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.

All of this makes up a call to "re-interpret", to "relocate", to "transform" our educational establishments: by starting new projects in the primacy of the charism on structure; by uniting ourselves in universal solidarity; by educating for justice, peace, solidarity by going from equality of opportunity to a "positive discrimination" in favour of the more disadvantaged. by spreading the Gospel through education; by going from a purely academic education to a society which educates in the full sense of the term; by going from individualism to a community existence, which implies both critical attitudes and readiness to take part in things.

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.