It Is Well With My Soul
On November 21, 1873, Anna Spafford and her four young daughters set sail from the United States to Paris aboard the ocean liner Ville du Havre. Her husband Horatio had been scheduled to travel with them but was detained by business; having lost nearly everything in Chicago’s Great Fire two years earlier, he was eager to rebuild their lives for them, and he urged his wife to go on ahead, promising he’d catch up a few days later. Four days into the journey, the ship suddenly and inexplicably collided with another, immediately endangering the lives of everyone aboard. With no escape except into the dark waters below, Anna and the girls knelt on the deck and prayed, asking God to spare their lives if that was His will, or, if not, that He would make them willing to endure whatever awaited them. Within twelve minutes, the ship sank, taking all four children with it.
Not long after the wreck a sailor, rowing a small boat over the spot where the ship went down, spotted a woman floating on a piece of the wreckage. It was Anna, unconscious but still alive. Nine days later they landed in Wales, and from there Anna sent Horatio a single telegram: “Saved alone, what shall I do?”
Horatio booked passage on the next available ship and set out to join his grieving wife. Four days into the journey, the ship’s captain called him to the deck to point out the place where the Spafford daughters had drowned and now rested three miles below. Yet Horatio did not look down. Instead, he turned his gaze towards Heaven and, just as his wife had done in that very spot a few weeks before, he prayed. Then he took up his pen, and wrote:
When peace like a river attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll,
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.
The Spaffords’ tragedy is one from which most of us instinctively turn away, so that we might not have to look on such unimaginable pain. And yet it’s also one at which we marvel. In the face of losing four daughters in such violent, terrifying fashion, to be able to cry - of all things - “It is well with my soul?” Who can do that? Even as our eyes want to avert themselves from the suffering, they can’t help but be fixed on the peace that reigns in its midst. It is something we long to claim as our own and - perhaps even more so - develop within our children.
One thing that usually becomes evident pretty early on to most people: That sort of peace is not a matter of chance or circumstance. Something that’s often less clear: Neither is its attainment a total mystery. St. Paul lays it out clearly in his letter to the Philippians: “Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice! Your kindness should be known to all. The Lord is near. Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:4-7).
Peace, then, is a matter of character formation: A person committed to joy, kindness, gratitude, and simple trust in God’s Providence during all of life’s worst moments will find it. So how do we at Lumen Gentium Academy develop within our children that kind of disposition?
For one thing, it is not enough for a school to have a “character formation program;” rather, the school itself must be the character formation program. The quest for peace is too paramount - too all-encompassing - to relegate it to one class period or a single twelve-week semester. It must be infused into every classroom, every discussion, every lesson, every interaction. We as a community aim for nothing but the highest aspirations of kindness, gratitude, forgiveness, and love. Our goal is for kids to be so immersed in peace they become allergic to anything less -- indeed, anything less becomes unthinkable.
The next thing we do is give our students the right heroes. Character is more caught than taught and, though enmity is contagious, peace is more so. Children become like the men and women they’ve learned to admire, so we introduce them to folks like St. Thomas More, who, though wrongly condemned to death, wrote to his daughter from prison: “do not let your mind be troubled over anything that shall happen to me in this world. Nothing can come but what God wills. And I am very sure that whatever that be, however bad it may seem, it shall indeed be the best.” Or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who, out of the depths of national and personal tragedy, penned some of the most poignant lines in American poetry: “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep/ The Wrong shall fail/The Right prevail/With peace on earth, good-will to men.”
Finally, we teach students where to look. St. Paul’s admonition to the Phillippians didn’t end there. He went a fair bit further: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me. Then the God of peace will be with you” (Phillippians 4:8-9). Whether they’re learning about poetry, science, faith, or Latin, we teach children where to find the “true, good, and beautiful,” and how to reach it. In doing so, we set them on their way - with God by their sides - towards the peace that surpasses human understanding.
Just as no one but God knows what children will become, no one but He knows what they will be asked to overcome. As a school, then, it is vitally important that we prepare them to withstand every storm and endure any sorrow. As the Spaffords and so many others have shown us, only peace can ultimately triumph over tragedy. So we dedicate ourselves to forming children into people who hear and heed St. Paul’s wisdom, such that peace will be with them all the days of their lives.
