Message on the presentation of the Report of Brother Superior General.
Br. Robert Schieler, presents his Report to the General Chapter.
“Your inmost being must be renewed, and you must put on the new man” (Eph. 4:23-24).
Introduction
We gather as the body of the society with the responsibility to procure God’s glory through our association for the educational service of the POOR. That is what these three weeks are about. Seeking guidance from the Holy Spirit, we ask, at this moment in our history as an Institute, what does it mean to procure God’s glory? For that is what we have consecrated ourselves.
This is our definitive, deepest, and greatest motivation, the ultimate reason and meaning behind all we do: the glory of the Father, which Jesus sought at every moment of his life…. Beyond all our own preferences and interests, our knowledge and motivations, we evangelize for the great glory of the [God] who loves us.
This is our joy, to announce the Good News of salvation to the poor and the young.
The Joy of Our Mission
In 2014, inspired by Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, the Joy of the Gospel, the General Council chose as our theme, “Living Together our Joyful Mission” as our inspiration for leadership and service. Despite young people’s loss of faith in the Church and institutional religion, the increasing global violence and polarization in our world, and the intolerance for the “other,” the immigrant in our midst, we believed then and now, that our vocation is to joyfully procure God’s glory through the ministry of education. We wrote:
We Lasallians, regardless of our age, are filled with hope and joy for the mission. We rejoice as the mission expands through the ever-widening circle of Lasallians. We celebrate new educational initiatives and ministries reaching out to the poor.
It is from this fundamental inspiration that we are sent, as stated in The Rule,as “ambassadors and ministers of Jesus Christ…. Brothers who have consecrated their lives to God to bring the Gospel to the world of education”.
