Ronnie Suarez has worked with children before, but she was surprised to discover how much spiritual motherhood has been at the heart of her year with the Seton Teaching Fellows.
After growing up in Prior Lake, Minnesota, and graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Ronnie was deeply discerning religious life. In December of her senior year, she visited New York to stay with the Sisters of Life. At a Christmas party, she met a current Seton Teaching Fellow and was introduced to the program. At the time, Ronnie didn’t consider the STFs an option for her. However, as she prayed, God asked her to take a year to wait on entering religious life. That spring, God kept putting the Seton Teaching Fellows on her heart, and Ronnie felt at peace with applying to and accepting the mission.
Once Ronnie arrived in New York, the transition was “wild, but very, very blessed,” she says. She assists in fifth grade at Brilla Veritas Middle School and teaches sixth grade during the El Camino after-school program.
“Once I realized that Jesus loves our poverty and wants to bless us in that place of poverty, everything changed,” she recounts. “It became so much more joyful and easier because the weight wasn’t on me. The poorer I am, and I started very poor because I’d never taught, the more He could bring about His glory.”
Part of Ronnie’s ability to realize this change came through a relationship with Will Brock, an energetic and spirited Fellow who had taught Ronnie’s students the year before. From Georgia, Will is now studying at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Marlo White, a fellow from Will’s cohort, still teaches in the building where Ronnie now works. Marlo asked Ronnie if she could share with her students a video from Mr. Brock about life in seminary and how he was still praying for them.
As Ronnie witnessed her students watch Mr. Brock, she realized the uniqueness of their relationship with him. “I could see it unfolding, and in that place of poverty, I was astonished at how well and simply and beautifully they knew that they were loved by their teachers and by God,” Ronnie says. “It really pierced me.”
Inspired by the video, Ronnie asked Marlo for Will’s number and wrote a message about how beautiful that love was to see and how he’d fostered this love in their hearts.
The encounter began a correspondence and a shared love for these students. Ronnie often shares funny quotes or messages from the students, and she’ll sometimes ask Will to pray for specific children, who, by providence, are always those to whom Will was closest.
“It’s been an absolute blessing!” says Will of his messages from Ronnie. “I have a photo of my kids and every time I do my holy hour, I take it in there. It is nice to hear that the kids do miss me, and also I just know that there’s still work to do. That was my moment in time to be there, and I prepared it for the next person as the Lord continues to work. It’s such a reminder that we are a body of Christ and my prayers help because that’s what I can offer. I can’t be there anymore in person, but what I can still do there is more. It requires a deeper faith because I can’t count on myself.”
Ronnie can see the fruits of Will’s daily prayers in her classroom. “It just makes sense,” Ronnie describes. “These kids are so good, not for what they do, but because they are delighted in by God and certainly by Mr. Brock. His prayers sustain our classroom.”
Ronnie’s relationship with Will has also helped her realize her own strengths as a teacher.
For Will, the key to his teaching was love and joy. “I wanted them to know that their approach to the Lord is with joy. Everything you can do for the Lord can be filled with joy,” describes Will. “I wanted to always, first off, be a big brother to them, and for them to know that I loved them first. I always wanted to remind them that whether they got every question right or wrong, they were still loved.”
Of course, stepping into the shoes of such a beloved teacher can be intimidating. “After seeing how much they loved Mr. Brock, and how well he loved them, I just knew I could never be Mr. Brock to these kids,” says Ronnie. “Obviously that’s not who God needed me to be. His gifts and charisms are unique to each person, and I just can’t pour myself out in that same way.”
Marlo again helped Ronnie reach this realization. Marlo pointed out that the students needed Mr. Brock last year. His playful and fatherly heart was made to love them in that particular way at that particular time, but they didn’t need him this year. They needed Miss Suarez and her motherly heart.
Ronnie was surprised and excited by this new perspective. Of the Church’s four identities of women (daughter, bride, mother, spouse), Ronnie felt she had spent the least time pondering the identity of spiritual mother. She asked God, “What are you trying to show me about how you created my heart as mother?”
“It’s been incredible to see how God is revealing my own heart to me through my relationship with my students. Words fall short! He’s teaching me to be a spiritual mother to these kids,” she says, “And showing me the gifts in my heart that at first I saw as deficiencies, but now I see as complementary.”
Will loved the class with energy and relationship building, always giving 120%. Complementary to Ronnie’s maternal heart, he had loved his class like a father. “Last year, when I came back from winter break, I asked St. Joseph, ‘How do you want me to be a dad?’ The kids wanted to be loved; we all do,” Will recounts. “I tried to walk with them and be patient with them. The Lord did not yell at me and kick me to the curb, he walked with me. He let me mess up. He gave me the insight that this is how the Lord loves me. The main thing is I wanted my students to know how I love them.”
Ronnie realized that she could love the class with equal depth but that it could look different. “God was showing me that my heart can be more of a home for my students,” Ronnie describes. “I have a gift of receiving students in their vulnerability and delighting in them with the heart of a mother. I still want to keep praying about this gift because Jesus reveals it as it comes! I didn’t expect it.”
This unexpected blessing has given Ronnie a sense of freedom as a teacher, as she no longer worries or scrambles, trying to be anything for her students but herself. While Will gave his students the dynamic, magnanimous love of a father last year, Ronnie is what her class needs and loves this year: a warm, kind, and welcoming spiritual mother.
