More than 50 Brothers and lay Lasallians from the five Regions of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools are participating this week (28 October to 1 November) at the Generalate in Rome in the Seminar on Lasallian Research convened by the Office of Lasallian Heritage and Research.
With a participative methodology, which included the prior reading of a working document, the seminar’s central theme is “Lasallian Association for the mission, its development for the future”.
“We understand this seminar as a space for exchange, a space that seeks to connect life and academic considerations”, stated Brother Santiago Rodríguez Mancini, Director of the Office of Lasallian Heritage and Research. He also added that during the days of the seminar “we will have the valuable contribution of Brother Pedro Gil, from the Arlep District, in whose research we are grounded”.
The past 50 years in the world and societies, the Church and the Institute, in view of the opportunities for Association and the pedagogy of fraternity, will be one of the axes of deepening during the seminar, which will also consider the story of the Bull of approbation of the Institute and its subsequent path, in the framework of the tercentenary of this important step in which Association finds an institutionalised form.
Similarly, there will be a reflection on synodality as an ecclesiological note of Lasallian Association and its possibilities as a “story of the future”, while at the same time there will be a discussion on the stories of the institutionalisation of Association for mission of the Districts, Regions and other bodies to which the seminar participants belong, among whom are also some members of the Councils, Offices and Commissions of the Institute.
The program of the seminar includes spaces for presentation, personal reflection – through writing exercises – and reflection in groups, as well as moments for sharing the experience of faith and fraternity.
Towards the end of the meeting, the focus of the group work and the discussions will be on the proposal of a system for the reflection of association and the challenges for the organisations and institutions in relation to the structures of association for the mission at the different levels of Lasallian life.
