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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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