via the Vatican:

Today, I would like to address you who are part of university institutions and all those who, in various ways, dedicate themselves to study, teaching and research. What is the grace that can touch the life of a student, a researcher, a scholar? I would respond in this way: it is the grace of an overarching vision, a perspective capable of grasping the horizon, of looking beyond….

Like the bent-over woman of the Gospel, the risk is always that of remaining prisoners of our self-centered perspective. Yet, in reality, many of the things that truly matter in life – we might say, the most fundamental things – do not come from ourselves; we receive them from others. They come to us through our teachers, encounters and life experiences. This is an experience of grace, for it heals us from self-absorption. This is a genuine healing that, just as for the woman in the Gospel, allows us once again to stand upright before life and its reality, and to look at them with a wider perspective. The healed woman receives hope, for she can finally lift her eyes and see something different, can see in a new way. This especially happens when we encounter Christ in our lives, when we open ourselves up to a life-changing truth capable of making us step out of ourselves and freeing us from our self-absorption….

Indeed, the grace of being a student, researcher or scholar means accepting a broad vision that can see far into the distance; that does not simplify problems nor fear questions; that overcomes intellectual laziness and, in doing so, also defeats spiritual decay….

Today, we have become experts in the smallest details of reality, yet we have lost the capability of an overarching vision that integrates things through a deeper and greater meaning. The Christian experience, however, wishes to teach us to look at life and reality with a unified gaze, capable of embracing everything while rejecting merely partial ways of thinking….

We can look to the example of men and women such as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Teresa of Avila, Edith Stein and many others who knew how to integrate research into their lives and spiritual journey. We likewise are called to advance in our intellectual endeavors and the search for truth without separating them from life. It is important to cultivate this unity so that what happens in university classrooms and educational environments of all kinds does not remain an abstract intellectual exercise. Instead, it becomes capable of transforming life, and helps us to deepen our relationship with Christ, to understand better the mystery of the Church, and makes us bold witnesses of the Gospel in society….

To educate is similar to the miracle recounted in today’s Gospel, for the activity of the educator is to lift people up, helping them become themselves and able to develop informed consciences and the capacity for critical thinking.