Is there a religious teacher that made a difference in your life?

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I think they all made a difference, from the first grade teacher who opened my eyes to the fact of our limited time on earth to serve God by asking: “Will you think about becoming a (religious) sister to take my place (when I’m gone)?” to the eighth grade teacher who helped form my conscience by posing questions about life in the womb, to the two who showed me how to trust in God through adversity when each experienced loss of a child at birth.

Home, school, church. Mutually supportive in teaching faith and morals.
 
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One stands out…

I was told, quite sincerely and frankly that “you have that capability that whatever you choose to put your mind to, you will succeed.” He was right. Thank you, Bro. Martin.
 
Several, but two in particular stand out from the crowd: my last spiritual director and my current pastor.
 
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Fr Deary , who said (to us 9th grader boys) “if you ever want to do something well, do it the hard way.”
 
Malicli Martin. Who wrote the books . hostage to the devil.
He described people I have met!
 
Yes, one of the Sisters of the Holy Names who taught at my grade school, and a priest and a lay teacher from my high school come to mind. Also, my former mother-in-law and father-in-law made a deep impression on me. They taught me more about devotions like the Rosary and traditional prayers like the Angelus than many of the teachers I had in Catholic school back in the 1970s.
 
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Father xyz…i refrain from using his name because of his great humility…he taught me joy for the Gospel that comes with the wat of St. Francis of Assisi.
 
Father Timothy Alkire and his great devotion to the Eucharist. (Did Sacrament prep for my First Communion class.)

Father Kevin Hurley and his reverence for the Sacraments, and the way he accompanied my father and my family as we prepared for my father to pass from this life in the hospital. Through his pastoral care we all felt the presence of Christ, even my sister who had fallen away from the Church.

Monsignor Joseph Lamonde and his fearless defense of the reverence due to the Mass. He was a military chaplain at a base we were stationed at, and when he first came people were upset with his approach. We went from half empty, to two-thirds empty, to jam packed with standing room only. We watched the living Truth transform the Parish in a matter of monthsthrough his leadership. It was awe inspiring.

Father Jerome Neyrey. My favorite theology professor of all time. He saved my faith in the Church and gave me great confidence in the truth of the Church when I was vulnerable.

My dad, who simply and thoroughly trusted God and taught us what fatherhood was so that none of us fears an almighty Father.

Pope Benedict XVI might be the most influential, to me. His love for God and truth are transformative. His theology is beautiful.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen. He understood people and the psychology of our culture and made living the faith obvious and right at a time when people were becoming very confused.

St. Terese of Lisieux—when I felt very little I read her “Story of a Soul” and her analogy to flowers in a garden taught me that my littleness could stay little and still be cherished by God. That was an enormous gift.

My mom. My dad had Multiple Sclerosis and battled it for a long time. Her love for him and devotion to doing faithfully anything that God put in her path as His will for her good was so beautiful that it didn’t occur to me that people could respond in any other way until Jack Kevorkian killed 19 people with MS in 8 years. 19/93 in only 8 years. Many of them left a testimony that their spouse had left and they could not do it alone, or that they didn’t want to burden those caring for them. My mom had never in the slightest indicated or made my dad feel that there was any burden. MS was happening to them, not just him.

My big sister. When I was 4 and she was 6, we were looking through the family picture Bible (on a stand in our living room) and she burst into tears when she saw a full page illustration of the crucifixion. She sobbed and sobbed and hugged herself and rocked and said “What are they doing to my Jesus! Make them stop! Make them stop! They are HURTING HIM!” From the mouths of babes.

If you want more I could keep going all day. Probably selfish enough to go as long as I have.
 
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I am afraid not, I wish there had been…I had to find Jesus in my own way and in my own time…way longer than necessary I fear.
 
My mother. She taught me all of the basic elementary-school-level stuff, and everything beyond that I pretty much got out of a book on my own.

The vast majority of my “religious education” teachers in Catholic school, sad to say, were not good at teaching religion. Some of them had serious personal problems (one was suffering from mild dementia and died a couple of weeks into the term; one had a mental disorder that caused him to repeat himself constantly, have nervous tics and lose control of the class). A couple of the older nuns were okay.

I remember one elderly no-nonsense nun in particular who taught a high school course on Death and Dying. I cannot remember if it was some elective I was stuck in due to schedule, or a required course, but I did not want to take Death and Dying. I just didn’t have any idea what one could learn in such a class and at that time I had very little interest in the theological dimensions of death. The course turned out to be surprisingly useful and included a field trip to a funeral home where we got to see the casket display room and how a funeral was planned. About 10 years later my father died and I had to help my poor grieving mom make the arrangements and I was very glad I had had the previous exposure to the process because Mom had never had any such exposure (her older brothers and sisters had planned all the family funerals and she as “the baby” of the family was left out) and she was squicked out by the whole thing. That’s about as close as a religion teacher ever came to “making a difference in my life”.

I was quite fascinated with a Jesuit who came to the school to teach one of the religion classes. I happened to overhear him after school, dealing with a girl who had acted up in his class. He just sat in silence with her for about 10 minutes while she got progressively more dithery and nervous and then he just let her have it with a couple of very well placed words. It increased my admiration for the Jesuits immensely. Unfortunately, I was not in his class. I wish I had been.
 
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when I hear things like this, it makes me sad to think that some determine their religious lives on the bad actions of one or another, but it can bring us to the reality of the necessity of our bringing the Light of Christ to the world
 
Pope Emeritus Benedict the XVI was to me like the wise professor grandfather I always wanted.
 
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