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What Does It Mean To Be Lasallian Today? A Layperson’s Perspective
Kevin Matheny
I have been associated with the Christian Brothers since I entered Christian Brothers High School as a sophomore seventeen years ago. I certainly never expected to still be involved in this association 17 years down the road. A four-year break while I was attending Santa Clara University did nothing to sever the bond. Ten years ago I came back to work at Christian Brothers High School, more because it promised to be an enjoyable job than anything else. At the time, what I really wanted to do was be a sports writer. Teaching school was a sideline that paid the bills while I worked part-time at night for The Sacramento Bee. However, it seemed the longer I stayed at CBS, the more I liked it. The students were fun to be with, I enjoyed the camaraderie with my friends on the faculty, and there always seemed to be something different to do every year. When I was asked to join the administration five years ago, I jumped at the chance and said good-bye to my career in journalism. In five years my perspective has shifted 180 degrees. What initially was a job to pass time had evolved into my primary passion.
It was at this point then, that I stopped to take a look at myself. What I saw was that not only was the work exciting to me, but its rewards had grown and bloomed as well. I found that I had grown personally, that the spiritual dimension of the school had broadened my faith and my commitment to the Christian community. The mission of the Institute of the Brothers, once a peripheral idea, had become something that I wanted to understand and be a part of. I discovered that a movement had been going on inside of me that had transcended a stage of spiritual development within myself. However, I realized that this movement was by no means complete. What was missing was a particular relationship with my students and my colleagues. I sat detached from the world within which I worked, its mission unclear to me, its territory undefined. The mission and myself had not yet meshed energies. I had become much better in my job, yet I was without vocation.
My struggle with this had barely begun when two significant things occurred in my life, one of a personal nature and one of a professional nature. On the personal side, a series of events were conspiring to fragment me and divert my attention from my work. I was floundering, but some of my associates would not let me down. They kept me going. In their support and in their patience, in their genuine love for me, I found what De La Salle writes:
“It is the Holy Spirit who unites you, one to the other, not only that a new kind of school may be created out of your association together, but also that this brotherhood that is rooted in the Gospel may spread far and wide. Such a school is a place for mutual evangelization, for sharing and support, for reconciliation and forgiveness.”
Running concurrently with this was a professional opportunity that my principal extended to me. I was sent to the RECCB Convention in Chicago (Huether Workshop). The things that I heard shook me, rattled my cage, caused me to take stock of the future of the Institute. The focus of the convention was on lay people and their role in the schools. What I found out was that in many cases, the schools back east are staffed almost entirely by lay people and in some cases, there are no Brothers in the school at all. Yet, these people managed to successfully run Lasallian schools. I was too dumbstruck to ask questions about how this was managed. Accompanied with barrages of statistics documenting the diminishing number of people in religious orders, I returned to California to ponder my own situation. I felt threatened, thinking that if there were no Brothers what would I do?
Once I got over the initial concern about myself and I began to focus on the students we serve, I wondered what would become of them. If I believed that the school would collapse without the Brothers, were there other lay people, who, given the same information, would think the same as me? I was caught too by the notion that without our school, many of our students would be lost. Oh, they could attend Jesuit or the local public schools but would that really address their needs? In looking at our student body, I saw that 40% of our students came from single parent families. Many came in search of a male influence while others simply looked for a haven that would shield them from seemingly overwhelming responsibility. And then there was a religious influence, that while rejected superficially by most students, was something that, in their own way, they gravitated toward. We had become, through no design of our own, the guardians De La Salle had described in the Meditations for the Time of Retreat:
“You should look upon the children you are called to instruct as poor, abandoned orphans, for although most of them have a father alive, they are as if they had not, being abandoned to themselves as far as the salvation of their souls is concerned. It is for this reason that God has appointed you their guardian. He has pity on them and cares for them as being their protector, their support and their father. But the care he seeks to take of them He bestows upon you.”
There was a larger vision to be considered as well. What would happen, not only to those “orphans” but to those who were poor, not just economically, but spiritually, socially, physically, and intellectually? Would an elitist system for the rich and brilliant welcome them? Would a bureaucratic system burdened with too many students and too little time and money even remember that they had enrolled? Would “education for the whole person” go the route of the Edsel and disco music? To me, the thought was alarming, enough so that I began to ask myself if lay people could continue the tradition of the Brothers.
When I looked at our lay staff, I saw various factions at work. One one hand, I saw a group of seasoned professionals who had been with the school for a number of years. These people were committed to their work and the students they served. There was a kind of Christian model to their being and they had, through the years, developed an understanding and respect for the traditions of the Brothers. Still another group consisted of teachers who had been around a while but were just passing time until they could find a job elsewhere. Finally, there was a group of young, relatively inexperienced teachers in their first job. They were happy to just have a job and the tradition of the Brothers was a vague idea that was thrown around at faculty meetings. In some sense, what I saw was not much different than what De La Salle encountered with his first group of motley, disorganized teachers. For like that first group of teachers, I found that we relied heavily on someone else to provide the help, support and above all, a sense of permanence in our situation. Too often I heard the comment, “I’m not a religious educator. I’m paid to teach such and such. Leave religion to the religion teachers.” That sort of attitude may have been all well and good when the religious were staffing the entire school, but something seemed terribly wrong when lay people make up 70-80% of the faculty. Further came the voice of De La Salle, writing in the Meditations:
“Let it be clear, then, in all your relations with the children who are entrusted to you that you look upon yourself as a minister of God, acting with love, with a sincere and true zeal, accepting with much patience the difficulties you have to suffer . . .”
If the core of the Lasallian school is the teacher, what was left of the core of the school? If the lay person did not step into the void left by the diminishing number of religious, who would? If the core of the school, founded in Gospel values, was hollow and without those values, and if they refused to become ministers of God, what then was the future of the Lasallian tradition?
Increasingly then, I began to see a distinction drawn between the Brothers and the rest of the staff. As I listened to the reasons for that distinction, I heard such things as, “That’s the Brothers’ choice. They’re religious. They don’t have a family. This is all they have to worry about. They live here. We go home at night. They don’t have to worry about paying bills.” The picture I saw was that the religious had a certain kind of lifestyle that lent itself to prayer, to service, to students, to a vocation. They had responded to a call. Lay people, on the other hand, had a lifestyle that lent itself to wives, husbands, and significant others, to sick kids, to high mortgages, to students who drove them crazy, to a job. They had responded to an ad in the newspaper. Vocation versus job! Religious verses lay people! When lay people heard “vocation,” they heard a different lifestyle and different time commitments. Community was not conducive to living in the real world.
It occurred to me at that point four years ago that there must be a way for lay people to live a vocation and not just work a job. Certainly, I find little deviation between my commitment as a lay person and the commitment to which De La Salle exhorted the Brothers:
“Since it is the work of God you are doing, do it with enthusiasm and bring to it all the resources of your talents, your gifts and your inspirations. Show as much creativity and inventiveness as you can, never losing sight of the true character of the teaching function that is your ministry. Since you are all ministers of Jesus Christ, be resolved to live in imitation of Christ by reason of your incorporation into Christ, into the mystery of his incarnation and nearness to us, the mystery of his role as servant and prophet, the mystery of his struggle for justice. Only in that way can you bring young people to assume their share in full reality of what it means to be a son of God.”
The development that has taken place in my thinking has led me to believe that seen from a different perspective, lay people too can have a vocation and not just hold down a job. In my thinking, the Lasallian school cannot exist as we know it without a shared educational ministry, simply because the nature of the mission places the core of the school in the teachers’ hands. The heart doesn’t pump if the flow of blood is choked off.
Is such a vision possible? Can we do it? In the late 1970’s the Philadelphia Phillies were a good baseball team on the verge of greatness and a world championship. They had many stars such as Joe Morgan and Pete Rose who had played on the championship teams in Cincinnati. They knew how to win. Morgan’s response to the fiery Bowa when asked if Philadelphia had the capabilities to be as successful as Cincinnati was, “Yes we can.” It became the theme for the Phillies. And they could.
Can lay people have a vocation? Yes we can! Certainly it is necessary for our Lasallian schools. To me it’s a rhetorical question. However, if we attempt to define a vocation through the religious model we will be unsuccessful. Why? Because the conversation goes like this: “I’m not a Brother. I’m a lay person!” Our perceptions are couched on the Brothers’ lifestyle. We never separate the lifestyle from the teaching ministry. Lay people, by the very nature of their lifestyle, are different. A newly defined vision, one without precedent, could shape a vocation for lay people. If, however, we continue to define this vision simply through a religious model, it will never work. We must take the blinders off. A community can be built based upon the teachings of De La Salle, Gospel values, and the collegiality of the people we have employed in our schools.
Starting Points for Building Community
To that end, I suggest the following as possible starting points for building on the community that already exists in your school:
- Provide time for prayer for the whole staff. Lay people don’t have time to pray at 6:30 a.m. They’re too busy getting their households in order. And do it on a regular basis, not once a month.
- Provide time for Gospel sharing and study. If our mission is founded in Gospel values then we damn well better know what we’re talking about. And not at 7:00 p.m. at night. Kids and spouses need their time too.
- Educate your staff in theology. Rely on the colleges for help here.
- Provide opportunities to educate spouses about the Lasallian tradition and the concept of vocation versus a job. The majority of our staff are married. If spouses don’t understand what’s going on at the school, they get real resistant to supporting the whole idea. Nothing is more divisive to the mission than staff members who are at odds about their vocation with their spouses.
- Take the opportunity to find out what it means to be poor. Lessons I have received in the last year about the poor have heightened my sensitivity and compassion for the students I serve. Like De La Salle, we have to be in it before we live it.
To those of us who are lay persons, we need to:
- Reevaluate our perception of the Brothers, particularly in light of a shared educational ministry. Take the burden of the spiritual nature off the Brothers’ back and start sharing it.
- Educate ourselves to De La Salle and his vision. Put ourselves in the context of his writings. He speaks to all of us, not just the Brothers. In preparing this, I found De La Salle’s struggles to be similar to my own; his growth proportionate to my growth.
- Recognize that Lasallian schools are by their very nature different from any other. If you see no discernable differences perhaps the core is dead and the heart is not ticking. Lasallian spirituality lives and breathes as much today as 300 years ago if only we will let some fresh air in.
- Recognize the power of the Holy Spirit which is central to the values of our schools.
We must see that as lay people in the Lasallian schools we may very well stand on the edge of a new frontier. Over three hundred years ago, De La Salle broke ground on a new and exciting educational concept. He recognized that his ideas would radicalize the society in which he lived. I would propose that we radicalize our educational association, that we grasp De La Salle’s vision so that it becomes our vision into the next century. All that we are lacking is a clear response to the vocation we are called to answer. And yes we can!
Kevin Matheny, Christian Brothers High School, Sacramento, CA.
[edited by David Hotek]
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