Bible Verse
-- Ecclesiastes 7:14 --
When times are good, be happy;
but when times are bad, consider:
God has made the one
as well as the other.
Therefore, a man cannot discover
anything about his future.
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God allows both good times and bad times to come to everyone. He blends them in
our lives in such a way that we can't predict the future or count on human
wisdom and power. We usually give ourselves the credit for the good times. Then
in bad times, we tend to blame God without thanking him for the good that comes
out of it. When life appears certain and controllable, don't let
self-satisfaction or complacency make you too comfortable, or God may allow bad
times to drive you back to him. When life seems uncertain and uncontrollable,
don't despair -- God is in control and will bring good results out of tough
times.
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April 7th - Saint John Baptist de la Salle, Confessor
1651-1719
AS MUCH AS we may sometimes dislike the process, we all have to be educated; we
must be taught to distinguish between what is good and bad morally and what is
true and false intellectually. Contemporary secular educators give attention to
the second task but often neglect the first. A man who paid a lifetime of
attention to both was Saint John Baptist de la Salle, founder of the Brothers of
the Christian Schools, or "Christian Brothers," and one of the great educators
of modern times.
Born in 1651, John Baptist entered the field of education more or less by
accident while he was a young priest in his native town of Rheims, France. For
six years before his ordination in 1678, he had the responsibility of caring for
his orphaned brothers and sisters, and immediately after becoming a priest was
given other tasks of a similar nature. A dying fellow priest asked Father de la
Salle to take over his position as spiritual director of a girls' orphanage, and
a short time later, a wealthy woman of Rheims, requested the priest to help a
layman, Adrien Nyel, to found, with her financial assistance, two schools for
the city's poor boys.
Forced into the role of an educator by these events, Father de la Salle took a
good look at his new field and saw its deplorable condition. Except for a few
free elementary schools that were shabby relics of the medieval past, staffed by
incompetent teachers who had failed to get better wages elsewhere, the poor were
left without any means of education. The rich had all the means for the
expensive education of the academies and universities, but all was taught by
outworn methods, the content no longer related to the world people lived in and,
what was worse, was only nominally religious.
After Father de la Salle looked, he acted. To accomplish any reform he had to
reach the heart of the problem: the education of children, especially the
children of the growing masses of the poor. His aims at first were modest,
merely to provide good education for the poor children of Rheims. Choosing
seven teachers from the schools he had helped found, he took them to live at his
family home while he imparted to them his ideas for school reform. Five of the
men left when they realized that the task would demand a complete dedication of
their lives to the education of the young; others took their place, however, and
Father de la Salle soon had to rent a larger house for his recruits and devote
all his time to their training. Finally he realized that the problem was not
confined to Rheims and that it would grow worse in the future, as cities grew in
population under the pressure of industrialization.
In 1684 he organized his followers into a religious institute and became their
first director. Members of the new congregation took the religious vows of
poverty, chastity, and obedience, but in order to give all their time to
educational work, they did not become priests, their status as brothers being
permanent. Through his community, Father de la Salle made revolutionary changes
in the teaching methods of the day. Abandoning Latin as the language of
instruction, he insisted on the use of the common tongue of the people; he also
largely did away with individual instruction, instead having groups of children
at the same mental levels taught by a single instructor (his famous
"simultaneous method"). These and other practices are described in his classic
"Manual for Christian Schools", written about 1693. In the free education that
they gave to the poor, the brothers taught all the modern, as well as the
classical, subjects, and made Christian doctrine the cornerstone of the whole
curriculum.
Such a fresh, intelligent approach to elementary education was exactly what
France needed, and Father de la Salle's young society shortly had more work than
it could handle. Along with teaching, it assumed the work of training young
laymen to be teachers in their own towns; a school for this purpose which was
opened in Rheims in 1688 is recognized today as having been the world's first
normal school. As the institute expanded to Paris and other cities, it further
diversified its activities; a technical school for the sons of artisans and a
school for delinquent children were two later projects.
With expansion came opposition; secular educators, overly conservative clergy,
and many of the wealthy saw nothing but danger in Father de la Salle's
determination to educate the poor and to do it with better methods than the
traditional ones. The priest himself was not worried by opposition, which
expressed itself in everything from personal abuse to lawsuits against his
schools. He had an unbreakable serenity that came from the acceptance of God's
will as the rule of his life. While others worried, he prayed; and God heard
his prayers. By the year of his death, 1719, his institute was firmly
established in France and was soon to spread throughout the world. Father de la
Salle was canonized by Pope Leo XIII in 1900; few men have ever done more for
children or for Christian education than this resolute French priest.
This Version taken from:
http://www.geocities.com/barats2000/Feasts.html
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Whoever taketh not up his cross and followeth Me, is not worthy of Me. -Matt.
10:38
"If anyone, O Lord does Thee a service, Thou repayest him by some trial. Oh,
what an inestimable reward is this for those who truly love Thee, if it might be
given them to know its value!" -St. Teresa
When the venerable Marco di Palfox saw that after he had done a good work, some
tribulation, reproach, or calumny came upon him, he considered this as a special
favor from the Lord; "For" he said, "as I receive no reward in this world, it is
a sign that God means to reward me fully in Heaven."
(Taken from the book "A Year with the Saints". April - Patience)
Bible Quote:
27 My sheep hear my voice: and I know them, and they follow me. 28 And I give
them life everlasting; and they shall not perish for ever, and no man shall
pluck them out of my hand. (John 10:27028)
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At the Hour of the Crucifixion
O Jesus Christ, our God and Saviour, who art great in mercy
and abundant in the gifts of Thy bounty, Thou who because of
our sins didst of Thine own will endure at this hour the
sufferings of the Cross and of death, and who didst
abundantly grant the gifts of Thy Holy Spirit to the blessed
apostles, make us also, we beseech Thee, O Lord, to be
partakers of Thy divine gifts, of the forgiveness of our sins,
and of receiving the Holy Ghost. Amen.
FROM THE LITURGY OF THE ARMENIANS
We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee, because by Thy Holy Cross Thou hast
redeemed the world.
THE RACCOLTA
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