From Sunday’s first reading: “Then you shall declare before the Lord, your God, ‘My father was a wandering Aramean who went down to Egypt with a small household and lived there as an alien. But there he became a nation great, strong, and numerous. When the Egyptians maltreated and oppressed us, imposing hard labor upon us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our fathers, and he heard our cry and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. He brought us out of Egypt with his strong hand and outstretched arm, with terrifying power, with signs and wonders . . . ."

From Lasallian Reflection 1 (2015-2016): A Gospel Adventure: “In the Hebrew Scriptures, the New Testament, and human history we see over and over again that God’s people are on the move, fleeing oppression, war, enslavement, or other calamities and we always see the living God accompanying the poor, the migrants, and the young. For us, there is no clearer teaching from our faith tradition and ongoing Lasallian story than that we respond in justice to the plight of the poor, the migrant, and the young through education. For over 330 years of this God-is-with-us story, we have shared St. La Salle’s love for the young, especially the poor. Our century, like the 17th and 18th, also suffers from indifference to those abandoned at the side of the road. Our challenge is to offer a radical welcome, the oil of mercy, compassion, and inclusion."

As Lasallians, education is in our very DNA. Because we are so focused on the sacredness of the learning that occurs in our classrooms, at morning assembly, with our CIP partners, and in extracurricular activities, we may miss what makes this learning holy. But yesterday’s passage from Deuteronomy and the General Council’s reflection remind us. We are called to see the oppression and maltreatment in our students’ lives, not just in the obvious economic ways. But beyond opening the eyes of our hearts to these things, we must respond, welcoming them with inclusion, compassion, anointing them with the oil of mercy, and modeling for them a welcome that shows we are all children of the same God. This “radical", or “at the root", welcome is proposed to us so that our students can see that they are loved and cared for by those who are walking with them, and that God is present in their lives and ready to save them – through us.

In this season of Lent, we need, as Rizza said last Wednesday, to look inside ourselves. The connecting thread that runs through our entire academic and CIP curriculum – seeing, welcoming, compassion, mercy, inclusion – will only appear in our classrooms and sanctify our educational mission if we make it the core of what we do. For we arethe ambassadors and ministers of, as Pope Francis put it yesterday: “[T]he God who has a name: Mercy."