I. Charism - La Salle.org

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IV. DISCOVERING, LIVING, SHARING THE GIFT OF GOD
maintain discipline and the Rule, who could not sustain the austerity
required of them or give an example of it. 75
There is here an echo of the Record of Election of 1694 and the reasons
for refusing, as Superior, someone who did not belong to the
Society. Their reasoning is further developed at the end of Blain’s
account:
We made a vow to obey you, not someone else. The very authority
which wishes to impose a stranger on us to govern us in your place
does away with our vow, leaves us free, and opens for us the door of a
house where we remained because of our vow. If a vow is a free act and
a deliberate choice, we have a right to refuse to obey anyone else as
soon as anyone tries to tell us we must no longer obey him whom we
promised to obey. And so, we recover our rights and our former liberty
and declare that we wish to make use of it by refusing a Superior
who is being imposed on us in spite of ourselves and in whose regard
our vow no longer obliges us. 76
In expressing themselves in this way, the Brothers clearly show that
their vow of obedience is not that of the classic religious life, aimed
at the sanctification of the subject, but that it is prescribed for the
ends of Association and those involved in this same association, as
it happens John Baptist de La Salle, with whom they are associated
to accomplish their mission. For them, it is the Church authority
which has come to break the vow of obedience which binds them
to John Baptist de La Salle, since it is imposing a person other than
the one to which they agreed. They have promised obedience to the
Superior they have chosen, to the body of the Society, and not to a
Superior who is being imposed on them. For them, the bonds of
association have been broken and they have regained their liberty,
not by themselves, but through the behaviour of the authority
which has undone what they have constructed.
75
Blain, op. cit., Book Two. p. 434. (CL 7, p. 412-413).
76
Blain, op. cit., Book Two, p. 439-440. (CL 7, p. 416).