REINTERPRETATION OF THE PRESENCES
IN THE FORMATION
AND EDUCATION OF TODAY

INTRODUCTION

"The model we have inherited is not the whole model"
Not long ago, reading a report from UNESCO called "Education: a hidden treasure" (Ed. Odile Jacob, 1996) I was struck by the words of M. Jacques Delors, then President of the European Commission, who defined our modern culture as "a culture lacking in soul".

The man of today goes through many experiences. In the First World, he is eaten up by consumerism, by "progress", and so on. In the Third and Fourth Worlds, it is by striving to better himself, by anxiety, by the need to survive. And in the midst of all this, among the youth of today, the adults of tomorrow, there is a growing indifference to fundamental verities.We find this even in not a few of our Catholic educational establishments, in which the mission of the school is not fully supported by the underlying culture.

The social framework in which many of our educational projects are carried out is a new one, which is taking over rapidly - an ambience which is multiethnic, multicultural, secularized, and multi-religious. It is my opinion that we must rethink the various "presences" in the light of the will to resolve the needs of the young people of today, immersed as they are in social realities that are for the most part highly conflicting both for their personal balance and their social balance.

When we look at the cultural situations and the challenges they bring, together with new possibilities for evangelical and charismatic witness, we have to have the AUDACITY not only to analyse the new realities and to take an "evangelical consciousness" of them, but also and primarily to PROCLAIM with creative fidelity new presences, new values and projects, new institutional language. Fidelity to our charisma demands of us both at personal and institutional levels, that we live "prepared for and attentive to" the social and cultural tendencies that have so much influence on the formation, awareness, values, and development of the personality of the young. We must be aware of all this preparedness and attention in order to re-interpret and re-situate our educational establishments. They exist for the young people, not for us.

Many times, torn between the desire for the almost impossible and the confident yearning for the possible, I have asked myself: "Is it possible nowadays in our educational establishments, to give "new responses" to "new challenges", without putting at risk the system in which we live, a system which is largely the fruit of "old responses" to "old challenges?"

The confidence our Founders had in the evangelical vitality of the RELIGIOUS LIFE and in their deeply evangelical "intuition", is something that pulls us strongly to a "creative refounding" of our life, our works, our institutions. Personally I have a strong belief in the impelling force of the charisma, in its unrenounceable place in the deepest heart of the mission, but so often swamped in a multitude of structures which accommodate themselves to the times.

A "re-founding" will be "prophetic and creative" if it is concerned to be RECOGNIZED in a NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT INSTITUTIONAL LIFE, and in PRESENCES which, coming to life like a tree, including starting from lowly beginnings, are capable of hearing the new cries of the people and of coming to life in the new needs. This is what we mean when we talk so forcefully about "displacement", "exodus", "frontier".