Jesus said to Simon Peter:
“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”.
He answered him: “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you”.
He said to him: “Feed my lambs”.
(Jn 21:15)
Commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Beatification of Mother Caterina Cittadini (April 29, 2001) means not only celebrating the memory of a great and significant event, but intensely living a true memorial that brings to life today the testimony of a daily holiness possible for everyone.
I asked myself how to share this event—so vital and generative for our religious family of the Ursuline Sisters of Somasca—with all those who live our same educational passion, and I thought that revisiting our mission through the dimension of “educational holiness” could be a useful tool for all those committed day after day, in different ways, to building the future.
I would therefore like to highlight some virtues that, it seems to me, can outline the identity of all those called to educate by vocation, choice, or personal aptitude. To do so, I find it useful to recall a passage from our Texts of the Origins that describes Mother Caterina’s idea of educational virtue lived in daily life: “
She possessed a goodness unlike any other, always even-tempered, humble, meek, and devout; she was a true model worthy of the high mission to which God destined her. It was beautiful to see her, all amiability and composure, in the midst of those lively girls; now in the school, seeking to break down and clarify the concepts of every subject she taught. She took advantage of every opportunity to direct toward God those tender hearts and young minds which, like soft wax, received those impressions that would be indelible. She was attentive and most shrewd, knowing how to take into account the age, temperament, and various dispositions of each one, and with gentleness and energy she not only corrected faults, but studied defects and straightened the crooked inclinations of those young souls.”
But what does “virtue” mean? “Virtue is an habitual and firm disposition to do the good. It allows the person not only to perform good acts, but to give the best of himself. With all his sensory and spiritual energies, the virtuous person tends toward the good; he seeks it and chooses it in concrete actions”1. This is the definition of “virtue” given by the Catechism of the Catholic Church. However, a definition, even if broad, clear, and explicit, is not enough to make us understand the value inherent in virtues. In fact, speaking of virtue today seems almost out of place, a word no longer in fashion, but if we think about it, it is virtues that define our way of being in the world, because they are not isolated actions, but rooted habits that require training, education, and will. Each of us carries those virtues, those educational habits, that have taken root in us through our family history, lived experiences, encounters, and the suffering each of us has experienced. We are the product of a history that has shaped us, leaving indelible marks within us that we transmit to others through our attitudes and our gaze on reality. We have probably already experienced some of the virtues I am going to define in our relationships, but the challenge of continuous change asks us to create and recreate them constantly within every educational practice. And this is often difficult and requires effort, because no one can feel they have definitively arrived. It is necessary to have patience because virtues must be continually nourished through daily practice.
What, then, are those virtues that must characterize an educator? I think the first virtue
that we, as educators, must constantly cultivate in ourselves is the courage to love: to love the educational process itself, to love educational practice, to love the people we work with, regardless of whether they like us or not.
Loving is an act that totally involves our relational capacities, calling us to a total gift of ourselves. It is an act of courage because it requires betting on hope. An educator is never certain of the results of their work, just as a farmer is never certain that the sowing will bring good fruit, but this uncertainty does not exempt us from sowing, from giving ourselves totally and letting time and grace work wonders in people’s hearts. The courage to love is thus nourished by unconditional trust in the person seen in their fullness as a human creature, image and likeness of the Father, sharing in the same Spirit.
Alongside the need to love, there is another quality that gives substance to educational practice from within, and that is humility.
Humility is that inner attitude that leads the educator to intensely respect every person, their level of knowledge, their creative capacity along with their divergent thinking, their limits and their talents, their weaknesses and their strengths.
Being educators does not mean possessing all the answers; we are not bearers of absolute truths, but “humble laborers in the vineyard of the Lord,” to use the famous expression used by Pope Benedict XVI in his first greeting after his election to the papacy on April 19, 2005.
Humility helps us to be humanly competent; it asks of us the strength to know how to step aside, to leave room for the future, but above all to know how to end the educational relationship at the right time to broaden the horizons of the other’s freedom. As Pope Francis exhorted us: “…Time is greater than space. This principle enables us to work over the long term, without being obsessed with immediate results. It helps us to endure difficult and adverse situations with patience, or the changes in plans that the dynamism of reality imposes. It is an invitation to take up the tension between fullness and limitation, and to give priority to time… Giving priority to time means being concerned about initiating processes rather than possessing spaces… What we need, then, is to give priority to actions which generate new processes in society and engage other persons and groups who can develop them to the point where they bear fruit in important historical events…” (Evangelii Gaudium nos. 222-223).
Another virtue that the educator must build, or rather create through their daily practice,
is consistency. This virtue consists in narrowing the distance between what we say and what we do. I am certainly not talking about total, absolute consistency, because that is impossible; indeed, life would even be boring if we were absolutely consistent, if we never accepted change, adaptation to circumstances, or shifting the horizon of our gaze.
What is necessary and absolutely fundamental is to understand how much and how inconsistency beyond a certain limit can damage an educational relationship. In this regard, I would like to offer for your reflection the figure of Eleazar, described in the second book of Maccabees (6:18-31) as a man of ninety years, esteemed for his wisdom, for the dignity of his old age and his blameless life, known for his role as an educator in religious fidelity. Under the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, Eleazar chooses martyrdom rather than setting a bad example for the young by violating the Mosaic Law, convinced that a feigned obedience would have scandalized the new generations, causing them to waver in their faith. I have always been moved by the idea that an elderly man, who has nothing to lose and has reached the fullness of life, is concerned with making even his own death an educational gesture toward the younger generations. Consistency, therefore, does not arise from rigidity, but is an inner way of being, of positioning oneself within different situations, constantly changing in order to remain deeply oneself. It is not a matter of prompting isolated examples of virtuous conduct, but of allowing a sort of habit (habitus) for the good to settle within us—one that is not a mechanical application of principles but that calls upon discernment time and again.
Courage to love, humility, and consistency are certainly attitudes that we have all tried to develop in our educational mission, but we have often had to create and recreate these virtuous perspectives in relation to the different situations that our experience has given us to live, and this is not easy or immediate. It requires effort, because no one can feel they have arrived. For this reason, the virtue of patience is necessary—not only patience toward those before us, but first and foremost patience toward ourselves. The realization that we can never consider a formative journey concluded, that every day presents us with new, unforeseen challenges that require new research, moving beyond “it has always been done this way” because reality is no longer “this way.” And so we must always start again, set out once more, perhaps even make mistakes and, by virtue of those mistakes, open new paths. And then there is patience toward those we are called to educate, knowing that it is a slow, gradual, but constant journey that asks us to always look ahead, starting over continually. Patience, famously defined as “the virtue of the strong,” asks us to give the best of ourselves and recalls the very high professional and moral responsibility of every educator; nothing is more contrary to virtue, indeed nothing is more vicious in education, than the habit of “cutting corners,” of superficiality, of sloppiness. The educator must, in fact, have as a primary virtue the awareness that every gesture is educational, directly or indirectly. Attention to every step and every transition in an educational project are parts of that patience that becomes a daily habit.
I want to conclude with another attitude of educating that must become virtuous:
collaboration, the ability to work together, or rather to walk together; it is that teamwork
that gives us the possibility of mutual stimulation and correction essential to educational work. We know well that it is not possible to carry out an educational path in solitude: the complexity in which we are immersed forces us to work with others.
We cannot be solitary monads; we constantly live a global interdependence within which we daily experience that famous “butterfly effect” that makes the world as small as a village. All the more reason why the mission, or rather the educational art, cannot be a solo adventure. We are within a myriad of intersecting relationships: the school, the family, the local area, various other formative offerings, and then expanding to the virtual world. The ability to work together sustains and strengthens us, nourishes the significance of every educational intervention, and legitimizes our mission by giving us security within a world of uncertainties. But collegial work, teamwork, sometimes poses problems, confronts us with certain struggles, and it is not always easy to understand the right balance between one’s own ideas and the opinions of others, especially when important decisions need to be made.
As educators, we hold the future of the younger generations in our hands, and if our children and young people learn from us educators that it is possible to be virtuous, they will concretely have the opportunity to be so in their lives outside the educational relationship. In fact, the educator does not only do good but “makes good happen,” or rather directs other people toward the good. The results of virtuous educational action do not end in the action itself but are transferred into the behaviors and attitudes of the students. Education is a transitive virtue that creates virtuous beings, or at least seeks to stimulate other people toward the beneficial contagion of virtues.
As always in educational work, self-education is needed first of all—a look at oneself
in order to then move with greater strength and effectiveness toward one’s students; it is necessary to develop the capacity and willingness to know how to step aside, leave room for the student, but above all to know how to end the educational relationship at the right time.
The educational journey is not easy; I could define it as a true adventure full of unforeseen events that we cannot calculate, but which are nonetheless “expected.” We wander uncertainly through the complexity of a constantly changing culture, within an extremely small and interdependent world that asks for certainties but struggles to accept them. And we, as educators, are small lights that can indicate paths of humanization which often coincide with the paths of holiness. I wish for everyone and each one the courage to continue putting themselves at the service of the younger generations with the hope, joy, and tenacity that distinguishes those who believe deeply in the dream of a better world. We are not alone: God has a special care for you! (Mother Caterina).
Bergamo, April 12, 2026
Feast of Divine Mercy