Catholic educators hold hands praying the Our Father at the educator’s conference, Jan. 31 in the Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa. (HCH photos | Darlene Dela Cruz)
Bishop Larry Silva urged the hundreds of Oahu’s Catholic school teachers and administrators who gathered Jan. 31 in the Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa for the Annual Conference of Catholic Educators to learn from the past, live in the present and “plant seeds” for the future.
Bishop Larry Silva preaches at educators conference Mass. (HCH photo | Darlene Dela Cruz)
More than 700 educators filled the church while an overflow of 100-or-so participated in the parish hall by way of video screens.
Five priests concelebrated the Mass.
Using the liturgy’s Old Testament reading about King David’s adulterous affair with Bathsheba that resulted in her pregnancy and the king’s murder of her husband, the bishop warned how present day “lusts” for sex, power and money can be “murderous” to future generations.
“The story is a wake-up call to all of us, so that we do not so lust after the things of the present moment that we forget where we came from, or our ultimate destiny,” the bishop said.
Bishop Silva said that, as followers of Jesus, “we are totally engaged in the present, but we never leave the past behind, bringing the classic wisdom of our ancestors into the current time, and even trying to learn from their sins and mistakes.”
“And we not only live for ourselves and our own time,” he said, “but we plant seeds that will grow — we know not how — for centuries after us.”
He said that Catholic schools are called to connect ancient wisdom with modern learning.
The bishop said that “the twenty-first century is filled with all kinds of sexual lusts that can lure us and our students into murdering the future.”
He said that the “lust for power” leads to a “rejection of God’s law” and “ultimately to division and war.”
Sacred Hearts Sister Georgene Perry, honored for her 60-year career in Hawaii Catholic schools. (HCH photo | Darlene Dela Cruz)
The “lust for wealth,” he said, “makes us blind to the plight of the poor, who have so little and who often suffer all the more when the rich get richer.”
Bishop Silva told the educators that with the “fresh and innovative ways” of modern education, “we must also be prophets of the future, not insisting that we have it all now, but realizing that we, too, plant mustard seeds that grow steadily and slowly over time.”
“And so how wonderful it is for us to be here,” he concluded, “to celebrate the mission that has been entrusted to us as Catholic educators. We bring the greatest meaning to the present when we link it effectively to the past and to the future.”
At the end of Mass, school superintendent Michael Rockers and associate superintendent Lovey Ann DeRego presented service awards to 20 Oahu educators marking 20, 30, 40 and 60 years of service.
Receiving a standing ovation for 60 years in the field of Catholic education was Sacred Hearts Sister Georgene Perry, a student counselor at Sacred Hearts Academy.
The conference concluded with a keynote talk by Kathy Mears, executive director of the National Catholic Educational Association Elementary Schools Department.
