I. Charism - La Salle.org

IV. DISCOVERING, LIVING, SHARING THE GIFT OF GOD 77
• The Brothers are determined with one spirit to be brothers among
themselves, brothers to the adults they deal with, and elder Brothers
to the young people confided to their care. (Rule 1987. Art. 53)
• This name tells them, that as Brothers, they owe each other mutual
proofs of tender but spiritual friendship, and that considering themselves
as the elder brothers of the children who come to be taught by
them, they should exercise this ministry of charity with truly loving
hearts. 60
A movement towards Association.
These first steps accomplished by the teachers in order to institutionalise
the identity of their group: name, habit, rules… clearly
show the lived relationship between the community and the education
of poor children. The vow of obedience goes in the same direction.
It tends to ensure cohesion in the service of the mission. In
fact, Association did not arise in order to satisfy the needs of the
members themselves, but to respond to the educational needs of
children and of abandoned young people who were far from salvation.
It was a call heard in faith and interpreted as a call from
God. It was the wish to respond to this call from God which was
the motive force behind the drive for Lasallian Association. In the
course of this journey the persons involved were gradually transformed.
They discovered that they were part of the History of
Salvation with real names and faces. They experienced communion
with other persons animated with the same spirit. They entered
into a ministry which increased their own responsibility before
God, the Church and those towards whom their mission was
aimed.
The result of this development was a new identity which received
the configuration of Lasallian charism: faith, zeal, the presence of
60
Blain, Idem, p. 186, § 2. (CL 7, 241).