The Sacramental Vocation of Teaching
By Jim Watkins, Ph.D.
On the western wall of the small Spanish Chapel (originally named “The Chapter House”) of Basilica Santa Maria Novella in Florence is a stunning fresco called The Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas by the artist Andrea di Bonaiuto (1343-1377) that can still teach us something about the power of education.
If you were born in the last hundred years, chances are this painting doesn’t scream “EDUCATION” to you. If we linger with this fresco, however, we will discover a profoundly sacramental view of teaching.
The Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas by Andrea di Bonaiuto (1343-1377). Public domain.
A sacramental view of teaching assumes that God is working in and through our learning. For three years, I served at a large Kindergarten-12th grade Christian school on the southside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin and many of our teachers learned their craft in the public system. Those teachers often struggled to see connections between the worlds of faith and academic learning. They wrestled with the question, “How do I bring faith into the classroom?” But even this question frames their work in a secular context. Christian teaching is not the act of bringing God into the classroom; it is the recognition that God is already in the classroom.
Let’s take a closer look at Bonaiuto’s fresco.
In the lower half of the fresco, seated in what looks like a medieval chancel, are two rows of people. The bottom row is filled with the great thinkers of the western tradition: Plato, St. Jerome Euclid, St. Augustine, Ptolemy, Cicero, and more. Seated just behind and above them are figures that represent the great classical subjects. On the left,the Sacred Sciences: civil law, canon law, Scripture, contemplation, and so on. On the right, the Liberal Arts: arithmetic, geometry, rhetoric, grammar, and so on.
In the very center of the fresco sits an enlarged St. Thomas Aquinas who represents the accumulated wisdom of the Christian West. Aquinas holds a book on which is written: “And so I prayed, and understanding was given me; I entreated, and the spirit of Wisdom came to me. I esteemed her more than scepters and thrones; compared with her, I held riches as nothing (Wisdom 7:7-8).” On his left and right flanks sit some of the greatest “teachers” in Scripture, and cowering at his feet are three heretics.
Above him are seven angels representing the four cardinal virtues (temperance, prudence, justice and fortitude) and the three Christian virtues (faith, hope and love).
Continuing upward, we see a new -- but not coincidental -- scene: Pentecost. Mary and the disciples gather on a balcony and the Holy Spirit descends from above. Connections between Pentecost and wisdom are woven into the biblical narrative as the descent of the Holy Spirit is a kind of re-enactment of Moses’s descent from Mount Sinai.
Bonaiuto’s masterpiece is a breath of fresh air for a culture that does not see teaching as a sacramental vocation. The two frescoes form a cohesive whole and they declare that wisdom ultimately is a gift of the Spirit. We receive this gift in varied, and sometimes unexpected, ways. Note that our scene is filled with Christian and pagan thinkers alike. No distinction is made between “secular” and “sacred” knowledge as all great ideas have their source in God.
The balanced and harmonious composition of The Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas challenges our sense that faith and learning are competing priorities in a school. I have spoken to Christian educators who felt torn between “teaching” and “discipling” their students as if “academic time” and “faith time” were separate blocks in a school day. And yet, as David Smith points out in his book On Christian Teaching, the formation of mind, heart, soul, and strength occur simultaneously in a complex environment we call “the classroom”:
Just as seeking to follow God in the life of a family home is not in competition with, or an alternative to, preparing dinner or checking the gutters, faith can be a live part of a simultaneous complex of considerations giving shape to pedagogy. (1)
Bonaiuto’s fresco is a vision of the complex pursuit of wisdom resting in perfect harmony.
As teachers, we rely not merely on our own devices, but we trust in a God who shares wisdom generously and freely with the human race. When the 19th century British educator Charlotte Mason encountered Bonaiuto’s fresco, she wrote:
Because he is infinite, the whole world is not too great a school for this indefatigable Teacher, and because he is infinite, he is able to give the whole of his infinite attention for the whole time to each one of his multitudinous pupils. We do not sufficiently rejoice in the wealth that the infinite nature of our God brings to each of us. (2)
The restless energy of educators to develop new strategies, learn new protocols, implement new standards, and analyze data swiftly leads to burnout without an acknowledgement of our own limitations. But we rest in the goodness of a God not subject to those same limitations. We serve an indefatigable Teacher indeed.
Dr. Jim Watkins is Senior Advancement Officer at Nashotah House. For the past seven years he has worked in Kindergarten - 12th grade Christian education and most recently as Director of Christian Formation at St. Augustine Preparatory Academy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He received a Ph.D. in theological aesthetics from the University of St. Andrews and Master in Christian Studies with an emphasis in Christianity and the Arts from Regent College.
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(1) David Smith, On Christian Teaching (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 30.
(2) Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, Vol. 2 (London: J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1954), 273.