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 Farewell message to the Lasallian youth participating in the sixth Asia-Pacific Lasallian Youth Congress
December 2001, Sydney Australia
Brother Álvaro Rodríguez Echeverría |
My dear young Lasallians,
First of all I want to thank you for having invited me to participate in this 6th Asia-Pacific Lasallian Youth Congress. For me, this experience that we have lived together has been more than just an opportunity to come to a better understanding of your anxieties, your plans, and your dreams. It has been a gift from heaven.
Permit me now to underscore three things that I find important. First, faith, service and community are the three Lasallian values that you best identify with throughout the Region. I think your common identification with these three values is what enables you to recognize one another when you come together. My dream is that throughout the Institute, in the eighty-three countries in which we are found, these values will constitute our distinctive character. Faith in God, in others, and in ourselves; service, especially on behalf of those who need it most; and a spirit of community that is capable of accepting and overcoming our differences.
Secondly, throughout these days you have been saying that you want to do something. I hope that this desire will never grow dim, and that you will find ways of making it a reality in each one of your countries and in your own concrete situations. I also hope that for a number of you, that desire to do something concrete will translate into a decision to join the De La Salle Brothers in order to serve the young people of Asia and the Pacific and, why not, even the entire world.
Thirdly, I am very happy that you had the opportunity to experience for yourselves some ways by which people here in Sydney serve others. It is not enough to know theories or statistics about the realities of the world. If we are to enter into solidarity with those who suffer, it is necessary that we have a personal experience of their problems and poverty. And when we do so we are aware that almost always we receive much more than we give.
In closing, I want to offer you two invitations. First, I hope that you will always feel that you are part of an international family that is committed to defending the rights of children. Second, the Region of the world to which you belong has been the cradle of the great religions, and has always been known for its spirituality. Please help all of your fellow Lasallians throughout the world to be open to inter-religious dialogue and to develop the virtue of tolerance. Help us also always to keep alive that deep hunger for spirituality, a hunger that is capable of transforming the world in which we live.
Thank you for the privilege of having shared these days with you. I wish all of you a Happy Christmas and a New Year of continued growth in faith, service, and community. |
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