The Power of the Divine Teacher

by Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen O.C.D.

Jesus not only imparts truth to us, He also helps us to accept it. This is the task of any teacher, but he can work only from the exterior trying to clear his pupil's mind of the errors which obscure it and present the truth in a clear and convincing manner. Jesus, however, does much more than this; His activity is far more intimate and profound. He is the only Teacher capable of acting directly on the souls, the minds and wills of His pupils. Jesus moves our souls interiorly to accept His teachings and to put them into practice.

 

The truths Jesus teaches are divine mysteries, therefore, we cannot master them by the art of human reasoning. To accept them, our minds must be equipped with a new supernatural light and power, the light and power of faith. Faith comes to us through Jesus; not only did He merit it for us, together with grace, the other infused virtues, and the gifts, but He is continually obtaining it for us and producing it in us. Therefore, while Jesus is revealing eternal truths to us, He is also filling our souls with the light of faith, until He produces in us, by means of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, a profound, mysterious knowledge giving us an intuition, a sense of divine things. He acts on our wills in the same way by the virtue of charity, drawing us to love Him and our heavenly Father, impelling us to put His teachings into practice. While Jesus is teaching us, He is kindling in us the fire of divine love just as He did in the two disciples from Emmaus. After they had heard His explanation of the events that had taken place in Jerusalem, they said to each other: "Was not our heart burning within us, whilst He spoke in this way" (Luke 24).

 

"Our Master", writes St. Teresa of the Child Jesus, "has no need of book or teacher to instruct a soul. The Teacher of Teachers instructs without sound of words, and though I have never heard Him speak, yet I know He is within me, always guiding and inspiring me, and just when I need them, lights, hitherto unseen, break in upon me". Jesus interiorly teaches souls who are willing to listen to Him, and He teaches them above all by His spirit, the Holy Ghost. Jesus and the Father are always sending the Holy Ghost from Heaven into our souls, this Divine Spirit makes us understand the profound meaning of Our Lord's teaching and suggests practical applications for our daily life. Jesus teaches us through the authority of the Church, to which He has entrusted the task of preserving His doctrine and transmitting it unchanged to all the faithful.

 

When we accept Jesus as our Teacher, we must also accept all His teachings: The written words of the Gospel, the living word of the Church, and the mysterious, secret word by which He teaches our souls individually making us perceive intuitively the way He wishes us to live. If His word is to be truly a treasure, it is not enough for us merely to hear it, we must sound its depths. This demands silence and interior recollection. We must imitate Mary, who "Kept all these words, pondering them in her heart" (Luke 2), meditating on everything her divine Son said and did.