Lasallian Reflection - Giver-Taker & Talker Doer

Jesus Christ compares those who have charge of souls to a good shepherd who has great care for the sheep. One quality he must possess, according to our Savior, is to know each one of them individually. This ought also to be one of the main concerns of those who instruct others: to be able to understand their students and to discern the right way to guide them. 

- St. John Baptist de La Salle[1]

The personal quality of Lasallian education has often been highlighted by both students, teachers, and parents. It is a quality that is part of being an “older brother / sister” to those “entrusted to our care.” We well know – or quickly come to know – that those we encounter in the classroom and around the school are eminently unique and different, sacred drops of God’s manifest presence in our daily lives. Teachers with long experience know that the strangers in their classrooms at the beginning of the school year will by the end of the year be perceived by them as highly individual characters, richly textured and nuanced – some good, some not so good, but more and more fully alive and revealed. Their personality traits, strengths, and weaknesses will have settled into the teachers’ minds in cumulative layers of awareness. Time and experience thus become privileged means for gaining occasional glimpses into the souls of our students.
     This is why the quote from De La Salle at the top of this reflection is so important. Not only is the connection made with how Jesus treated his disciples and others during his ministry, but there is a direct responsible parallel to “one of the main concerns of those who instruct others.” And that main concern is not how well the student does in class, how smart or helpful or responsive the student is to the teacher’s directions. In fact, all those other things depend on this “main concern.” The focus is rather on “to understand” and “to discern” how to guide them. It is deep listening.
     Ever practical, this concern that De La Salle advocated is not left in midair, with a hope that others will address it responsibly. There is also a practical side to it; a way to actually do it. That is seen in the 1720 school handbook, the franchise’s three-ring binder. In the description of the Admissions Register, which contains all the relevant information about each student, there is this sentence: “After all of this information has been recorded, some blank space should be left to contain what may need to be added later. Examples of what might be added are: what is the child’s character and disposition …?” [2] This is the part that the next teacher of the same student would want to see. Wouldn’t you, if you were teaching the same student? It’s a help to being able to “understand” and “discern” the student, although it certainly is not a substitute for it. Merely helpful advice.
     An example of such a record was this one: "Francis Delevieux; 8 1/2, two years at school, in 3rd section of Writing since July 1st. Somewhat turbulent; little piety at church or prayers unless supervised. Lacks reserve. Conduct satisfactory; needs encouragement to effort; punishment of no avail; light-headed. Rarely absent except when with bad companions; often late. Application moderate but he learns with ease. Twice nearly expelled for negligence. Submissive to a strong hand. Not a difficult character. Must be won over. Spoiled at home. Parents resent his being punished." [3] With that kind of description, I think most of us might have a running start at understanding a student and determining how we might guide his/her character and disposition.
     In more recent times, we’ve been provided with all sorts of systems for understanding and discerning the character of ourselves or others – Enneagram, Meyers-Briggs, Strength Finder etc. And more methods appear with each new book season. But one of the ones that I’ve found both simple and elegant was shared by a friend of mine many years ago. I don’t know if she found it or if she came up with it herself. I just find it generally helpful; not to pigeon-hole but to provide some sort of framework for understanding where a person’s dispositional inclinations are leaning.
     The quadrant chart at the top of this reflection is a crude representation of this schema. She said, “Generally, there are two characteristics that you can pick up about people. There are the Givers or the Takers, and there are the Doers or the Talkers. The best sort are the Givers and the Doers, and the worst ones are the Takers and the Talkers.” In the other quadrants are those who have a mix of different characteristics, and it’s interesting to think about professions that might fit each of the quadrants. I don’t know, for example, where I’d generally put politicians or poets. Most of us are a mix, of course, depending on “with whom” and “for what” and the like. But the cluster of what we do, like the cluster of blue dots, show a general preference for one area of the chart.
     The point of sharing this chart is to highlight the fact that each of us has their own way of understanding and discerning the students they encounter. (And this GT-TD chart seems more appropriate to adults than to developing students.) However, De La Salle’s insight is that we should have something, some intentionality, some method, by which we engage this most potentially transformative dimension of our educational ministry. His advice? “This guidance requires understanding and discernment of spirits, qualities you should frequently and earnestly ask of God, for they are most necessary for you in the guidance of those placed in your care.”[4]

     BTW. I think that De La Salle was a Giver and a Doer big-time!

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A PDF of this reflection is HERE

[1] De La Salle, John Baptist, Meditations by St. John Baptist de La Salle, trans. Richard Arnandez, and Augustine Loes, eds. Augustine Loes and Francis Huether, (Landover, MD: Christian Brothers Conference, 1994), 91 (Med. 33.1).

[2] De La Salle, John Baptist, The Conduct of Schools, Translated by F. de La Fontainerie and Richard Arnandez, FSC, Edited with notes by William Mann, FSC (Landover, MD: Christian Brothers Conference, 1996), 240.

[3] De La Salle, Jean-Baptiste. Œuvres Complètes. (Rome: Frères des Ecoles Chrétiennes, 1993), 657.

[4] De La Salle, John Baptist, The Meditations, Op. Cit.

Lasallian Reflection - No Boxing Gloves Permitted

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Do you instruct those for whom you are responsible with the attention and the zeal

God asks of you in so holy a work? By your good conduct, be worthy of this distinguished role.

Act in such a way that your life may begin today to be holy and edifying 

and continue to be such in the future.

 -  St. John Baptist de La Salle[1]

One of the reasons that humanity has been able to thrive on the earth, according to those who study human progress, is our shared sense of curiosity, our interest in the new and the different, our exploratory dispositions. It is what caused early migratory movements across land masses, the constant pursuit of better ways of life – such as farming instead of hunting -- and the development of comprehensive ways of making sense of the world through meaning-filled activities like folklore, rituals (religious and otherwise), and the arts. This sense of curiosity, this drive for knowledge and creativity, is what today causes us to enjoy wrapped packages, pick up a new book, scroll down beyond the screen, listen to gossip, and even simply get up in the morning to see what the day will bring. It all comes from an inborn, essential, and ever-living capacity for plumbing the deeper wells of the possible. It’s the motor for joie de vivre. It’s the poet’s instinct, the explorer’s drive, the lover’s persistence, and from a depth awareness / engagement perspective, it is the mystic’s contentment, exemplified in how John Baptist de La Salle came to gradually embrace his life’s journey and living in God’s loving presence, decision by decision over a long period of time.
     The beginning of any new calendar year is now celebrated worldwide with parties, count-downs to midnight, fireworks, confetti, and jubilation. Isn’t this yet another expression of the possibilities for the future, to hope perhaps previously deferred and now extended once again? We revive our motivations in mutual support of yet another chance, yet another set of days to do what we know we want to do. The new year’s celebration invests the wisdom of the old into the hope of the young; the old man of 2019 stands next to the bright-eyed baby of 2020 . . . every single year. It is an annual ritual that, again and again, attests to the deeply-rooted human dynamic of hope, of curiosity, of what is possible, of an innate hunger for the “something more” in our universe.
     David Brooks concisely describes our pursuit of this “more” in life as the second mountain, “…the one people begin climbing once the goals of the first mountain—the goals of success, personal fulfillment and happiness—have been met and found wanting. ‘If the first mountain is about building up the ego and defining the self,” he writes, “the second mountain is about shedding the ego and losing the self.’”[2] All the new year’s resolutions in the world won’t equal that insight.
     Such topsy-turvy insights into the less obvious aspects of the universe are regularly conveyed within most of the major religious traditions, most viscerally and profoundly by Jesus Christ in the New Testament.[3] With the best of intentions, we ignore or explain them away as hopelessly (!) idealistic and unachievable. And society’s popular voice is as myopic as it is ubiquitous. What’s been problematic “. . . has been what he [David Brooks] believes is the secular news media’s tin ear on issues of faith. ‘They treat it like you have changed from being Republican to a Democrat,’ he says. “As if it’s that kind of choice. ‘I used to like French fries; now I like sweet potatoes.’ You feel like there’s something sacred and mysterious that is being handled with boxing gloves.”[4]
     What, then, of our students and staff, our Lasallian educational communities? When De La Salle and two Brothers went to the school in the parish of St. Sulpice in Paris in 1688, the place was a bit of a mess. De La Salle told the Brothers to concentrate on their own classrooms, on the things that they could do within their own area of responsibility. That strategy led to the transformation of the entire school in less than a year. By focusing on the possible, the impossible gradually recedes.
     T.S. Elliot famously wrote, “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”[5] The most worthwhile knowledge, the greatest journey, lies within. The more we can help our students and educational communities look deeper, beyond the obvious – in literature, science, history, sports, religion, etc. – the more they will be disposed (and trained) to do so in the future, to engage in their own exploring. “It is apostolic to awaken in students a serious attitude towards life and the conviction of the greatness of human destiny; it is apostolic to make it possible for them, with intellectual honesty and responsibility, to experience the autonomy of personal thought; it is apostolic to help the students to use their liberty to overcome their own prejudices, preconceived ideas, social pressures, as well as the pressures that come from disintegration within the human person; it is apostolic to dispose students to use their intelligence and their training in the service of others, to open them to others: to teach them how to listen and to try to understand, to trust and love; it is apostolic to instill in students a sense of trustworthiness, brotherhood, and justice.”[6]
     Teaching indeed is a holy work: the cultivation of curiosity, of hope, of the poet’s instinct, the explorer’s drive, the lover’s persistence, and the mystic’s contentment. Something sacred and mysterious is at work here. A sign in every classroom should read “No boxing gloves permitted.”

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A PDF  of this reflection is HERE.

[1] De La Salle, John Baptist, Meditations by St. John Baptist de La Salle, trans. Richard Arnandez, and Augustine Loes, eds. Augustine Loes and Francis Huether, (Landover, MD: Christian Brothers Conference, 1994), 174 (Med. 93.2).

[2] Bill McGarvey, “The Confessions of David Brooks,” America Magazine 221, no. 6 (September 16, 2019): 47.

[3] “The one who finds his life will lose it, and the one who loses his life because of me will find it." (Matthew 10:39)

[4] McGarvey, “Confessions,” 47.

[5] T.S. Elliot. Little Gidding. (http://www.columbia.edu/itc/history/winter/w3206/edit/tseliotlittlegidding.html)

[6] Brothers of the Christian Schools. The Brother of the Christian Schools in the World Today: A Declaration. Rome: 1967. (Section 41) Slightly edited for inclusive language.

Lasallian Reflection - Gratitude's Abundance

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To whom ought we to give ourselves if not to the One from whom we have received everything. … This thought and the gratitude we owe him for all his goodness to us ought to have 

frequently occupied our minds and touched our hearts during this year.

 -  St. John Baptist de La Salle[1]

Have you ever noticed that the most grateful people we know are those with little apparent reason for being so? Those who give, give, and give – like Mother Teresa, Jean Vanier, and many silently busy unknown saints – have few material things. They do have great gratitude. Compared to those admired in popular culture – sports and movie stars, famous musicians and authors, online personalities, etc. – those with the least obvious advantages possess the greatest ones. Philip Yancey, who has interviewed a wide host of people, divides them into stars and servants. The stars, by and large, he found to be “as miserable a group of people as I have ever met …” But more significantly, “I was prepared to honor and admire the servants, to hold them up as inspiring examples. I was not, however, prepared to envy them. But as I now reflect on the two groups side by side, stars and servants, the servants clearly emerge as the favored ones, the graced ones. They work for low pay, long hours, and no applause, ‘wasting’ their talents and skills among the poor and uneducated. But somehow in the process of losing their lives they have found them. They have received the ‘peace that is not of this world.’” His experienced conclusion is aligned to what the Gospel proclaims: “The way up is down.”[2]
     Teachers are such servants, educating by word, example, and personality. Gospel seeds appear gently but directly, filtered by life experience, reflection, intentionality, and a genuine care for students. How, then, might gratitude be revealed within the focused, organized chaos of daily school life? What are the deeper challenges in education today to developing a real sense of gratitude? Where should we turn our attention in order to “teach” Gospel priorities?
     Young people are often energetic, curious, and given to spontaneous outbursts of well-intentioned leaps of purpose-filled activity, and popular expectations, whether in society or personal relationships, are not conducive to lengthy reflection or deep filters, especially when it comes to today’s economic drivers. “Successive echelons of youth mean a perpetual supply of unspoilt ‘virgin land’ ready for cultivation, without which even the simple reproduction of the capitalist economy, not to mention economic growth, would be all but unconceivable. Young people are thought of and paid attention to as ‘yet another market’ to be commodified and exploited.”[3] An economic juggernaut that is powered by personalized Facebook ads, clever social media and gaming advertising strategies, easily becomes a society where early Black Friday deals trump [intentional use] the genuine benefits of a convivial Thanksgiving meal with family and friends. While one might say with genuine gratitude that there are plenty of examples of young people who resist these and similar well-hidden societal forces, there is “a gathering volume of evidence casting ‘the problem of youth’ fairly and squarely as an issue of ‘drilling them into consumers’, and leaving all other youth-related issues on a side shelf, or effacing them altogether from the political, social and cultural agenda.”[4]
     This is a large part of the landscape of education today. It is the one within which the gratitude called for by the Gospel is much needed. How? “Isn't it true that gratitude springs up in our hearts more powerfully, more gloriously when what we receive is undeserved, when it is a miracle of divine and human love?” Turning the eyes of youth toward the miracle of divine and human love – in retreats, in personal encounters, in undeserved forgiveness, in just saying “hello” – is an immediate, real, and powerful agent for change. It is grounded in the conviction that God trusts us to be the love that created us. “How wonderful it would be if out of gratitude we lived in such a way as to give God joy, the joy of knowing that He has not created us in vain, that He does not believe in us in vain, that He has not put His trust in us in vain, that His love has been received, is now incarnate, not only in emotion, but in action!”[5]
     At the end of the magical video, Gratitude Revealed,[6] Br. David Steind-Rast, OSB, invites us to notice the blessings that we encounter each day: “I wish that you will open your heart to all these blessings, and let them flow through you, that everyone whom you will meet on this day will be blessed by you, just by your eyes, by your smile, by your touch, just by your presence. Let the gratefulness overflow into blessing all around you.”
     Allow me to suggest that the capacity for gratitude itself is one of those blessings, and the more we notice its presence and exercise its agency for grace, the more we and others will find that God’s presence isn’t all that far away. In fact, we yet dwell within its silent, rich abundance.

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PDF of this reflection is HERE.

[1] De La Salle, John Baptist, Meditations by St. John Baptist de La Salle, trans. Richard Arnandez, and Augustine Loes, eds. Augustine Loes and Francis Huether, (Landover, MD: Christian Brothers Conference, 1994), 384 (Med. 90.2).

[2] Yancey, Philip, I Was Just Wondering, (B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989), p.91.

[3] Bauman, Zygmunt, On Education-Conversations with Riccardo Mazzeo, (Polity Press, Cambridge, UK) Pg. 55.

[4] Ibid., Pg. 56.

[5] Bloom, Anthony, Sermon on Gratitude, www.mitras.ru/eng/eng_96.htm

[6] https://vimeo.com/282760088

Lasallian Reflection - The Synergizing Prerequisite for Genuine Education

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Example makes a much greater impression on the mind and the heart than words,especially for children ... They are led more readily to do  what they see done for them than what they hear told to them.  St. John Baptist de La Salle[1]

October 13th will see the canonization of John Henry Newman here in Rome, where I am right now for a couple of months, starting in a new role that will place me here three times a year. Reading a recent book about Newman, I was struck by his fine integration of evangelization and education. Newman’s primary writing for the first half of his life was focused on his weekly “plain sermons,” masterfully bringing scripture to life.  He wrote, “In Scripture to preach is to do the work of an evangelist, is to teach, instruct, advise, encourage in all things pertaining to religion, in any way whatever. All education is a kind of preaching – all catechizing, all private conversation – all writing. In all things and all time a Christian minister is preaching in the scriptural sense of the word.”[2] But was this done just in the writing of heady sermons, sermons that had immense impact and enjoyed wide popularity? Or was there more at work here?

Clearly, there was more to it in the case of Newman and others. Besides being a lifelong hard-working pastor to those entrusted to his care, which included the poor and the weary from all walks of life, the character of his personality was also a significant factor. “While in their priestly offices and personal lives the Oxford leaders remained distrustful of display, the almost magnetic energy produced by so much passionate intensity held under control by a restraining simplicity of life was a source of powerful attraction. To many who gathered about them it made them appear to glow with an inner light.”[3] It was the witness of their lives that brought both credibility and substance to what they wrote, an evangelization of word and witness.

Pope Francis also recently addressed this topic, in the context of working with young people. “Young people have good will, but they can be easy prey to deception as well as impatient. It is necessary to be close to the young people, to give them space so that they can discern what is happening in their hearts. Formation considers ideas and feelings together. ... For example, we must help the youngest to recognize when they live in resignation, and therefore in stagnation, and also to recognize when they live a healthy restlessness. In short, we need spiritual discern­ment, accompaniment.”[4] This echoes De La Salle’s meditation on teachers as good shepherds, who know their sheep individually and are “able to understand their students and to discern the right way to guide them. … This guidance requires understanding and discern­ment of spirits, qualities you must frequently and earnestly ask of God.”[5] (Prayer is not an option here.)

Along with such discernment and accompaniment, the element of personal witness is the synergizing prerequisite for genuine evangelization. How we live shapes how we educate and gives substance to what we truly teach. Personal witness synergizes who we are for others; example outweighs words any day, especially among our students. Pope Francis nicely brings all these notions together for us by contrasting evangelizing and proselytizing: “Evangelization is essentially witness. Proselytizing is convincing, but it is all about membership and takes your freedom away. I believe that this distinction can be of great help. … The Church does not grow by proselytism, it grows by attraction, the attraction of witness. … Evangelizers never violate the conscience: they announce, sow and help to grow. They help. Whoever proselytizes, on the other hand, violates people’s conscience: this does not make them free, it makes them dependent.”[6]  The kind of education that sticks is much more like genuine evangelization.

Education’s synergetic grace through personal witness was best described by the great Jewish educator and theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, who said, “Everything depends on the person who stands in the front of the classroom. The teacher is not an automatic fountain from which intellectual beverages may be obtained. He is either a witness or a stranger. To guide a pupil into the promised land, he must have been there himself.  When asking himself:  Do I stand for what I teach? Do I believe what I say? He must be able to answer in the affirmative. What we need more than anything else is not textbooks but textpeople.  It is the personality of the teacher which is the text that the pupils read; the text that they will never forget.”[7]

De La Salle, John Henry Newman, Pope Francis, and most teachers with some experience under their belts would agree. Wouldn’t you? And if so, doesn’t it make sense to pay attention to how we feed our spirit, pursue virtue, shape our habits, and set our priorities? Souls depend on it!
it!

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PDF of this reflection is HERE.
[1] De La Salle, John Baptist, Meditations by St. John Baptist de La Salle, trans. Richard Arnandez, and Augustine Loes, eds. Augustine Loes and Francis Huether, (Landover, MD: Christian Brothers Conference, 1994), 456 (Med. 202.3).
[2] Cummings, Owen, John Henry Newman and His Age, 153 (2019), cited from Murray, Newman the Oratorian, 37.
[3] Ibid., 30 (2019), cited from “Tracts for the Times I,” iv, cited in Borsch, “Ye Shall Be Holy,” 72.
[4] https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2019-09/pope-conversations-jesuits-mozambique-madagascar-spadaro.html[5] De La Salle, John Baptist, Meditations by St. John Baptist de La Salle, op. cit., 91 (Med. 33.1).
[6] Web page cited above in # 4.
[7] Heschel, Abraham Joshua, edited by Dresner, Samuel H., I Asked for Wonder (Crossroad, 1985), 62.

Lasallian Reflection - The Dance of Grace & Faith

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Applying ourselves to the presence of God is a most useful practice; be faithful to it. 

– St. John Baptist de La Salle[1]

There has been a lot of press over David Brook’s new book, The Second Mountain. In one section, he talks about how “grace” is, or becomes, a part of our lives. Grace, he says, is not the result of a rational process, but instead can only be a totally free gift from God. You can’t make grace happen. This is why: “We have this amazing ability to care about each other and to love each other and love God in ways that are beyond any normal requirement. So we’re just made that way. And it is a gracious universe that gave us this capacity, and it seems to me it didn’t have to be that way.” That’s well put. The next bit reminded me of a positive notion from the 17th century that emerged with Jansenism. He writes, “Faith and grace are not about losing agency. They are about strengthening and empowering agency while transforming it. When grace floods in, it gives us better things to desire and more power to desire them.”[2]

     In an article by Louis Dupré about Jansenism – a controversial movement during the time of St. John Baptist de La Salle – a surprisingly similar perspective is expressed. Beyond Jansenism’s general impact of conveying an “unqualified pessimism about human nature,” figures like Blaise Pascal also highlighted a “humble awareness of an unmerited union with God.” And this deep awareness is not, and cannot be, something that comes from reason alone. “Only from God himself (in faith) can one learn about a total, intrinsic redemption that sanctifies one’s attitudes and grants merit to one’s works. Yes the object of faith itself, the ‘mystery of Jesus,’ is such that it blinds some while enlightening others. Only with ‘eyes of faith’ … can we see the true reality of this mystery.”[3] Jansenism highlighted that it is only the grace of faith that provides the capacity to learn about God’s presence in Scripture, in nature, and in others. Pascal writes, “Those to whom God has given religious faith by moving their hearts are very fortunate, and feel quite legitimately convinced, but to those who do not have it we can only give such faith through reason, until God gives it by moving their heart, without which faith is only human and useless for salvation.”[4] In other words, faith and grace empower agency while transforming it.

     And what engages that dynamic in the lives of ordinary people? Do we just wait around until God decides to shower us with this grace? De La Salle provides a related insight in one of his meditations: “God gives two kinds of reward in this world to those who commit themselves untiringly to the work of the salvation of souls. First, he gives them an abundance of grace; second, he gives them a more extended ministry and a greater ability to procure the conversion of souls.”[5] In others words, it is in the pursuit of one’s vocation, in the doing of good and faithful things, that God’s dynamic is engaged and that the seeds of faith, however conceived, are watered. Like any relationship, one’s relationship with God is also cumulative, multi-layered, built up through activity and attention. There are no shortcuts in the spiritual journey.

     One of the best illustrations of this is provided in the novel Brothers Karamazov, when the Elder monk answers a genuine plea for guidance. “What will give me back my faith? … How can it be proved, how can one be convinced?” … [The elder answers] “By the experience of active love. Try to love your neighbors actively and tirelessly. The more you succeed in loving , the more you’ll be convinced of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. And if you reach complete selflessness in the love of your neighbor, then undoubtedly you will believe, and no doubt will even be able to enter your soul. This has been tested. It is certain.”[6] However, if it is pursued for the sake of honor or the admiration of others, it goes nowhere. Active love is tied to active faith when they are aligned with genuine humility and pursued with pure desire. This careful integration needs at least as much care and attention as whipping up a hollandaise.

     If grace, from God or from anywhere or anyone, is “unmerited love” lived out in daily life, then we are indeed inundated with invitations to jump into the deep ends of things. Thomas Merton: “For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not. Yet, the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.”[7]

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PDF of this reflection is HERE.

[1] De La Salle, John Baptist, Interior Prayer. Translated by Richard Arnandez & Donald Mouton. Edited by Donald Mouton. (Landover, ML: Christian Brothers Conference) Pg. 51.

[2] Brooks, David. The Second Mountain. (Random House Publishing Group, 2019) Pg. 255.

[3] Dupré, Louis. Jansenism and Quietism article in Christian Spirituality: Post-Reformation and Modern. (New York: Crossroad, 1989) Pg. 127.

[4] Pascal, Blaise, Pensees. # 110.

[5] De La Salle, John Baptist, Meditations by St. John Baptist de La Salle, trans. Richard Arnandez, and Augustine Loes, eds. Augustine Loes and Francis Huether, (Landover, MD: Christian Brothers Conference, 1994), Pg. 467 (M207.1)

[6] Dostoevskly, Fyodor, Brothers Karamazov, Part 1, Book 2, Ch.4 – “A Lady of Little Faith

(Cf. https://bloggingsbetter.wordpress.com/2009/02/11/1702)

[7] Merton, Thomas. New Seeds of Contemplation. (New Directions Publishing, 2007) Pg. 296.

Lasallian Reflection - Our Encounters (Choose a verb) Our Vocation

Lewis University – New Installation – “The Encounter”

The remembrance of God’s presence will be a great advantage in helping you and in inspiring you to do all your actions well. [1]

- St. John Baptist de La Salle - 

Like De La Salle himself, we keep coming back to that central, shimmering, pregnant insight about remembering God’s presence in all that we see, do, and pursue. Christ dwells in the midst of the daily tasks, encounters, decisions, and experiences that make up our day. Where else find the resurrected Christ, the Holy Spirit alive?[2] You can’t think your way to salvation.

This struck me most powerfully recently when I was reading a commencement address by Fred Buechner at a (non-Catholic) seminary. “Again and again Christ is present not where, as priests, you would be apt to look for him but precisely where you wouldn’t have thought to look for him in a thousand years. The great preacher, the sunset, the Mozart Requiem can leave you cold, but the child in the doorway, the rain on the roof, the half-remembered dream, can speak of him and for him with an eloquence that turns your knees to water.”[3] Nicely put! How many of us haven’t noticed, heard, said, or did something that, small though it was, made our world spin? De La Salle’s generous response during the brief encounter with Adrian Nyel at the door of the Sister of the Infant Jesus convent was such a pivotal moment, although even this wouldn’t have happened if a whole chain of other events hadn’t brought them both there at precisely that time, with precisely their personalities and interests, and with precisely their priorities and religious sensibilities. It was this unlikely providential mash-up, if you will, that resulted in an educational movement that was started by a lay man, established and shaped by a priest, and that is now carried out by Brothers and Partners from all backgrounds, vocations, and cultures. You just can’t make this stuff up! It brings to mind parallels to the overwhelming providential circumstances that led to our own blue planet’s physical existence.

“Astronomers disagree on just how rare life is in the universe, but Earth nonetheless boasts several features that make it ‘just right’ for life as we know it. The right ingredients: A planet needs liquid water, an energy source, and chemical building blocks like carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen for the life forms we're familiar with to thrive. The right crust: Gas giants and molten worlds need not apply. Luckily, Earth possesses the suitable distribution of elements to ensure a hot metallic core and a rocky mantle. The right temperature: The necessity for liquid water also means that planetary temperatures must permit the substance to retain its liquid form in some regions. The right moon: Our large moon ensures climate stability by minimizing changes in planetary tilt. If our planet didn't have a tilt, it wouldn't have seasons. Likewise, a severe tilt would result in extreme seasons. The right star: The sun provides Earth with the energy for life and is thankfully rather stable. [Earth lies in a habitable zone that allows water to remain a liquid – The Goldilocks Zone – and have a stable orbit because of the moon’s distance and size.] ... The right core: Earth's solid inner core and liquid outer core play crucial roles in protecting life from deadly solar radiation. Differences in temperature and composition in the two core regions drive this powerful dynamo, emitting Earth's protective electromagnetic field. The right neighbors: Jupiter shields Earth from constant stellar bombardment. Without the gas giant in the neighborhood, scientists predict that Earth would endure 10,000 times as many asteroid and comet strikes.”[4] And this list doesn’t even include things like breathable air, the variety of species, and our human brain.[5]

What does all that mean for us, as educators who value the complexity of God’s presence? Buechner says it best and echoes De La Salle. “God speaks into or out of the thick of our days. He speaks not just through the sounds we hear, of course, but through events in all their complexity and variety, though the harmonies and disharmonies and counterpoint of all that happens. As to the meaning of what he says, there are times that we are apt to think we know. … To try to express in even the most insightful and theologically sophisticated terms the meaning of what God speaks through the events of our lives is as precarious a business as to try to express the meaning of the sound of rain on the roof or the spectacle of the setting sun. But I choose to believe that he speaks nonetheless, and the reason that his words are impossible to capture in human language is of course that they are ultimately always incarnate words. They are words fleshed out in the everydayness not less than in the crises of our experience.”[6]

May we each discover the active verb that ties our daily encounters to our life’s vocation.

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[1] De La Salle, John Baptist, The Letters, Translation, intro., and commentary by Colman Molloy, FSC. Edited with additional commentary by Augustine Loes, FSC, (Landover, MD: Christian Brothers Conference, 1988), 20 (Letter 2).

[2] "Earnestly ask Jesus that all your work be energized by his Spirit and draw all its power from him." (Med 195.3)

[3] Buechner, Frederick. Buechner 101: Essays, Excerpts, Sermons and Friends, Kindle Edition, Location 309.

[4] https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/evolution/earth-just-right-for-life.htm (Retrieved August 1, 2019)

[5] For a really interesting overview of all this, see “One Strange Rock” (National Geographic). Available on Netflix.

[6] Buechner, Frederick. Buechner 101: Essays, Excerpts, Sermons and Friends, Kindle Edition, Location 354

Lasallian Reflection - Remaining in God's Presence

Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash

All you need and all God wants of you is that you remain in his presence. [1]

 - St. John Baptist de La Salle - 

The quotation above is from one of the few letters that we have from the thousands that De La Salle wrote.  While it is only one sentence out of a long letter – and the letter’s tone is definitely 17^th century French spirituality – it represents an invitation to dwell in the presence of God that pervades all aspects of Lasallian life. This is an ongoing, recurring theme in De La Salle’s writings and a deep current of his personal spiritual life. His enduring desire was to deepen the spiritual lives of his followers and of the students who attended his schools, so that they might come to realize God’s intimate involvement in their lives, as the one who “guides all things with wisdom and serenity . . . in an imperceptible way and over a long period of time.”[2]

Remembering the presence of God was one of the “interior supports of the Institute,” showing up throughout his writings: “Are you attentive to the holy presence of God?” (List of Topics for Self-Examination)[3], “What is meant by keeping our attention fixed on God? It is to think of the presence of God.” (Explanation of the Spirit of Our Institute)[4], “When you recite the Divine Office … apply yourself as much as you can to the meaning of the words … or simply to the presence of God.” (The Divine Office)[5], “They will be inspired to enter the classroom with profound respect, out of consideration for the presence of God.” (The Conduct of Schools)[6], “At each hour of the day, some short prayers will be said. These will help the teachers to recollect themselves and recall the presence of God; it will serve to accustom the students to think of God from time to time …” (The Conduct of Schools)[7], “When they [parents and teachers] wish to train children in practices pertaining to bodily care and simple modesty, they should carefully lead them to be motivated by the presence of God.  ...  Children should do these things out of respect for God in whose presence they are.” (Rules of Christian Decorum and Civility).[8]

Okay. So how might we go about this “presence of God” business intentionally? One answer De La Salle gives is interior prayer. In his book Explanation of the Method of Interior Prayer, he “defines exactly what he means by ‘interior’–the whole person in the depths of our being, the ‘heart’ in the biblical sense, where vital decisions are made and where there is real dialogue with God.”[9] It is that place of quiet depth and attention where room is made for the small still voice to be heard. It is where serenity and consciousness converge in silence. It is a mindfulness that is focused on the Spirit of Faith, “which should lead … [us] to look upon nothing except with the eyes of faith, to do nothing except in view of God, and to attribute all to God.”[10]

And why should this be something worthy of our attention today? One of the best answers came from Gery Short, a lay Lasallian partner for over thirty years and head of the SF/SFNO office of education for over twenty years – so his experience has been long, wide, and deep. When he accepted the John Johnston Award at the 2018 Huether Conference, he said:

 “We must commit ourselves to firmly establish the spirit of faith as a foundational and effective reality in each and every one of our works. We must ask, how do we make prayer and spirituality, the spirit of faith, the core of who we are and what we are about? How do we make prayer and spirituality real for ourselves as educators and our students in an authentic, understandable, and deeply significant way?”

This squarely hits the mark. How do we, can we, should we remain in God’s presence today? God’s presence shines out from countless undiscovered places in our lives and in the lives of others. We don’t have to put him there. We just have to figure out how to roll the stone away.

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[1] De La Salle, John Baptist, The Letters, Translation, introduction, and commentary by Colman Molloy, FSC. Edited with additional commentary by Augustine Loes, FSC, (Landover, MD: Christian Brothers Conference, 1988), 233 (Letter 111).

^[2] Blain, Jean-Baptiste. The Life of John Baptist de La Salle, Founder of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. Translated by Richard Arnandez, FSC. (Romeoville, IL: Christian Brothers Conference, 1983). Vol. 1, Bk. 1, 60–­­61.

^[3] De La Salle, John Baptist. Collection of Various Short Treatises. Translated by W.J. Battersby, FSC. Edited by Daniel Burke, FSC. (Romeoville, IL: Christian Brothers Conference, 1993), 16.

^[4] Ibid., 34.

^[5] Ibid., 56.

^[6] De La Salle, John Baptist. Conduct of Christian Schools. Translated by F. de La Fontainerie and Richard Arnandez, FSC. Edited by William Mann, FSC. (Landover, MD: Lasallian Publications, 1996). 49.

[7] Ibid. 92.

^[8] De La Salle, John Baptist. The Rules of Christian Decorum and Civility. Translated by Richard Arnandez, FSC.  Edited by Gregory Wright, FSC. (Romeoville, IL: Lasallian Publications, 1990), 3–4.

[9] See the article by Maurice-August Hermans, FSC, and Michael Sauvage, FSC, in Spirituality in the Time of John Baptist de La Salle, edited by Robert Berger, FSC. (Landover, MD: Lasallian Publications, 1999), 207.

[10] De La Salle, John Baptist. The Rule of 1705: An English Translation. Translated by O'Gara, Eugene. (Moraga, CA: Buttimer Institute, 1989), 1.