Richard Leonard: Eighth Grade Teacher at Our Mother of Consolation, Parish School, Philadelphia, PA
Richard Leonard
A nun once praised me in eighth grade for being a perfect gentleman. I was happy there was no one else around. Growing up in Philly in the 70s was no place for a gentleman. It was a word that wore a powdered wig or threw its coat over mud puddles for rich ladies.
My name’s Richard Leonard. Since the 1980s, I’ve taught seventh and eighth graders in Catholic schools all over Philly. Whether you’re teaching a boy from North Philly or Manayunk, asking him to behave like a gentleman is still a hard sell. Stealing a line from Kiss of the Spider Woman, I got further by offering this definition: A man never lets the people around him feel degraded. Successful men in America have never been held to this standard.
I now teach at Our Mother of Consolation School (OMC), run by the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales. De Sales was the Gentleman Saint. Over the last fourteen years, I’ve begun to see the word gentleman in a more Salesian light. I was bobbing to the surface from one school closing after another when I met St. Francis de Sales. When I interviewed with OMC’s pastor, Oblate Fr. Bob Bazzoli, I asked about the monogrammed letters on his shirt pocket. I must’ve missed something because I told him my parish priests were also Franciscans. Today I’d be armed in these situations with Salesian wisdom: “Nothing is more like a wise man than a fool who holds his tongue.”
What first drew me to Francis de Sales wasn’t his wisdom, it was his example. It wasn’t just that he never let anyone around him feel degraded. He pushed further. He let everyone know they were indispensable to Christ, particularly those with whom society was quick to dispense. A woman too old or sick to be welcomed as a Bride of Christ in other orders was always in demand at his Visitation Community. He spent months spelling out the sacraments for a deaf man who wanted to know Christ – while many saw this as beneath his office as Bishop of Geneva. The Jesus that Francis de Sales lived was kind, not judgmental. How else would he restore 70,000 fallen-away Catholics to the faith?
Images and sayings of Frances de Sales appear all over the campus of Our Mother of Consolation – in the school, the church, the rectory. I reflect on many of these as I travel from my eighth-grade class to the room where my wife teaches Pre-K 3. (We are the gatekeepers of the school). By her door, a sign says “Worry prevents us from doing well the very things about which we were worried…”
I flashback to the winter of 2010 when I was in and out of the hospital for a benign brain tumor. Before my first operation, I’d told my ten-year-old son that the difference between prayer and worry is that only one of them can change anything. He replied that worry can change things too: for the worse. (He was always scary smart). I wound up deaf in one ear, with balance issues and an anxiety disorder. During my absence from school, an Oblate would check in on me. He talked me through this total nervous breakdown. When he first called, I shared my rigid plan of saying the rosary every day until I started improving, admitting it wasn’t my favorite way to pray. He told me just to take time to be present in the moment with God. I’d like to make that a life-long practice.
Every January, the eighth grade plans the liturgy for the Feast of Francis de Sales. Through art, poetry, and film, we trace the ripples of Francis’ life outward from Jane de Chantal to Don Bosco and his Salesians. To Louis Brisson and his Oblates. To all of us who aspire to follow in the humble, inclusive spirit of Francis de Sales.
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time we all knew our value. We’re all indispensable to Christ.
