I. Charism - La Salle.org

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IV. DISCOVERING, LIVING, SHARING THE GIFT OF GOD
This charism is also profoundly linked to the person of John Baptist de
La Salle. The history of our origins clearly shows this essential link
between Monsieur de La Salle and the Brothers. We see clearly how the
Brothers, by making their own the experience of God of the Founder,
make the Society of the Christian Schools exist, resist those who threaten
to cause the break-up of association: the ecclesiastical hierarchy, groups
with their own interests, ambitions… The direct link with John Baptist
de La Salle is very strong. The Brothers, the Lasallians, make his fundamental
intuition their own: to keep schools is to bring the salvation of
God, for the teachers, for the children and the young, for the families.
One is beyond the simple “teaching a class” or teaching a subject. This
relation with John Baptist de La Salle marks the battles of the early days
and continues to mark association; from this arises the necessity nowadays
to continue to appropriate the Founder for ourselves, not in order to bend
him to our ways of thinking or our needs, even though one never really
escapes from this, but in order to try and become aware of where his
strength came from, and to place ourselves in its continuity.
What constitutes the radical novelty of the Lasallian Community in the
Church and the Society of its time, was not the fact that it was a “religious
community” made up entirely of lay people - this was the case with
all the female communities - but that this community of baptised persons
had taken its destiny in hand, had taken its mission in hand, calling
it a ministry, without making reference to an external power, religious
or municipal, without making reference to the ‘elite’ of the period.
These Brothers, “simple lay persons without character” as used to be
said, decided on their style of life, their organisation, their superiors, kept
schools together, invented a way of being with the young (the Conduct of
Christian Schools), chose to respond to one appeal rather than another and
together carried forward their project. Beyond the juridical aspects, it is
that which constitutes “association to keep gratuitous schools”, as well as
its innovation: having the education project live by means of these men
who consecrated themselves to God while promising and making a vow
to unite themselves and live in Society to keep gratuitous schools. It is
there also that one better understands the importance of the shared
Education Project in giving consistency to the charism; this Education