Cyrille’s Talk

Building a Culture of Compassion in the Catholic High School (and every other high school on the planet)

Danny Brock, Cyrille Santos

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781666719826
  9781666719833
• eBook ISBN:
  9781666719840
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Education General

Jesus exhorted his disciples to love one another as he loved them and to be compassionate as your Father is compassionate. But overcrowed schedules, looming deadlines, and competing demands can set a frenetic pace in the Catholic high school. Our students join the fray, trying to keep up. They proffer a cooperative demeanor for teachers, while inside they are falling apart from stress and anxiety. A culture of compassion can seem more a heavenly ideal than an earthly reality. It's time for a reset. Building a culture of compassion takes more than words in a mission statement or promotional brochure. It is hard work. But this is what students long for, and when they receive it they realize that the school really does care about them. Between the covers of Cyrille's Talk the reader will taste and see what a culture of compassion is like and discover what it takes to make it happen.

1

Cyrille’s Talk

“All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.”

—Isak Dinesen

I was born into a very religious family. I’m Filipino, which means Catholicism is in my blood. You could say I was a Cultural Catholic. As a kid, my faith wasn’t really part of me, it was just something I felt I had to do because everyone else did.

In grade eight I was in Catholic high school and part of a Catholic youth group. I attended retreats and met new people with the same faith. Even with these new experiences, I still felt my faith was just something I was born with, or something I had to do. One thing I found difficult was balancing my faith with secular society—trying to fit in but also do what I think is right or what I believe.

In grade nine I started to be more self aware, thinking more about who I was. When it came to faith I felt it more as “peer pressure” in a way. I had to be religious because my friends and family were. I started copying others in my youth group trying to be religious like them and pretending to have a relationship with God like them. I did this to try to fit in, but what happened is I soon became labeled as the “Christian Girl,” a holy church goer.

Some of my classmates said they couldn’t swear around me or do certain things around me. They would say things like, “Cyrille can’t go here because she has to go to church and she only hangs around with her church friends.” This bothered me.

One thing that I wanted and waited for at this time in my life, was a special moment, what I called a spark, an experience of God that would make my faith strong. I would always hear talks about how this grand moment changed their lives and made them closer to God. And I was always waiting for my miracle to happen.

And then came grade ten.

Two of my closest friends left for a different school, and I felt all alone and didn’t belong anywhere. I compared myself to other people and felt there was something wrong with me. I have an older sister and she was smarter, prettier and more talented than me and she had so many friends. I love my sister and we have a very good relationship but I just felt like I was comparing myself to a standard I could never reach. Grade ten was a really sad and lonely point in my life.

All these feelings I had, I kept to myself and told no one, not even my closest friends. I thought that no one cared or that I wasn’t important enough to be heard. Because I bottled everything up, there were times I would go to the bathroom, cry, and let it all out. During lunch, when I would feel lonely, I would sit in the bathroom and just cry and get angry with God. I would rant to God saying, “Why am I in the bathroom?” Or, “Why am I feeling so lonely? I go to church. I try to be a good person. Why am I feeling this way?” This lasted throughout grade ten and was the lowest point in high school.

Then the summer came and I started hanging out with my friends who were not from my school. I started to change by trying to become more like them. They did not influence me to change, I just thought I had to be like them to be worthy of their friendship. Before I did anything I thought: What would they do? Or, do they like what I am doing? I tried so hard to change myself and become like my friends. It was painful to try to please them, to try to fit in and to constantly change myself to be like them. I knew what I was doing was wrong. It was tiring to try so hard to be like them. I spent a lot of time in my room, lonely and disappointed in myself.

During this time at home during the summer, I still continued to question God, always telling God how I felt. I thought to myself: “At least someone’s there to listen.”

With grade eleven starting, I wanted a new start. I was tired of being lonely and tired of feeling pain in my heart. I wanted to try new things. I tried to keep a healthy distance with my friends, knowing that I needed to do things on my own.

I challenged myself to get more involved with school. I was in student council, which helped me grow out of my comfort zone. I reached out to other students. I started to help with school liturgies and got more involved with the drama department. I joined new clubs and started talking to new people. I enjoyed all these things, and even though I still felt lonely and in pain, I was able to find ways to deal with these feelings and not dwell in the sad and dark place. The pain I felt throughout grade ten, and during the summer, motivated me to find happiness in myself.

Now, I am happy to say, I am in a different place. To this day, I don’t know why these things happened to me or what caused them. When I look back I see good times when I was strong in my faith, sad times when I questioned my faith, and even times where I thought I could leave and forget my faith. My parents never forced me, which would make it easier to just leave. I thought that if I left, what would I do and who would I turn to. If I wasn’t talking to God, I would consider myself crazy, because I would just be talking to myself all the time.

I have decided to continue on with this journey of faith because I believe there is a reason behind all this pain I am feeling.

It also helps me to know that there is always Someone there for me—to listen, to rant to, to talk to, or even to blame when things go wrong. Knowing this has helped me through this dark place, because who knows what I could have done or what would have happened to me if I didn’t know Someone was always there for me.

I was always afraid of expressing my faith and standing firm in what I believe in, but look at me now, I am here in front of you sharing my journey with God.

I challenge you to think about where you are right now in your journey. Whether you’re in a really dark place, or a happy place. Wherever you are, embrace it.

2

A Letter to Cyrille

“When I meet God I want to ask him about the mystery of suffering, I do not understand it at all.”

—Romano Guardini, Theologian, author of The Lord

Dear Cyrille,

Thank you for your talk. You spoke the truth: to God, to yourself, and to us. It was a truth hewn from experience and forged in the furnace of pain.

When you spoke the truth to God in your complaints, in your questions and in your rants, you were connecting with God, though God seemed far away and unresponsive. You shared the truth of your life—what you were thinking and how you were feeling. You were going through a ‘dark night of the soul’.

You evoked sadness in me and those who heard your talk as you described the pain you felt, alone, in the bathroom, in tears. When you shared your feelings with us, you shared your very self. In doing so, we came to know you and you experienced being known. It took courage to open yourself like you did, and you were received with gratitude and affection. Your talk gave others courage to look with honesty at their own life journey. As your talk helped students at Saint Andrew’s High School, I believe it can help students elsewhere.

Cyrille, in your talk you said your faith in grade eight and nine felt like “peer pressure,” having to be religious “because my friends and family were.” You copied others “trying to be religious like them.” Then you asked God to give you real faith—a spark, a grand moment, a miracle, something other people said happened to them. But, instead, you were plunged into a dark night of sorrow and loneliness.

Cyrille, you said, “To this day I do not know why this happened to me.”

All of your talk, and particularly this question—why?, expresses the ‘holy longing’ of your soul. As a religion teacher I would like to offer some thoughts and reflections that your talk has prompted in me. Thank you for permitting me to walk a few steps with you along the sacred path of your life.

Don’t waste your time dreaming of being someone else. Don’t try to be someone else. Work and pray at being yourself.

St. Francis de Sales

Cyrille, when you were in grade nine and you wanted God to give you real faith, a spark, a grand moment—who were ‘You’? Back then, the ‘you’ that you wanted God to give faith to, was not the real and authentic you, but the want-to-be-someone-else you. It’s as if God were to say: I want to give you faith, but I d...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Cyrille’s Talk
• Chapter 2: A Letter to Cyrille
• Chapter 3: Cyrille’s Response
• Chapter 4: Notes to a High School Retreat Director
• Chapter 5: Notes to a High School Religion Teacher
• Appendix 1: 10 Takeaways from the Directory For Catechesis
• Appendix 2: 10 Takeaways from Fratelli Tutti (All Brothers and Sisters)
• Contact the Authors
• Bibliography