I. Charism - La Salle.org

IV. DISCOVERING, LIVING, SHARING THE GIFT OF GOD 97
vows, as with every religious vow, are addressed to God. However,
they go through the Brothers with whom one associates. They are
accomplished by them and with them. One might translate their
meaning in the following way: Association: I unite myself with these
Brothers; Stability: I promise to be faithful to them (they can count
on me, come what may); Obedience: I accept whatever they will
decide.
Stability and association have already appeared in “to unite myself
and to live in Society, to keep together and by association…” The
vow of obedience is made “to the body of the Society and to the
Superiors”. It is in the line of the vows taken since 1686. It ensures
that the Society will be able to accomplish its mission: to keep gratuitous
schools. It seems to me that it is not first of all an “ascetic”
vow, in the line of the classic triad, but a vow in keeping with the
circumstances of the profession of educator, lived in “association”.
They are three vows in reference to the community plan, to the
body of the society. They are also vows for the Mission: association
in order tot keep gratuitous schools; stability: I want to remain
faithful to the young, to the children of artisans and the poor; obedience:
I accept the work, the ministry which is assigned to me by
“the Society”, in the place where it shall send me.
These commitments are to be kept “inviolably all my lifetime…”
That is to say for what is within the power of man, helped by the
grace of God, which corresponds to the “as far as I am able” of the
beginning.
The Vow of Association.
This formula is the ritualising of an experience, a memory and a
hope. It is the confession of prophetic faith of a community which
professes, in the faith, that God has been with it, that He is with it,
that he cannot abandon it because it confides totally in Him in