Back to School and Seeking the Divine

I headed back to my public high school teaching job last week and our boys went back to public high school and middle school, respectively. This time of year brings changed routines and busy days. We have to find a new rhythm and routine for everything, down to who walks the dog when.

My schedule has radically shifted; I wake by 5 a.m., head out the door by 6 a.m. and generally don't sit down again until about 9 p.m.  My day includes trying to manage our small household - the grocery shopping, the meal preparation and overseeing my children's homework or at least nudging them toward it. The nine o'clock hour finds me and our 11 year old snuggling upstairs as I read "Johnny Tremaine" to him.

When I was little my mom used to say:

"A man works from sun to sun, 

but a woman's work is never done." 

The older I become, the more that old English proverb resonates. True, my husband handles the laundry and cooks many a meal. But after my own work, my afternoons are filled now with grocery shopping, driving my sons to after school activities, doctor's appointments and so on. Back to School night is tomorrow and I have to prepare to meet all my students' parents.

You won't hear me complaining. I never imagined I'd be so blessed to have a loving husband and two healthy happy children. As I rushed about today, I carried these words in my heart. Then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger spoke them in his funeral homily for Monsigneur Luigi Giusani:

"Let us not lose sight of Christ and let us not forget that without God nothing good can be built and that God remains enigmatic if he is not recognized in the face of Christ."

Note to self: Are you seeking the face of Christ in your children, your husband, your students, your colleagues? Do you understand, truly, that each of them was created in the image of God and bears a spark of the Divine?