From a Christian perspective, what does it mean to educate and what does it require in terms of projects and content, attitudes and methods? In his 2007 Message to the educational communities, the then Cardinal Jorge M. Bergoglio outlines the Christian educational task as a commitment shared by all, which today requires a decisive impulse.

1. To educate in the Christian perspective is to help discover life as a gift from God the Father. This includes learning and teaching to value life as a gift, promoting true freedom that is shaped by love.

This task has an essentially paschal character, because it is the Risen Christ who makes possible this fascinating task of promote responsible liberties, as a gift and a task for all. For this task, which today encounters particular difficulties and temptations to weariness, we can count on the greeting of the Risen Christ to his disciples: "Do not be afraid"; for, in fact, the stone has been removed that was intended to hinder the life and message of the Son of God made flesh: the manifestation of the love of God that is light and full life for each person and for the world; a manifestation that continues to go forward through the family of God that is the Church.

The Christian educational task, Cardinal Bergoglio points out, lives from hope in a new humanity, by divine design: "It is the hope that springs from Christian wisdom, which in the Risen Jesus reveals to us the divine stature to which we are called"(El verdadero poder es el servicio, Madrid 2013, p. 111).

2. For this reason, citing Benedict XVI, Christian anthropology is an anthropology of transcendence (cf. "The Human Person, Heart of Peace," Message for the World Peace Day workshop , January 1, 2007). It is - in a Newmanian expression - a kind of natural "grammar" that flows from the divine project of creation, by which we are not simply a part of the world but the culmination of creation.

The Argentine Cardinal, now Pope Francis, writes: "Creation 'transcends itself' in man, the image and likeness of God. For man is not only Adam; he is first and foremost Christ, in whom all things were created, first in the divine plan"(The True Power..., p. 112).

He notes that, according to this, Christianity gives rise to a peculiar conception of what "transcendence" is: Christian transcendence is not a realm that is "outside" the world, separate or elevated from created things. Rather, it "consists in recognizing and living the true 'depth' of the created". And he rightly points out where this depth is: "The mystery of the Incarnation is what marks the dividing line between Christian transcendence and any form of spiritualism or Gnostic transcendentalism" (ibid.).

In this sense," he observes, "the opposite of a transcendent conception of man would not only be an 'immanent' vision of man, but an 'unimportant' (vision)," that is, something without importance or relevance. This is not a play on words, but when man loses his divine foundation his existence is blurred, he loses his foundation, he becomes a piece in a puzzle, one more pawn in a chess game, a statistical issue or an insignificant element in a production process.

In this "anthropology of inconsequence" - which we see every day: children living on the street, enslaved women, etc. - we lose sight of the infinite or transcendent dignity of persons, that is, the dignity of man, of those who are related to Christ, to God himself, and which means that people cannot be considered as mere numbers equal to one another.

That human dignity transcends the world does not mean separation from nature -that would be a "denaturalized transcendence-, but the capacity to create culture; not by destroying nature, but by questioning ourselves about our participation in nature, with wisdom and responsibility. This should be reflected in the Education, teaching the meaning of science and technology, of production and consumption, of the body and sexuality; of the transformation of the world, beyond the dictatorship of consumerism and image; of the value of what is free, of time and of the shared work , of the diverse beauty of people. 

Christian anthropology is transcendent also with respect to oneself, because of its constitutive openness to others. And this is the opposite of what has been called "competitive individualism" as an ideology resulting from modernity in the West. The happiness of people includes others, needs language, history, community. That is why a negative definition of freedom cannot be accepted, from subject: "your freedom ends where the freedom of others begins". Rather, something else happens: "Freedom, from this point of view," says Jorge M. Bergoglio, "does not 'end' but 'begins' where that of others begins. Like every spiritual good, it is greater the more it is shared" (p. 119).

And this is reflected in the meaning of human work and of freedom, of the relationship with people and things: "Why do I want to build a world if I am going to be alone in a luxury prison? A positive conception of freedom leads to understanding people not as objects to be possessed, but as subjects to be promote and loved, not for what they have but for what they are. According to the ideology, or rather the idolatry of the market, those who do not have, do not exist and are therefore excluded and self-excluded. The Christian core topic of anthropology goes in the opposite line of this individualistic intrascendence, of this competitive individualism. It is in line with citizenship, solidarity and, ultimately, love.

For this reason, it is not enough to recognize a new ecological conscience that overcomes all deterministic reduction to the natural-biological; nor is it enough to recognize a new humanistic and solidary conscience that opposes individualistic and economistic selfishness. It is necessary to maintain the capacity to dream. Cardinal Bergoglio says: "A Latin American writer used to say that we have two eyes: one of flesh and the other of glass. With the one of flesh we look at what we see, with the one of glass we look at what we dream". Well, this can only happen with certainty from the freedom and openness of faith, which saves us from sclerosis and conformism; and at the same time frees us from relativism, by giving everything we do a meaning and a term in relation to the "meeting staff and community with God-Love, beyond even death".

3.How can we educate this new humanity that must begin in every school (one could also say, in every family)? The last thing we educators should do, notes Jorge Bergoglio, is to entrench ourselves in lamentations: "It is not licit for us to become 'distrustful' a priori (...) and to congratulate ourselves among ourselves, in our closed world, for our doctrinal clarity and our incorruptible defense of the truths... defenses that only end up serving our own satisfaction". We must convince ourselves that things can be changed.

For that we must first convert, like Jonah, to stop running away, and be able to serve God's plans. Jonah had "too clear" ideas about how God acts and what he wants at every moment; and God asked him to leave his security and comfort to go to the "periphery". We too, the Cardinal suggests, should accept the risk of taking the lead in a new Education, to go to meeting of those who continue to question the meaning of life. And he offers concrete orientations: to give priority to non-quantifiable values such as friendship, authenticity, meeting, participation; to present the testimony of so many who have dreamed of a different humanity, as "models" that allowed entire generations to hold their heads up high, who shone for their virtue and their joy; to foster the "culture of transcendence" by awakening dreams and hopes, and helping them to mature and be sustained.

In fact, it could be said now with Pope Francis: the time has come for an integrally human Education . In the school this project can be undertaken with the partnership between families and teachers. It is a project that implies not only a revision of the "contents" of the Education; but also, and above all, of the dispositions and attitudes, first of all of the educators. And that has to do with our expectations and horizons. The project implies, as we have already seen, the methods. Jorge Bergoglio ends by speaking of revaluing the word: that of the educators, that of the young people, and above all that of God, practicing and teaching prayer.