ACE Advocates News

Read this Sunday's Gospel

The last two lines of today’s Gospel read, “When the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from him for a time.” These three final words certainly give me pause. Lent is a powerful reminder that I need to be steadfast, to pray, fast, and give–not just during these forty days, but every day, for the temptations of the world are a constant. How I respond is the variable.

Read the Ash Wednesday Gospel

We are invited on this Ash Wednesday 2019 to take account of ourselves and our personal relationship with Jesus, and to grow in that relationship. The scriptures remind us that Lent is traditionally a time for almsgiving, prayer, and fasting suggesting that these practices help us clear away that which keeps us from Jesus and sharpens our focus and desire for Him.

Why does Christ so often talk in stories?

You could likely recite them given their opening lines alone: “A sower went to sow some seed…”; “There was a father who had two sons…”; “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector…” It seems every time someone asked a tough question, Jesus had a great story ready to tell.

When Ricky Austin read the 2005 Notre Dame Task Force on Catholic Education report during his second year as an ACE Teaching Fellow, he was startled and inspired. Catholic schools were at an inflection point. They were closing at an alarming rate, and without intervention, they could disappear entirely from inner cities. Austin, now the director of programs and communications at the Aim Higher Foundation in Minnesota, felt a stirring in his heart as he read the conclusion of the report: “Will it be said of our generation that we abandoned [Catholic schools,] these powerful instruments of justice that provide educational opportunity and hope for families otherwise trapped in poverty?”

ACE Teaching Fellows graduate Brent Modak (ACE 18 - Denver) is the first to remind someone that, while teachers teach subjects, they first and foremost teach students. While teaching social studies and religion both in and beyond his time in ACE, Brent discovered he often had answers to students’ content-specific questions. A question about the text? No problem. He would help the student engage in a reading strategy he had learned in his social studies methods courses. A question about a student’s literacy acquisition? He’d revisit his notes and come to a reasonable explanation. But when a student confronted him with a social or emotional concern like stress or anxiety, he would find himself at a total loss for answers.