Young Volunteers Embrace the Lasallian Mission for Life Click here to see Lasallian Volunteers alumni serving in schools & ministries today
On February 9, 2015 news outlets across the world announced the death of Kayla Jean Mueller, 26, at the hands of her ISIS militant captors in Syria. She had been kidnapped 18 months earlier with a friend as they sought a bus to return to their homes in Turkey. In the days that followed, her parents […]
The first meaningful Christian image for me at a young age was my guardian angel. I prayed to this angel every day and knew he would be there for me no matter what. I felt God at that time was busy with many things but this angel was always near. As time went on and […]
Recently on a freezing cold morning, I found myself sitting in the corner of a school cafeteria with a warm, delicious cup of coffee in my hands. Seated near a few hundred students, I was chatting with a veteran Lasallian teacher. After we exchanged insights into modern teenage society, he quickly got on to another topic […]
Illustration by Al Cassidy 2014 Derived from medieval Europe, “blue bloods” distinguishes the upper class—whose veins appeared blue through their untanned skin—from the working class of the time. The term eventually came to refer generally to a those who inherited a bloodline. Len Cariou plays Henry Regan, the family patriarch and former New York police […]
On the first day of spring this year I was in place on the front lawn of Christian Brothers Center in Narragansett to welcome a magnificent sunrise. In the gentle breeze the trees were almost as flexible as I was in several yoga poses. As the sky lightened up a bit my attention was diverted […]
Early in the spring of 1978 Bill Fecteau and I met on a street corner in the South Bronx to evaluate our efforts to refound a Lasallian community in that neighborhood. Our long standing community at St. Augustine School had closed a year earlier, and a new mission was developing around adults who wanted to begin […]
Recently, while sitting in 22B on a United Airlines flight, I had a great awakening when the president of United came on the screen in front of me with a commercial. He wore a shirt with the United emblem on the chest. Behind him stood a plane with the usual markings, but not once in his […]
A few months ago the Nobel Prize in Physics confirmed the Higgs Boson, the most basic building block of the universe that forms the world we know today. Once upon a time these particles slowed down, like a marble rolling through molasses, in an invisible field that pervaded the universe. The resulting clumps formed atoms […]
Not long ago a chapel full of Lasallians gathered at Manhattan College to celebrate and send: celebrate a new Lasallian mission in Jamaica and send Rich Ward, Brother Gus Nicoletti and Brother Jim Wallace to work at St. Vincent Strambi Catholic High School in Bull Savannah. It was August 15, 2013, the feast of Mary […]
“Community for Mission” defines the Lasallian charism across the world today as it has since the beginning. For most of Lasallian history, its family members have been De La Salle Christian Brothers who have lived and worked together in schools and institutions. We call them residential communities. This Spirit-filled insight of De La Salle grew […]
“We are the Church, and we are to build that kingdom in our society. I have been chosen by God, just like He did with De La Salle to bring the salvation of God to young people and all persons that cross my path, which is a great challenge.” Joan Eoe, a Papua New Guinean […]
“Ed, there are electrical problems at Ocean Rest and we moved the retreat to Pennsylvania. Can you pick up the retreat director at Newark airport and drive her out to Malvern?” “No problem, Dennis!” Close friends know this response from me is anything but that. It is what I say when three people want to […]
The yin-yang symbol intrigues me. It attracts a part of me beyond reason, similar to an attractive painting in the art gallery. It reminds me of my own light and dark sides as a person. I suspect it applies to the Lasallian family as an organization. Personal Shadow Carl Jung might say my ego (what […]
At 3 pm each day, John Joyce (22) reviews the day’s assignment with his class of 7th graders. For them, a review is often a new view. Some even stay later after school for extra practice in math. Most of the children at De La Salle Blackfeet in Browning, Montana, get this level of special […]
On a foggy day before Christmas in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, Chris Giangregorio (33) followed his early morning routine on the school steps: he greeted each and every student by name, with a firm handshake and a word of welcome. At just about the same time on Hale Street in sunny Memphis, TN, […]
For some time, Lasallians have published statements and chapter documents beginning with the words: “We Lasallians, Brothers and Partners...”
As Lasallian Volunteers (LV) approaches its 25th year, one major trend continues to unfold—the steady increase of women volunteers year after year. The three-year, groundbreaking effort of Betsy Nolan encouraged an eventual 425 combined years of service by women, volunteering anywhere from the Tenderloin in California to the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana to the South […]
Change is the air that Lasallian Volunteers breathe. “Changing the World” is their tagline, and a great expression of what they do for children and their parents as they discover themselves transformed in the process. For many, the reflection on and sharing of this transformation takes place in a community of friends, co-workers and (traditionally) […]
