Yesterday, on our way to the Cathedral in Antipolo, we drove past the vast squatter settlements on the shores of Laguna de Bay. It is truly astonishing to see this much poverty in sight of the high-rises of the greater metropolitan area of Manila. The people who live in these areas are in serious and immediate need of clean drinking water, food, medical care, education and employment. Seeing hundreds of thousands of people in these conditions is truly disheartening and can cause one to despair of ever finding a solution. The same disparities are present in most nations, including the US, but in few places are they as stark as here.
What is important for Lasallian educators to remember is that our mission is not to provide an education that turns poor people into wealthy people, but rather to make available to the poor an education that enables them to live safe, healthy and productive lives as well as developing their faith and their understanding of their rightful place in the world and in the kingdom of God. There is no way, in any realistic sense, for all of us to be affluent, but it is certainly within our grasp that we can all live dignified lives with our basic needs being met, albeit through our own efforts or (when we are unable) the assistance of others. Perhaps it was said best in Announcing the Gospel to the Poor by Brothers Michel Sauvage and Miguel Campos:
"The Institute De La Salle founded is not at the service of social conservatism, but neither does it exist for an advancement of individuals in which the ultimate motive force is the desire for possessions or power. While De La Salle's statements on the beatitude of poverty are stern, they only emphasize the prophetic meaning of the Brother's vocation and mission. To work for the liberation of poor children doubtless means to help them become the agents of their own victory over external oppressive forces. But this result would not be achieved if the motivation brought into play were the will to become part of a ruling class or to take the place of that class. The Brother's reward is not that his pupils "are successful" according to the standards of a "world" to which his own basic choice opposes him. The Brother's aim is not to develop a society in which money is the real god, but to bring to birth a new world in which man, the child of God-every man, including the poor-is regarded as having infinite value and deserving to be recognized, honored, loved, and served.
If this seems a utopian purpose, then the Gospel must be blamed for it. And if a religious community like the Brothers of the Christian Schools loses its prophetic power to challenge a "world" that maintains, against the Gospel, the blessedness of riches; if this community reaches the point of being simply an instrument that propertied society uses for its own maintenance and growth, then the Institute no longer has any justification for its existence, even though it be so integrated into this society that the latter allows it to prolong its existence by supplying it with new members. The resolute decision in favor of the poor and the vital faith in the blessedness of poverty are central to De La Salle's thinking, just as they were the essential motivating forces of his life and his struggles. It is doubtless in this that he was a witness to the Spirit Who caused him to enter with full realism into the mystery of the saving incarnation of Jesus Christ."
- from Announcing the Gospel to the Poor, by Michel Sauvage, FSC, Miguel Campos, FSC
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