It's been a year since I was asked by the Provincial of the Contemplative Order of the Missionaries of Charity in Plainfield, New Jersey, to help teach Scripture to the sisters in formation. Each week we gather for prayer, and study, one chapter at a time, through St. Paul's letter to the Romans, the Gospel of St. John, and now the Gospel of Luke.
I offered to help them in any way I could after my wife and three-year-old daughter went to their humble convent in a poorer section of town for adoration, the rosary and evening prayer. While it was my interest in the Missionaries of Charity sisters that brought us there in the first place, it is Jesus' presence in the Eucharist and in the joy of these women that keep us coming back.
I find it both a privilege and somewhat amusing that I have found myself teaching such holy, faithful and committed religious sisters. One thing that may surprise an outsider is the amount of time we spend laughing as I try to convey some scriptural insights to these women who come from many different parts of the world and who grew up in cultures far different from my own.
In the midst of teaching these faithful women who abandon their very selves to give all to Jesus and satiate His thirst on the Cross for souls, my "real" job is teaching at the Catholic high school where I've been for twenty-one years. It has caused me to reflect on the holiness of my students and what a privilege it is to be able to share the Good News with them as well. While it is an honor to be of some help to Mother Teresa's sisters, it is equally an honor to try to impact young men and women who will go out into the world and, I hope, take the message of Christ into the workplace and, more importantly, into their families. While the questions I receive and the language I use are a little different when teaching my high-school students, my high-schoolers are equally loved by God and deserve the best I can offer.
In the past few weeks I have combined classes as it were and I've taken over thirty suburban and inner-city high-school kids to the sisters' convent for evening prayer, rosary and adoration. It's quite a scene to see a dozen high-school students, not all Catholic or even Christian, kneeling or sitting quietly before the Eucharist praying the rosary or just taking it all in.
The first time I took seven young men, all seventeen years old and "cool" in every sense of the word according to the high-school culture. I had promised the guys I'd take them out for ribs afterward. Of course, I introduced them to the sisters and then, during the drive over to the BBQ place, I heard reactions like, "That was powerful" and "The sisters were authentic" and "They had nothing, but they were the happiest people I've ever met!" Since then about twenty other students have made the trek to the convent and the reactions are similar.
While I already planned to have more trips in the future, yesterday one of the original seven guys said to me, "Mr. Wright, we want to go back over there for adoration. Don't worry; we don't need to go for ribs."
