Can the Devil be Restrained from the Classroom?

In the parable of the Sower, Jesus provides us with beautiful teaching imagery about receiving the Word of God and teaching it with clarity,

When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the Evil One comes and snatches away what is sown in his heart; this is what was sown along the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is he who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the delight in riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. As for what was sown on good soil, this is he who hears the word and understands it; he indeed bears fruit, and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.[1]

Jesus reveals an important facet of teaching the Word of God: if it is not delivered with a clarity of faith, then the Devil will readily seek to undo or impede any grace received. This is his ultimate end, to draw you and me away from Christ at any cost. This specific parable expresses a reality that all teachers, I argue, confront: a spiritual battle for the souls of children. The moment a child steps into a classroom from the outside world, a battle begins, I argue, to regain the child’s path to Christ. The nature of this battle originated the moment man was created and received an evidential beauty that reflected God’s love and which the Devil despised and sought to rupture and destroy. The fall of man due to the choice to commit the first sin did rupture our relationship with God, but it did not destroy it. We recall from Scripture that God created man in his own image, male and female, and he created them.[2] This means that Adam and Eve were created to be in friendship with God.

Only man possesses the ability to know and love God and to reciprocate his love. This means that man possesses an inherent dignity as a person; man is not an object but a being, a person. He is someone capable of

Self-knowledge, of self-possession, and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. And he is also called by grace to a covenant with his Creator to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature can give in his stead.[3]

Why is the focus of creation important within the ministry of teaching and the restraint of the Devil within the classroom? Where we come from and why we were made must be the first order of, or instance of, teaching from a divine perspective. Part of our aim as religious educators is to limit the Devil’s influence in the classroom, and this starts with ourselves: how we, as religious educators, actively live our relationship in Jesus Christ with joy. This means that a caveat of our relationship with Christ is that as Catholic educators, we teach from a Divine perspective: My teaching is not from myself; it comes from the one who sent me.[4]

St. Paul provides us with a blueprint of how to teach from a Divine perspective, where he reminds us to seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.[5] The Catechism of the Catholic Church reaffirms the importance of teaching from a Divine perspective;

I believe in God: this first affirmation of the Apostles’ Creed is also the most fundamental. The whole Creed speaks of God, and when it also speaks of man and of the world, it does so in relation to God. The other articles of the Creed all depend on the first, just as the remaining Commandments make the first explicit. The other articles help us to know God better as he revealed himself progressively to men. “The faithful first profess their belief in God.[6]

To confess that Jesus is Lord is a distinctive charism of the Christian faith. The Catechism echoes this: Whoever is called “to teach Christ” must first seek “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus”; he must suffer “the loss of all things . . .” in order to “gain Christ and be found in him and “to know the power of his resurrection, and to share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that, if possible, he may attain the resurrection from the dead.[7]

When we teach the Catholic faith, our priority should be to address the student’s soul and not regurgitate information. Every single human being created in God’s image and likeness requires the student’s soul to be addressed because the author of life made it so. This means that we teach with an incarnational mindset that unveils why we are made out of love, why God offered his son Jesus Christ in death out of love for us, and why we must continue to reveal this message of love to our students in hopeful anticipation of our eternal rest.

We should be cautious with the erroneous assumption that any human being does not need God. The soul always needs a place of refuge and nourishment where the person can mature in his relationship with God. So, how do we restrain the Devil from the classroom? The Catholic educator must be a witness of prayer and demonstrate how to pray to their students with a central focus on Christ and the necessity of the sacramental life. Affirm the dignity of every student as an invaluable child of God, made in God’s image and likeness, even when they misbehave. Introduce the practice of a daily examination of conscience to help the student understand the nature of sin and to help the student avoid the near occasion of sin. Create an atmosphere that evokes truth, beauty, and goodness through sacred images, sacred music, and the application of these holy elements in daily living. Pray for spiritual protection; introduce the lives of the saints; the church’s understanding and teaching of the communion saints, Guardian Angels, and the gift of having a patron saint.

In his letter to Timothy, St. Paul, the Apostle and teacher to the Gentiles, leaves Timothy with an important charge about living a Christian life and, I argue, how this life can help us restrain the Devil from entering the classroom,

Now you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions, my sufferings, what befell me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra, what persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceivers and deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the Sacred Writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.[8]