I. Charism - La Salle.org

50
IV. DISCOVERING, LIVING, SHARING THE GIFT OF GOD
announce the gospel to them and to bring them up in the spirit of religion.
The charism of the Founder and Lasallian charism.
“Lasallian charism” should not be confused with “the charism of the
Founder”. The latter belongs specifically to John-Baptist de La
Salle. It consists of the singular manner in which he discovered
what God was calling him to and how he responded to it in his personal
story as in the History of the Christian People. Of course “the
charism of the Founder” continues to be fruitful today, but its
dimensions are those of the life of Monsieur de La Salle. It is nourished
by what the Founder lived and wished and what he has left
us. Nobody today can claim to possess “the charism of the
Founder”. However, these two realities – the Lasallian charism and
the charism of the Founder – are not unconnected to each other
because, if the manner in which John-Baptist de La Salle is
“Founder” is clearly marked by his personality, it is also marked by
the choices he made, with other persons, towards the end of the
‘Grand Siècle’ (the age of Louis XIV) in France.
It might be mentioned in passing, still in the area of vocabulary,
that the adjective “Lasallian” was obviously completely foreign to
the world of Monsieur de La Salle, who would probably have been
very surprised to see it formed and used! It is, therefore, one of the
paradoxes of the present study that it is dealing with an expression
‘Lasallian charism’ where neither of the two terms existed at the
time of the Founder, while wishing to write a history of the reality
covered by them!
To try to write the history of “Lasallian charism” at the time of the
origins, is to look at the singular manner in which the first Brothers
understood the sense of their existence and the significance of their
vocation in the world in which they were born. Even the change
from the word “Masters” to “Brothers” in describing themselves is