Dear Brothers and Lasallian Partners,

As we enter the major cycle in the Church’s liturgical year, the Lent-Easter cycle, celebrating the fullness of the Paschal Mystery - the mystery of our redemption through the dying and rising to new life of Jesus Christ and our participation in this mystery, I would like to share a few words of explanation and encouragement. In beginning the first part of this cycle, the Lenten Season, it is well to recall that this time, preparatory to the celebration of the Paschal Triduum (Holy Thursday evening through Easter Sunday evening), is primarily intended for those preparing for baptism at the Easter Vigil, the climax of the Triduum.

Consequently, for those of us who are already baptized Christians, this season can be one of recalling and strengthening the many effects of baptism in our lives as well as of renewing our baptismal commitment.
One effect of baptism is to unite us by the power of the Holy Spirit to Jesus Christ and in him to one another in what the New Testament (e.g., 1 Cor. 1:9, 1 John 1:1-3) terms koinonia, translated as “fellowship” or “communion.” Those of us who are Brothers often speak of a central reality in our heritage called association. This association has essentially the same characteristics of communion. Today we extend our understanding of association to include our Lasallian Partners as well. In other words then, a chief characteristic of all Lasallians is that they live and act in communion with one another especially in the furtherance of the Church’s educational mission. For those of us who are Christians, this reality is rooted in our union with Christ, one of the chief effects of our baptism.

As we make our way through Lent toward the annual celebration of Jesus’ life-giving death in which our communion with him and with one another has its origin, we might focus particularly on our living in communion, in association for the service of the poor through education. In a global society marked by war, violence, division, litigation, and individualism, people committed to living and working together in communion or association for the human and Christian education of the young are certainly not only a counter-cultural force but a necessary witness to the young of how their lives must be lived if peace and genuine happiness are to be theirs.

Communion or association, however, is not easily maintained. It requires the very same self-surrender that engaged Jesus throughout his life and particularly in its final moments—at the Last Supper where he gave himself to us and on the cross where he handed himself over to his Abba for our sake achieving that communion into which we enter by baptism. Lent is traditionally the time for engaging in those actions that will assist us to assimilate more surely, more continuously, and more deeply the self-sacrifice of Christ that grounds our communion, our association, with him and with one another. We don’t have to go outside our daily routines to find those actions. They are chiefly those in which we relate to one another daily—conversations, discussions, service, activities in and out of classrooms, etc. Marked by the self-surrender of Christ, these actions have a powerful, unifying potential.

May God give all of us the grace to enter more deeply into the saving mystery of Jesus’ dying and rising throughout the Lenten season, so that in the liturgies of the Paschal Triduum, our communion with and in Christ may be profoundly renewed and strengthened. Then the fifty days of the ensuing Easter Season can be marked by thanksgiving for and celebration of the gift that this communion is.

Fraternally,

Brother Stanislaus Campbell, FSC
Visitor