|
Brother Álvaro
Rodríguez Echeverría
Superior General
III UMAEL CONGRESS
Mexico City, May 15 - 18, 2003
CALLED TO SERVE
Introduction:
I am delighted for the invitation to be here with you in Mexico City
for your III Congress, on the campus of La Salle University, my own
alma mater. The slogan which you have chosen, "Former Lasallian
students called to serve," is comprehensive in scope and I hope that
during these days it will turn into concrete activities and not just
remain enclosed as a fine theory. I am grateful especially to your
President, Jean Pierre Hascoët, to the Executive Board and to the
committee here in Mexico who have prepared this meeting with such
care. As I greet them and you today, I also remember the thousands
and thousands of former men and women students throughout the length
and breadth of the Lasallian world whom you are representing.
1. The times in which we live
One of the things I admire most and which most impresses me about
our Founder is to see how attentive he was to, and allowed himself
to be “trapped” by, the reality of his lived experience. In the
light of this reality and enlightened by the word of God, he
discovered God's plan for him and for our Institute. Therefore it
seems important to me as I begin this reflection that we situate
ourselves in the moment of history which we are living and that we
in turn discover what it is that the Lord is asking of us today so
as to continue his plan of salvation.
The last few months have been marked on the world level by war and
efforts made to avoid it and to find other roads for the solution.
On the other hand, we know that in different geographical areas
there are other ethnic, political or religious conflicts and that
the progress offered to us by globalization, with its economic
growth and market expansion, as well as by the fantastic development
of computer technology are being overshadowed. The fact is that many
people remain excluded from such benefits and that local, cultural
values run the risk of disappearing as they face the imposition of
supposedly universal values. Certainly the international character
of our Institute is a call to live "the basics" as we face change;
this means knowing how to welcome, respect and appreciate
differences. At the same time it is important to be aware also, that
tomorrow's alternative is not so much going to be between the haves
and the have-nots as between the knows and the know-nots. This is a
real challenge for an Institute which is dedicated to a Christian
education without borders and available to everyone.
On the Church level, with its advances and setbacks, inter-religious
ecumenism and dialogue are developing. There is more and more
commitment among the laity. The various continents have had the
opportunity to reflect on their own identity via the Synods and we
have been helped to discover a Church which is more multi-ethnic and
multi-cultural. The Jubilee year of 2000 was the symbol of a
powerful call to a more authentic faith and opened doors for a new
hope. The recent World Youth Days in Paris, Rome and Toronto have
shown us that young people today long for something more, even in
secular societies. The unequivocal stance of the Church in favor of
peace, so clearly evident recently, is a sign of hope in favor of
life and it is an invitation to a commitment to solidarity with
those who suffer, with the poor, with young people who are looking
for meaning.
I think, too, that the 43rd General Chapter reached a milestone in
our secular history and that the topic of association will force us
to talk about a BEFORE and AFTER. We are laying the foundations for
the Institute of the future, which certainly will take in the best
of our received inheritance, and will make us discover and build a
new reality in which we Brothers and associated lay persons
guarantee the Lasallian charism creatively. It is important to ask
ourselves today where society and history are heading in order to
make the needed changes which will prevent us from becoming an
estranged body far from the world’s reality. We should not be afraid.
We can respond to the challenges the world gives us today while
maintaining the fire that saw us come into being and responding with
imagination to the world's needs. It is in this context where we
should place the efforts of the III UMAEL Congress which we begin
today.
This Congress is a continuation of the one held in Rome in May 1999.
On that occasion, Brother John Johnston raised some questions that
continue to be current. Among others I would like to cite the
following for their clear reference to service, the topic that
unites us today:
- Do former students understand the commitment in solidarity on the
part of Lasallians toward the poor? Are they willing to collaborate
in projects or to organize them and to help in such projects? Are
they willing to collaborate in the creation of new works for the
education of the poor, both inside and outside their country?
- Are our former students actively involved in the fight for a
better society and the elimination of the lack of honesty and of
corruption that plague so many countries?
- Do our former students financially support our Lasallian mission
by means of personal contributions and the collection of funds? Do
they try to provide scholarships to students who are poor?
It seems to me that these questions serve us very well in beginning
the discussion of the topic of our Congress and this present
reflection.
2. Called to serve:
Father Kolvenbach, Superior General of the Jesuits, during the Sixth
Congress of the World Union of Jesuit students, held in January of
this year in India, cited a poem written by one of their most famous
former students, Rabindranath Tagore, to underscore how our faith in
God is authentic only in the measure that it translates into service
in favor of a brother or sister in need.
Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads!
Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with
doors all shut?
Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!
He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where
the path maker is breaking stones.
He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered
with dust.
Put off thy holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty
soil!
Deliverance? Where is this deliverance to be found?
Our master himself has joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation;
he is bound with us all forever.
Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense!
What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained?
Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow.
2.1 Called to serve children by defending their rights
The United Nations Program for Development (PNUD) in its latest
annual report speaks to us of how poverty has more and more the face
of a child, of how the rates of leaving school early or of repeating
grades is on the rise in primary schools in many countries, of how
youth unemployment is becoming commonplace. This means that a great
part of the youth population is outside the educational system and
the labor market. In fact, as Manfred Max-Neef tells us: "One of the
most tragic situations for which humankind in general should feel
painfully ashamed is that we have built a world in which the
majority of the poor are boys and girls, and even worse, in which
the majority of children are poor." Unfortunately, both in the North
and in the South, children constitute the most fragile and
vulnerable link of our society.
We can think of child labor, street children, children soldiers or
victims of armed conflicts, displaced children, refugees, the
kidnaping and selling of minors, infant malnutrition, abused
children, children with no education. This last situation touches us
profoundly as an Institute devoted to the education of children and
the young. The fact is that UNESCO acknowledged a few years ago,
that the last few decades have been disastrous for education; two-thirds
of the more than one-hundred countries in the Southern Hemisphere
that were studied registered a decline in per-student spending and
in half of those countries the proportion of children registered in
primary schools decreased.
As we come to grips with the reality I described above in theory but
which corresponds with a living and challenging reality, what can we
do? The last two General Chapters asked us to make the Defense of
the Rights of Children the banner of all Lasallians. More than once
I have dreamed about our associations of former students taking on
as their principal task a specific service in favor of children in
these situations.
I would not want to finish this section without sharing with you a
text that has deeply moved me: "Because I am a lover of life, I have
always been curious about, and today I greatly admire, the ability
of those children to carry on...I know dozens of seven or eight-year
old kids who abound with care for their younger siblings. They raise
them, they educate them and you should see how skillfully they carry
them on their fragile hips. At the age of nine they succeed in
overcoming the shriveling family finances by selling tissues at stop
lights...I hope the day comes when the moral conscience of people
manages to give the recognition that is due these tissue sellers at
stop lights, to these alienated, struggling adolescent messenger
boys, to the distributors of advertising material, collectors of
used cartons and paper who, with their undeclared savings, like
currents of subterranean water, will make the poorest orchards green
again, preventing the voracity of some from exhausting everything"
(Martínez Reguera, Cachorros de nadie, Madrid, Ed. Popular, pp.
179-180).
2.2 Called to serve the young by helping them find meaning in their
lives.
In today's world La Salle is called not only to offer service to the
young, important though that may be, but above all to help them find
meaning in their lives. That is why it is important to be very alert
to the new forms of poverty that the world of youth is presenting to
us today and at the same time to be very alert to a youth culture
which is mostly universal. Today the songs, fashion, rebelliousness,
the ways of interpreting life, the deficiencies and the criteria for
action among the young, their frustrations and hopes are very
similar throughout the world. Knowing and understanding their world
from the inside is a theological and pedagogical requirement if we
want to touch their hearts as we are called to do according to Saint
John Baptist de La Salle. This means we must make a greater effort
to inculturate ourselves in their world. Our international dimension
can help us enormously in this task.
The education that we give today should lead the young to an
encounter with God in their own inner being. We should educate for
inner strength. Is not the Good News which Christian education
brings, awareness above all of feeling loved, appreciated and
blessed? And in a society where everything is bought and sold, do we
not have to become gratuitous which will allow us to develop the
ability to contemplate, to thank, to marvel at mystery or beauty?
At the same time, as Lasallians we are called to awaken young people
to the needs of others so that they do not remain enclosed within
their own inner selves. Dialogue with young people, which affords
the necessary bridge-building to cross the abyss so frequently found
between their cultural universe and ours, is a challenge for
everyone. Should not this also be an ongoing concern for all
associations of former students?
2.3 Called to serve the poor and the excluded by promoting their
active participation in the benefits of globalization.
As I said at the beginning one of the principal characteristics of
our Lasallian spirituality is to start from reality as the
theological place where God manifests himself to us. As we speak
about the poor, therefore, it is important to know the reality and
to be sensitive to it. There are poor people and they are in the
majority. Three quarters of the world or some 4 billion people are
poor. This situation, far from diminishing, has increased in the
last 20 years and it does not appear that it will revert because of
the international pressures put upon governments that make them
implement policies of social cutbacks.
We should look upon the poor with the eyes of the God of Jesus, the
Father of life, and listen to their cries. We know that from God's
looking upon the world was born the mission of the Son of God in
history as merciful solidarity. The challenge for us is to be
merciful as the Father is merciful. This is a merciful solidarity
that involves letting ourselves be affected by the sufferings of
others, acting against avoidable suffering and taking on the task of
finding paths for hope and transformation.
We should recall, also, that our preference for the poor is an
integral part of the finality of the Institute. Aware of this
finality we should look for suitable policies by which this option
can be an effective priority at the different levels in the life of
the Institute. You as former students should also be very sensitive
to this finality. The diversity of historical situations calls for
associations at the local level to have the necessary creativity and
thrust to respond with new initiatives to the different forms of
poverty which our societies have not been able to overcome. I would
like to express here my deep admiration for the Saint John Baptist
de La Salle Educational Center which former students from Cuba have
established in Homestead for Latin immigrants, especially Mexicans.
Initiatives such as this should be on the increase.
Naturally we could think, also, about global projects of solidarity
and aid at the international level, such as that of MAU THON
(Vietnam) which has been proposed by the excellent UMAEL web site.
Our research and initiatives should be guided by the most pressing
needs of men and women of our time and by the new forms of poverty.
In 1993 our 42nd General Chapter invited us to be attentive in a
special way to: "migratory movements, racism, urban violence,
terrorism, drug addiction, loss of basic human values, crises of
faith, refusal of religious education, the attraction of sects,
unemployment, AIDS, hunger, illiteracy, street children,
homelessness, contempt of life, broken families, school dropouts..."
(Circular 434, page 22).
2.4 Called to serve the world by creating bonds of fraternity.
One of the most powerful experiences during my visits throughout the
Lasallian world is the experience of fraternity that I find in each
of our schools. In particular, during my trip to Southeast Asia in
January and February of this year I realized just how much our
schools are places of dialogue, respect, tolerance and conviviality
for persons of different cultures and religions. This seems to me to
offer tremendous witness for the divided world in which we live. I
believe that this is an essential Lasallian trait that should be
present in the very heart of each association of former students.
I would like to share with you what I shared with the Brothers, as I
reflected on the topic of our fraternity. In today's globalized
world and with the fall of the great ideologies we are living an
exciting moment in which the search for communion is becoming
something which is fundamental. Today more than crusaders who are
defending an idea we feel that we are searchers for a truth that
will be enriched by everyone's participation.
Nevertheless there are worrisome signs of just the opposite, and
this has been forcefully seen in recent months: irrational terrorism,
war with its destructive consequences, broadening unemployment,
growing immigration, the lack of a future for many children and
young people who are abandoned in the streets, the manufacture and
the sale of arms and globalization itself that leaves the
impoverished majority excluded and on the outside looking in.
The topic of association from our last General Chapter reminds us
that we Brothers and lay persons can live the same charism based on
our own vocation. Every Lasallian, not only those of us with the
name of Brother, ought to feel that they are brother or sister to
others, with a heart which is always open. We make up one family and
this should be visible in the type of relationship that exists among
ourselves. This is a family in which, as I have said, young people
should have a very special place and where former female students
also play an essential role because of their close relationship with
life, because of their traditional role as educators of faith and of
basic values. I think that it is very important that associations of
former students be very open to this dual reality and that they
foster an active and dynamic presence of new generations of male and
female former students, and of a delicate and inspiring presence of
the many female graduates who have gone out from our schools.
2.5 Called to serve peace and to be builders of peace in a divided
world.
I believe that we are living in a grace-filled moment in which, on
the one hand, there is growing awareness that war never has been nor
will ever be a solution and, on the other hand, that we should
create and develop a culture of peace, that our option is for life,
for the poor and for those who suffer. I like very much the English
term "peacemaker." I believe that it defines very well the position
in which we should live permanently. A "No" to war should translate
into a "Yes" for life, a full life.
John Paul II has reminded us during these days that: War never
involves a simple fatality. It always defeats humankind. And surely
many of us recall the distressed call of Paul VI at the UN
Headquarters in 1965, which unfortunately still has not become a
reality: Never again war! Never again war!
My first thought, as the war broke out, was about the Iraqi children
who have already suffered so much, even before the war, because of
malnutrition, violence and the anguish of many other children whose
parents had gone to war. For that reason, I make my own, and I
invite you to do the same, the words of John Paul II in his message
for the World Day of Peace in 1995, entitled Let us give to children
a future of peace. The Pope, after inviting parents to make their
families the primary school for peace by the witness of reciprocal
love, continues by saying: But besides basic family education,
children have a right to a specific formation for peace in the
school and in other educational structures, which have the mission
to make them understand gradually the nature and the requirements of
peace in their world and their culture. It is necessary that
children learn about the history of peace and not just about wars
that have been won or lost (9).
This message, no doubt, ought to be an ongoing inspiration for all
our male and female former students and their associations.
2.6 Called to serve the unity of the human family by means of
ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue.
Another moving experience that I had during my recent visit to
Southeast Asia was the discovery of how Lasallian values can be a
source of inspiration and how they can be incarnated in different
cultures and religions.
The last General Chapter invited all who desire to live the
Lasallian charism, spirituality and communion more intensely to a
life of faith which discovers God in reality, in light of Scripture,
and for persons of other religions, according to their own sacred
texts. This faith will translate into fraternity, because over and
above our differences we feel that we are brothers and sisters to
one another. And this fraternity will become a service to attain a
world that is more human and more in solidarity, to be builders of
peace and reconciliation, to see that the poor have what they need
to live with dignity and where creation will be respected, protected
and loved.
This also assumes, not only in theory but also in practice, that in
all cultures by means of all religious expression, God is made
manifest. "In every culture and every religion there can be found
the seeds of the Word of God and the power of the Spirit of God.
This implies a respectful stance toward cultures and religions"
(Circular 435, page 39).
At the same time, and this is not in contradiction with the above,
for us Christians this does not mean giving up the specifically
Gospel values which are able to purify and enrich all cultures. The
person and the message of Jesus about being children, about
fraternity, unconditional love, pardon without limits, are the
greatest wealth that we can give to humankind in their relationship
with God, with others and with the world.
A deep living of one's own faith and ecumenical and inter-religious
dialogue will be a valuable contribution that Lasallian former
students and their associations can give to a world where distances
are shrinking and where we are called to live unity in diversity.
CONCLUSION
I would like to conclude this intervention by thanking you again for
your presence here at this Congress and especially for your doing
all you can, at the local level, so that the Lasallian charism takes
root in the world under different forms and expressions. Called to
serve, the topic chosen, is rich in suggestions for possible action
plans. Brother José Pablo Basterrechea, one of my predecessors, whom
surely some of you knew, liked to say that we should not take the
name of De La Salle in vain.
We do this when we make it a museum piece or reduce it to a memory
of the time when we were students and say, as the Spanish poet Jorge
Manrique says, it used to be better. We do it when the present is
only an occasion for festive celebrations or for projects that
revolve around our own interests. We do not take the name of De La
Salle in vain, and this is my invitation today to you, looking
toward the future, that the Lasallian values that were learned in
the school classroom inspire us to concrete service in favor of
children, the young, the poor, fraternity, peace and unity within
the human family.
Brother Álvaro Rodríguez Echeverría
Superior General
|
