“Well, if it’s just a symbol, to hell with it!”
Flannery O'Conner famously said this while attending a gathering at which someone said that the Eucharist was a symbol. We should absorb some of Ms. O'Conner's zeal for the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Truly, if the Eucharist acts only as a symbol, it only holds the power that we give to it. If it is a symbol - and It is not - it works as a prop, gimmick, or even an idol - where the symbol becomes even more important than the substance it should represent.
As we near the end of the academic year and start the season of baccalaureate masses and graduation ceremonies, our schools become filled with symbols, rituals, and traditions that carry significant weight and meaning. From May Crownings to students giving flowers to parents/families to senior activities to caps and gowns to awards and recognitions, the symbolic abounds in our schools throughout these final weeks of the year.
Symbols play key roles in organizations. Mascots should embody the spirit of the community and evoke commitment and pride. We should adorn our hallways with symbolically relevant artifacts, messages, and images. The stories recounted at orientations, retreats, and in faculty meetings should inspire students, teachers, and community members to carry on the legacy of the school. Rituals act as conveyors of the school's culture - we slow down and gather together and devote time to things that matter.
In all of these cases, though, the substance underneath these symbols must remain known and continue to advance the school's mission. When they become defunct or self-serving or an appeasement to alums/donors or no longer appropriate, leaders must lead the community either back to the heart of the matter - the substance of the symbol - or in a new direction.
At times, this means we do away with the old. If the symbol lacks substance, we should lack the symbol. Doing something only "because we've always done it this way" is a great reason to no longer do it.
G.K. Chesterton, another famous Catholic author, gives us a way forward in this substance of the symbol discernment, "(W)e must try to recover the candour and wonder of the child...we must try at least to shake off the cloud of mere custom and see the thing as new, if only by seeing it as unnatural" (1925). Put more plainly, we should look at the familiar - the symbols across our schools - so that it becomes unfamiliar again.
This unfamiliarity should lead us to reclaim and proclaim again the symbol's substance - wow, that is why we do that! Or, these new eyes should allow us to see we've allowed the symbol to also be the substance.
And unless it's the Eucharist, it's just a symbol.
