Op-Ed: Divine intercession

Monotheists all believe that God works through history, through individual human choices. To Christians, Christmas is about God breaking into the world to intervene decisively in human history.

Our traditional BC/AD dating system places the incarnation of God’s Word as nothing less than the hinge of history.

I see evidence of such intervention in those unlikely events that change everything. The Marathon run of Phidippides saved Athens. The storms, not the English, put paid to Spain’s Invincible Armada.

Napoleon’s illness at Waterloo led to his defeat.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s driver getting lost in Sarajevo led to his assassination, sparking World War I. The destruction of U.S. Torpedo Bombers at Midway allowed U.S. Dive Bombers to sink Japan’s Kido Butai. Note that the benefits of some of these are beyond my mortal ability to understand; I take them on faith.

And, yes, one Carpenter’s son’s birth in a manger in a backwater Roman province began a faith which enlightens the world, in part by His coming to save women, children, and slaves as well as the glorious among men. He has even saved me, as on this occasion.

From kindergarten through fourth grade, I was languishing in Meriden, Conn.’s failing public schools. There were simply too many kids arriving in school without any foundation to successfully function there for the beleaguered teachers to handle. My early schooling was an anarchy filled with chaos and violence, much of it racially charged.

One spring day after school, I decided to explore rather than just walk home. Instead of turning left, I went right into a hilly old neighborhood. I came to a set of old brick buildings, Saint Mary’s School and Church. Built by German Catholic immigrants, this parish served some of the poorest in the area.

The schoolyard was unlike anything I had yet seen; kids in uniforms playing while waiting to be picked up, but without the fierce viciousness I was so used to.

A middle-aged woman in a nun’s habit noticed me watching, and began a conversation. She invited me up to her principal’s office for tea and cookies. There, she conversed with my studious young self. Before she was done, this woman had called my single mom and invited me to join her school the following autumn.

My Mom recounted later that when our inability to pay tuition was raised, the sister said that we would pay only what we could. When she found out that I had twin sisters, she invited them to come as well; Saint Mary’s was a family school.

I began fifth grade in a new uniform at St. Mary’s. It was, without exception, the very best school I had ever attended. Two grades were taught per classroom by sisters and lay teachers who were paid a fraction of what was earned by their public school colleagues.

My life was changed because this school worked. It was a place of inspiration, where learning was not punished and where teachers and not ruffians set the tone. I cannot overstate what my nearly four years at St. Mary’s meant to me!

When I departed, because we had moved mere months before my eighth grade ended, I was back in public school. Though Wallingford was more wealthy and suburban, the public schools were as I remembered; full of chaos where thugs ruled the halls and Teachers kept their heads down.

But, none of this mattered! I had lived in the Promised Land, and I would return. I would repay the favor that Sister Catherine Marie O’Donnell, Schooling Sisters of Notre Dame, gave to me. Her spontaneous generosity saved my life and made me a Teacher.

As I celebrate God breaking into history in Bethlehem, I remember how He reached into my life and changed everything for the better. Merry Christmas!

• • •

In Maine and then Idaho, Ralph K. Ginorio has taught the history of Western Civilization to High School students for nearly a quarter century. He is an “out-of-the-closet” Conservative educator with experience in Special Education, Public Schools, and Charter Schools, Grades 6-12. He has lived in Coeur d’Alene since 2014. Email: rginorio@cdapress.com.