By Fr. Steven Mills
Chief Administrative Officer, Bishop Neumann High School in Wahoo
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them up to the Lord.
The routine of the liturgy can be numbing, or it can renew us with the phrases that have become etched in our hearts. The numbness will want us to move on and avoid the present grace-filled moment. But, a renewed heart will want to savor the closeness of God precisely in that moment.
I teach seniors at Bishop Neumann High School in Wahoo. This is their last semester, and let me tell you, senioritis is real. They are filled with a desire to move on, to explore the world, and to encounter something new. They live in the drama of everyday high school life: sports, activities, homework, friendships, work and hobbies. They wrote me poems about senior year. Poems filled with the readiness to graduate. Poems filled with anticipation for this year and now the fear of it being almost over. Poems of exhaustion. Poems of wanting to stay close to God as the next chapter begins. Their hearts are tired of the routine. Their drama is different than my drama as a priest administrator, but it is real drama nonetheless.
Our hope at Bishop Neumann is to live that drama within the theodrama. God is at work here. I have seen it. I’ve prayed with teachers as they go through life’s drama and various promptings are put on their hearts. I’ve prayed with students in discernment, students in crisis, students searching to experience God. Through it all, I have realized time and again the need for relationship – with God and with others. And how badly God wants to sit with us in our suffering.
“For God so loved the world....”
St. John Neumann’s feast day usually falls before the second semester begins, but we celebrate it right when we get back. For two years now, we have taken our students to watch a movie in the afternoon on the following Friday. Last year we watched “Radiating Joy,” an incredible story of Michelle Duppong, whom I knew as a FOCUS missionary during my time with FOCUS. Her story inspired our students to find joy amid suffering.
This year was more intense. We watched “Triumph of the Heart.” Our students walked out of it with heavy hearts—realizing the suffering that St. Maximilian Kolbe lived in his final days. Yet they were uplifted by the brotherhood that was forged, the real joy of heaven, and the power of song and prayer.
Last summer, I visited Poland on a pilgrimage with Lolek Pilgrimage. Spending time by Maximilian Kolbe’s cell was eerily powerful. In Auschwitz I felt a presence of evil. Yet walking by the cell of Maximilian Kolbe was a feeling of conquering peace. This feeling pierced my heart. Evil will not have the final say.
“The most deadly poison of our times is indifference.”
– St. Maximilian Kolbe
The ending of “Triumph of the Heart” is a glimpse of the heavenly joy, even though the number-one thing students told me after the movie was, “I had to look away at the rat part.” They were struck by St. Maximilian’s fatherhood amid suffering himself. His heart knew the Father’s love. He chose to live from the Father’s love and the love of the Blessed Mother. He leaned on God and it transformed a cell. It transformed the hearts within a cell.
“Let us strive, therefore, to praise Him to the greatest extent of our powers.”
– St. Maximilian Kolbe
I am learning the entrustment to Jesus through Mary needed to run the race set before me. I hope Bishop Neumann is a school where our students are learning how to run this race as well. The faculty and students here have taught me more than they will know in my short time here. But I look forward to running a long race with them. Persevering amid suffering, building relationships, letting our hearts be healed by the Divine Physician, and rejoicing together at the heavenly banquet.
Our hearts do not triumph alone, but only in oneness with God, urged on by the oneness of our brothers and sisters along the way. Therefore, lift up your hearts. We lift them up to the Lord.
