This week is Catholic Schools Week — always the last week of January — and this time always brings up good memories of my days spent as a teacher and coach at a Catholic middle and high school in Memphis, TN, before I entered seminary. Catholic Schools Week was generally when our school, ironically, spent more time doing extracurriculars — Masses, field days, service trips, parties — than we spent teaching and learning in the classroom.
However, these “outside-the-classroom” opportunities were some of my favorite parts of being a teacher. The random but sometimes very deep questions before or after class, the conversations around the lunch table, the bus rides to and from away games, the time preparing to send the students to Mass, the opportunities to serve side-by-side with them in the city, the camping trips, and the tutoring sessions which inevitably turned into discussions about the BIG questions of life, of future, and of faith — these were human moments that made all of the lesson planning, grading, and late night chaperoning all very much worth it.
When I entered the postulant program at Moreau after five years at that school, I soon learned how much Fr. Moreau’s spirituality and mission were a part of what drew me in to teaching. In his work, Christian Education, Moreau describes teaching as a “work of resurrection,” and how true that was to my experience! Over the course of several years, I saw this work of resurrection in students as they failed, learned and succeeded in their endeavors. They had many experiences of the Cross, and yet I saw so clearly how God was bringing life, light, and hope into their lives — often born out in those “extracurriculars.”
In Holy Cross, “resurrection is for us a daily event” (Constitution 119), and I am so grateful to have seen the light of that resurrection unfold in my students back then and now as a Holy Cross priest. We are called to walk alongside our brothers and sisters in Christ, but especially those whom we teach. As Fr. Moreau taught, “Hurry then; take up this work of resurrection, never forgetting that the special end of your institute is, before all, to sanctify youth… May it be so! May it be so!”
By Fr. David Murray, C.S.C.
Published January 30, 2026
Photo: Fr. David Murray, C.S.C., after his Ordination to the priesthood, with former ACE housemates and fellow teachers.
