I. Charism - La Salle.org

IV. DISCOVERING, LIVING, SHARING THE GIFT OF GOD 137
which allowed him to have direct contact with the reality of the
work of the Brothers, a service to the Institute at large and its mission
by editing books of a spiritual and practical nature; these were
some of the ways in which Monsieur de La Salle could again converse
with this God who, a short while earlier, was no longer saying
anything to him.
To unite myself and liver in Society with… for …
John Baptist de La Salle had been questioning himself about his
role and his place in what had become the Institute of the Brothers.
But another crisis was superimposing itself on his personal
approach to life: that which the communities of Paris and its region
were living, with the new way of “uniting oneself and living in
Society” which they were trying to put in place.
“I promise and vow to unite myself and live in Society with…
for…”: we still pronounce this phrase from the 1694 formula of
vows. I would like to underline five aspects: it is an “I” who speaks,
an individual person who commits himself; he wishes “to unite
himself and live”… these are verbs, actions, not a statute which one
ratifies after having participated in a constitutive general assembly;
it is a question of “living in Society”, which indicates at the same
time both permanence and a kind of common or shared life, in this
Society, which again, is not defined by statutes but by persons: with
and by means of a project: “for”.
It is on this basis established in 1694, that the Institute, John
Baptist de La Salle and the Brothers, are going to build the future
of those “associated to keep gratuitous schools”. “Association” is an
abstract word, full of juridical connotations, “associated” points us
towards persons, living beings.
The origin of the crisis lived by John Baptist de La Salle and the
Institute from 1712, was to be found in Paris. Blain devotes a whole