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II. CHALLENGES AND
COMMITMENTS
The challenges which we must
face up to in our fidelity to "re-founding" do not come from our
"works" so much as from PERSONS. They are the challenges which
implicate the present and the future of the children and the adolescents. In order
to "re-found", we must be prepared to listen, to question, to
investigate, to pray.... and to look at our world through the eyes of the
young, in their lives, their cries and their silences, more concerned about
what they are "telling us" than about what we "should tell
them".
If we want to "found
anew" we have to choose not to remain quiet in the face of the reality of
the social and cultural inequality which characterizes all societies, and which
wounds us even more when we see it as a whole and face it with our own
charisma.
I believe that in the light
of the present reality which is crying for help, both from our charism and for
our places of mission, we have to make a "re-founding analysis" of
what is needed in the educational and pastoral fields. We have to face up to a
common deposit of values which are the foundation of our new educational establishments
and projects, and, of course, its place in practice as regards the dignity of
the person, solidarity, the feeling of transcendence....to quote just a few of
those things most menaced by the "culture without a soul".
In the aspect of those
"values for a new foundation" which are crying out most of all, not
so much in their scientific content, but so that from our schools there come
forth more than those who are technically and professionally competent, but
people who are capable and free to integrate themselves in society, I believe
that we must engage ourselves in CHANGING OUR PRESENCE, OUR EDUCATIONAL
STRUCTURES AND VALUES, in order to arrive at a more evangelical way, nearer to
the young people and to the children who are truly vulnerable and who are marginalized
by so many circumstances - family, social, religious, cultural, economical,
etc.
This "educational
re-founding" of our establishments, born of fidelity to our charism in the
HERE AND NOW, brings us to "risk" some, or a lot of, our "old
ideas and arrangements", because this new birth brings us where few go,
immersed as they are in the culture of success, of prestige and
competitiveness, to the "frontier" of the child and the youth in a
condition of inequality.
Our charism,
"incarnate" in our education and our educational mission, matured in
the "tension" of creative fidelity, is a call to LIVE PROPHETICALLY
in the world of today; particularly in the world of the "little ones"
who find themselves so often "outside" society.... to be a light
which will free them and guide them to the LIGHT, the Lord Jesus.
I ask that you will all
understand what I am saying, but meantime, I cannot resist quoting a few short
paragraphs from a Circular Letter to the Marist Institute written by Rev. Br
Basilio Rueda during his term as Superior General:
These ideas, inspiringly
prophetic, and read in the perspective of what we are studying, I call
"seeds of re-founding":
"I believe that we
should avoid at all cost a type of pedagogy which produces a bourgeois
formation, that is, individualistic, lacking in solidarity, egoistic,
conformist. Closely allied to this is a mentality which animates many young
people, and which consists of studying in order to pass their exams with high
success, to obtain a career, and if possible, to assure their personal and
family future. Basically, in itself this is not immoral, but is not enough to
reach the fulfilment of the ideals of the Christian life. We must go beyond
certain educational structures which de facto lead to a pedagogy which helps to
foment those bourgeois attitudes which lead progressively to a lack of
solidarity...." (Circ. XXIV pp 264-265, - 02.01.1968))
Many thanks to all for your
kind attention.
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