Jesus and Seneca

 

Several years ago, the fifth-year Latin students at the school where I was teaching wanted to read some Roman philosophy, so I suggested Seneca, the 1st century A.D. Stoic.  After they had read some of his works, they insisted that I include him in one of my classes.  They thought his ideas and advice were sound and would be particularly well suited to teenagers.  Since they were teens themselves, I took their word on this last point, pulled together selections from Seneca's 124 philosophical epistles, and put them together in a small volume that would allow students to read some of his best works, record their translations on the pages with the Latin text, and have space to write their own philosophical musings.

My current Latin III students at Guerin Catholic High School have recently been reading and discussing Seneca, and one of them made an interesting connection with something Jesus had said.

Guerin Latin students discussing their translations of Seneca

We also have a Verse of the Week, a Latin verse from the Bible, that we read and discuss each week, and the verse for this particular week was Matthew 6:34, "Nolite ergo solliciti esse in crastinum.  Crastinus enim dies sollicitus erit sibi ipsi:  sufficit diei malitia sua."  "So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries.  Today's trouble is enough for today."  I commented that this seemed like the kind of thing Seneca would say, and Erin immediately replied, "It's like what he said in Epistle 13 about not worrying because things may not actually happen."  She was referring to the passage in which Seneca had written, "Illud tibi praecipio, ne sis miser ante tempus, cum illa quae velut imminentia expavisti fortasse numquam ventura sint, certe non venerint."  "I advise you this, that you not be miserable before the time, since those things at which you paled in fear as if imminent perhaps may never come, for they certainly have not come yet."

I wish I could write that I expounded upon this meaningfully, that I drew forth from this student's observation further profound insight, but I didn't.  I fumbled some sort of affirming comment and moved on because her keen insight had simply blown me away.  This high school student had made a connection between something Jesus had said and something Seneca had written as effortlessly as other people cite sports statistics or quote song lyrics.  Do not let anyone tell you that young minds are incapable of some of the sharpest and deepest thought.  Do not let anyone say that we must come down to some imagined inferior level when working with them.  That is nonsense.  High school students are more than capable of rich, meaningful engagement with the greatest art, music, poetry, philosophy, and science that we have created.  We do them and the world a disservice, whether by pandering to them with silliness or by burdening them with great quantities of work in misguided attempts to instill rigor into the curriculum.  What is needed is straightforward, deep, and deeply human interaction with the discoveries and achievements of the past as we guide our children to the fullest use of their gifts.