to be.  Through my husband’s reminder of the model of her motherhood, I was able to find the courage to lay Catherine down in her own crib.  It turns out, she cried only minimally as we formed that habit, and then she slept excellently, and her rest translated into mine and my husband’s as well.
 
Though this moment of His birth, when there was no room for them in the inn, is not counted among the traditional seven sorrows of Mary, it is, nevertheless, an instructive image of the willingness of Our Blessed Mother courageously to allow her Son to suffer.  And, of course, Simeon’s prophecy soon afterwards assures her that she will indeed suffer greatly as mother of the Redeemer.  Mary’s fiat did not end with her assent to conceive the Son of God, her fiat would have to include her assent to take on the immense suffering that only a mother experiences in handing over her child to suffering.
 

Who Thrives in a Catholic Classical Education?

Why is the Sorrowful Mother an important model for those of us involved in Catholic classical education?  To answer this question, let me begin by sharing what I have observed -- in my 14 years of observing Donahue Academy students -- to be the common thread of the greatest success stories of student flourishing and also the even more common thread of the students and families who opt out of the Donahue experience.
 
We came to Donahue when my oldest child, Catherine, was in first grade.  I was quickly blown away at what she absorbed about the truths of our world and society. She knew so much and was already being immersed in a tradition that I was only beginning to know existed; after all, I am an adult convert who hadn’t had the benefit of a classical education.  In just a couple years at Donahue, Catherine was able to articulate all sorts of theological truths, situate centuries of literature in their proper historical frameworks, spout all sorts of scientific knowledge of our world, and, above all, grow in love of God and develop in virtue.  What an education!!  Who wouldn’t want this for their child?  I was certain that Donahue was for everyone!  But, it turned out not to be quite so simple.
 
While Donahue is open to everyone, not everyone is open to Donahue, or whatever Catholic classical school might be in his/her area.   As I watched students leave and a good handful of families discern that Donahue wasn’t for them year after year, I wondered what they were experiencing that I couldn’t fathom.  Because I was just a mom and not a teacher at Donahue for several of my first years in Ave, I was able to have many candid conversations about why these families were leaving.  What I discovered at the core of all of the families that opted out of Donahue, with very few exceptions, was a perception that their child/children had to suffer too much through their Donahue experience.  Meanwhile, when I saw students really thrive, grow, and flourish through their Donahue experience, it was not because of some extraordinary academic ability (in fact, I discovered that sometimes that was a hindrance!); it was, instead, an openness to challenge and the suffering that comes from it that compelled the successful ones.
 
After watching these patterns emerge after a handful of years, I realized that Donahue really isn’t for everyone.  If your high school goals are “this worldly,” then the call to strive for perfection of person seems too costly.  Parents have to see growth in fortitude as an actual goal of the educational experience for Donahue’s expectations to be “worth it.” If one’s goals end with getting good grades or being prepared for some job or having a high school experience full of typical American high school events, then the suffering that will be asked for you to endure will outweigh the benefits that come from the formation that results from persevering at Donahue.  The Catholic classical educational experience, if done well, is going to be one that isn’t oriented toward “this worldly” goals or toward distracting entertainment as so much of the programming at typical high schools (even Catholic ones) is.  Instead, some amount of challenge, and therefore suffering, is inherent to the Catholic classical education experience because it is only through that challenge and suffering that growth in virtue happens.
 

Qualities of Catholic Classical Education that Necessitate the Cross

For an education to be Catholic, it certainly must incorporate that essential Christian theme of the necessity of bearing one’s cross -- and even dying to oneself -- into the formation that it provides.  One could hardly argue otherwise. A classical Catholic school, though, will prize this even more, as it holds the perfection of the human person in this world as its goal.  An education and formation in virtue is certainly going to be a big part of the goals for any Catholic classical school.
 
Andrew Youngblood writes in his recent text on classical Catholic education, Know Thyself, that classical Catholic education “immerses students in the unity of truth, transforms them through a metaphysical worldview, and, through engaging discussion, encourages them to embrace a life of flourishing fulfilled in God’s call to divine intimacy with Christ in his Church”^[1].  At surface, perhaps this definition does not necessarily entail an education in endurance of suffering. However, if we dig even a little into what this definition implies, it becomes clear that suffering is inherent.  In fact, in the book Youngblood uses a classical reference to describe the suffering that is inherent to the fullness of education that takes place in Catholic classical schools.  He recounts that Socrates likened the “appearance of the new idea in another to that of a birth.  In the dialogue Theaetetus, Socrates encourages a young man to attempt to understand the essence of knowledge.  The pupil, Theaetetus, complains that it is hard and that he is unsure if he is up to the task.  Socrates replies, ‘These are the pangs of labor, my dear Theaetetus; you have something within you which you are bringing to birth.’”^[2]  It is, of course, no accident that Socrates uses this image of childbirth, the iconic experience of suffering that all humans have always understood as inherent to flourishing, in describing the educational process.  For any kind of learning to take place, a student must choose to do the work involved in learning. And the greater the learning, the more work must be done.
 
But, in our modern era, work is sometimes misunderstood as writing on a paper that is handed in for a grade.  It is easy to copy answers, use AI, or write meaningless responses to questions and prompts and therefore generate this type of “work” without doing the actual labor to which Socrates refers that leads to real learning.  This seems obvious, perhaps, but you may (or may not) be surprised by how many students and parents will point to a paper full of writing as proof that work is being done.  In our particular time – post-COVID-19 -- students will miss dozens of days of school and then expect the same grade as their classmates as long as they hand in something that resembles their peers’ actual work.  In a Catholic classical school, one of the great labors that truly leads to the birth of new ideas is participating in seminar.  It is a challenging and sometimes daunting task in the early years of high school to find something intelligent to say in front of your peers about the topic at hand and to have to defend a claim that you are making.  In a time when adolescents are more and more able to go through life without having to practice the courage that is necessary in normal social interactions, having to speak in seminar can lead to real anxiety, real suffering. Parents in our day and age are encouraged to respond to anxiety with protection from the anxiety-producing stimuli.  It is remarkable how many absences are due to “mental health days” because of anxiety associated with coming to school.   Parents are, perhaps understandably, afraid to allow their children to suffer -- and in acting out of this fear, they prevent their child from flourishing.

In their article on education in an AI age, Dr. Askonas and Dr. Litke, professors from the Catholic University of America, argue that in an age of education where the use of AI is becoming the norm, “the challenge of the future will not be that humans are being displaced by AI but that AI might short-circuit the human willingness to endure the ardors of cultivating the kind of intensity, knowledge, and focus that will, in the end, outperform AI systems.”^[3]  They argue further that “the industrial model of education that prevailed in the twentieth century (and that leached its way even into Catholic schools) assumed that what education needed to accomplish was the development of understanding.  But Christian education has always understood formation of character to be its foundational purpose…”^[4]  These professors note that “the kinds of knowledge and skill LLM’s (Large Language Machines) can display are enormously shallow.  And using them as a substitute for one’s own work means that the students operating them end up shallower still than the artifacts they submit for grades.”^[5] In the Catholic classical model, students are asked to suffer for the truth rather than let a machine do it; this is what leads to authentic tranformation.

Conclusion

It turns out that an education that  “immerses students in the unity of truth, transforms them through a metaphysical worldview, and, through engaging discussion, encourages them to embrace a life of flourishing fulfilled in God’s call to divine intimacy with Christ in his Church”^[6] will inherently require students to enter into labor that is associated with suffering or else the aim of transformation will not be achieved.  In fact, we who choose to live as Christ’s disciples know all too well that “flourishing in fulfilling God’s call to divine intimacy with Christ in his Church” requires significant suffering at times, and certainly some suffering almost all of the time.
 
Pope Benedict XVI is often quoted as reminding the youth of today that “The world offers you comfort; but, you were not made for comfort.   You were made for greatness!”  My work at Donahue has led me to making this my mantra.  This is at the heart of the necessary experience in a Catholic classical school.   Our students are made for greatness and we want to help them achieve that.  But, it will not be achieved if we do not let them suffer.  Like Our Blessed Mother, we must accept the suffering that our students will endure in order to fully flourish and achieve that greatness for which they were made.