Lasallian Declarations
Lasallian Declarations
This document aims to motivate and guide the Lasallian educational work toward the future in response to the needs and challenges of today’s world. It offers proposals full of hope and highlight certain convictions derived from our rich history in order to facilitate the development and continuity of our Educational Communities. Present reality has been kept in mind as the starting point, the rich history as an Institute has been recognized and a desired future imagined.
This aims to serve as a starting point for an ongoing reflection on the Educational Mission that unites Lasallians worldwide. It highlights the essential elements of our historical heritage, characterized by giving a pertinent response to local challenges and by a profound educational, collaborative and associative evolution based on fraternity and the foundational insights of De La Salle.
The twelve points synthesize Lasallians position, convictions, proposals and hopes vis-à-vis the challenges identified, which with historical evolution, will continue to change, and with them, Lasallian way of responding in the mission. It concretizes Lasallian’s position regarding the educational mission.
The life of Lasallian educational groups is nourished by a passion for the education of the poor, those who suffer, those who await our offer of solidarity and invite us once again to take a risk and to be creative. Rather than cling to the past, Lasallians prefer to build the future. Lasallians choose life and hope. Lasallians reaffirm one’s faith in the goodness of human beings and in ones passion for humanity.
“We accept the past with gratitude, embrace the present with joy and look to the future full of hope, animated by the deep faith that this pathway we are following is the work of God”; and so:
WE DECLARE THAT
(1) We firmly believe that children and young people are a call to hope and commitment.
(2) We believe that in the faces of the impoverished and vulnerable we find God's saving power.
(3) We believe in the inspiring and mediating power of the educator.
(4) We believe that the educational community is a core component in the building up of the person and the transmission of values.
(5) We believe that our Lasallian association is a gift from God to the world and an extraordinary means to continue the legacy received from our living three-hundred- year heritage.
(6) We believe that education makes possible the search for and transmission of the truth.
(7) We believe that education is a fundamental, powerful and productive resource for the care of the Earth and the defense of the habitat where life can flourish and sustain itself.
(8) We believe in the transforming capacity of education.
(9) We believe that Lasallian education is an expression of Christian humanism.
(10) We believe in the evangelizing power of the school.
(11) We believe that today's realities demand taking risks and being creative.
(12) We believe that another world is possible, and that education is a fundamental force for building it.
References:
Declaration on the Lasallian Educational Mission Challenges, Convictions and Hopes
Brothers of the Christian Schools, Generalate – Rome, First edition, 202