Lasallian Spirituality Christian spirituality is?

A Lasallian is an individual who integrates in his life and
lives the spirituality and mission of St. John Baptist De
LaSalle
Spirituality – a path which connects you to yourself and
almighty in the purest form
1. about totality of the whole person.
2. about the Trinitarian God of love and grace.
3. is a prophetic spirituality.
4. is a contemplative spirituality.

– derived from the Latin adjective ‘spiritualis’, which 5. is a healing spirituality.

means "concerning the spirit” 6. is Christian spiritualities.
– ‘spirit’ means "animating or vital principle in man and 7. sustained in the journey of faith by grace.
animals”. derived from the Latin word spiritus (soul,
courage, vigor, breath) and is related to spirare (to
breathe).
SPIRITUALITY

Spirit
Three Lasallian Core Virtues
1. not Material: Simple
Faith – to rest in God, despite the uncertainties that we
2. not Time: Space bound
experience
3. infinite, but not necessarily eternal
• to open our hearts for the Word of God through
prayers Eternal – no beginning and no end

Service – doing all our actions for the love of God Infinite – no end but with beginning

• the act of kindness and generosity with our fellow Temporal – with beginning and end
Lasallians or to our less fortunate brothers and sisters
Aeviternal (angels)
Communion in Mission – an act of solidarity, or
individual’s dedication to his goal or mission
Spirituality
• unity within the community
– something within us

– not quantifiable
Essential Elements of Christian Spirituality
– that connects us beyond our material limitations
Christian Sprituality is
– that makes us relate to someone greater than us
1. about Knowing God.
(pure spirit – God)
2. about Experiencing God to the full.

3. involves Transformation of existence on the basis of

the Christian faith and truths.

4. attaining Christian authenticity in life and thoughts.

We connect to God through

1. Prayer,

2. Bible Study
Characteristics of Christian Spirituality
3. Faith Sharing Types of Spiritual Path
4. Going to Mass Devotional
5. Sunday worship and service – spending time with God through prayer, reflection,
meditation and contemplation
6. Rosary/Novena
Practical
7. Procession
– through learning, listening to teachings, self-
8. Fasting and Abstinence
experience of God’s presence in their lives

Moral
Being Religious
– sense of (respect for life, right or wrong,
1. Act of Devotion family/upholds the value of life), hates any form of
injustice
2. Prayer Life

3. Liturgical/Worship Obligation Ministry

Common Features to the 3 Spiritual Paths
4. Pastoral Work
1. Benevolence (Kindness of Heart)
5. Spiritual Life
2. Sense of Respect
– many times, it reflects our spirituality
3. Not Materialistic
Spirituality – a relationship of man to God, a way of life
4. Peace loving

5. Charitable – poverty can be a means of God’s Gift /

Who is this God?
Grace
1. One if 3 Divine Persons – Mt.28:19-20

2. Creator – Gen.1-2 (Saan ko galling?)

Living one’s Spirituality – Mission
3. Omniscient – Jer.1:5 (Sino ako?)
Mission (Mitere: to send)
4. Immutable – Exod 3:14 (Paano ako?)
Spirituality – enables us to go and reach out to others
5. Omnipotent – Ps 68:34 (Anong gagawin ko) (Missionary)

6. Love – 1 Jn 4:16 (Sinong Kasama ko?)


St. John Baptist de La Salle
– a French priest, educational reformer, and founder of
an international educational movement who spent over
forty years of his life to educate poor children.
Birthdate: April 30, 1651
Death: April 7, 1719 on Good Friday (at age 68)
– Died at St. Yon near Rouen
Birthplace: Rheims, France
Humble-Servant
- Went into Solitude at Parmenie in 1712-14
- Serious attack of Rheumatism
- Period of Self-Effacement & Doubt
- Received letter from the Brothers to return
- First General Chapter
- Election of Brother Barthelemy

Educator
Who is St. John Baptist de La Salle? – Pioneered in training college teachers
1. Risk-Taker – Reform schools for delinquents
2. Decision-Maker – Technical schools
3. Servant-Leader – Secondary schools for modern languages, arts and
4. Humble Servant sciences

5. Educator – Educational Institutions spread across the globe

Risk-Taker How did our Founder St. John Baptist de la Salle

- Devoted his talents to open schools for poor children
- Abandoned his family and wealth
- Established a community of brothers
become more Christ-like?
– His generosity served as the hope of the unfortunate
children in education.
– Passionate human being who distributed his personal
wealth to the poor or his community.

Decision-maker "What is nobler than to mold the character of the

young? I consider that he who knows how to form the
- Heroic Vow in 1691 with his two companions youthful mind is truly greater than all painters, sculptors
and all others of that sort” - (St. John Chrysostom)
- Established Vaugirard Novitiate

- Received Perpetual Vows with 12 brothers in 1693

Servant-Leader

- Use vernacular medium of instruction

- Trained Lay Teachers

- Superior of the Brothers

Lasallian Spirituality
– live in God’s presence, and trust in God’s providence
– live the Gospel, and pray always
– work with the poor, and in the community
A Spirituality (a relationship with God) embraced by St.
John Baptist de La Salle, and from which proceeds it’s
related and unique Lasallian Mission
– No Lasallian Spirituality without and apart from St.
John Baptist de la Salle
– Lasallian Spirituality is one of the many means of
relating to God in the ways of St. John Baptist de la Salle
Lasallian lived Spirituality: Goal of Religious Education
– Deepening intimacy and fidelity to loving God
experienced in persons, places, events, and things in
everyday life.
Seeing with the Eyes of Faith – involves the ability to
regard life experiences and everyday realities in the light
of the Christian Story and Vision and so bring a faith
perspective to one’s thoughts, words and actions.
1. life
2. faith
3. life reflection
Praying our Experiences – involves the ability to bring
life experiences to prayer and worship, recognizing that
God is experienced in persons, places, events and things
that constitute everyday life.
1. personal prayer
2. communal worship
Personal Information - includes the affirmation,
adaptation or conversion of beliefs, attitudes values and
behavior brought about by engagement with the
Christian Story and Vision.
1. forming character towards freedom
Living in Friendship - calls us to transcend self -
centeredness and consider the good of others as just as
important as our own. This is because being Christian is
expressed most visibly in our day to day relationships.
Especially on how we treat others.
1. forming healthy relationship
Caring for the World - promotes the orientation to
serve the common good and enter into effective
solidarity with those in need.
1. solidarity and service to the common good
Praying our Experiences
– involves the ability to bring life experiences to prayer
and worship
– recognizing that God is experienced in persons, places,
events and things that constitute everyday life.
– The focus will be on acquiring the dispositions for
prayer: (honesty, receptivity, responsiveness)
– and developing a sacramental vision of reality, as well
as facility in using various spiritual practices, prayer
forms, sacred scripture & spiritual texts, symbols and
rituals to grow in one’s relationship with God.
What is Prayer?
1. dialogue with God.
2. time of fellowship with God
3. power of God through man.
4. being in God’s presence
5. finding the mind of God and agreeing with Him
6. lifting up of our minds and hearts to God.
7. enables us to see, to feel and to love as God do.

“for me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look
toward heaven, it is a cry of both recognition and of love,
embracing both trial and joy.” – St. Therese of Lisieux
3. THANKSGIVING: To thank God for his favor and
blessings. Everything that we are and have comes from
God.

“man achieves the fullness of prayer, not when he expresses

himself, but when he lets God be most fully present in
prayer.” – John Paul II, crossing the threshold of hope
Reasons to Pray
1. because we are God’s children and he loves us
2. it deepens our trust in God
4. SUPPLICATION or PETITION: To lift up to the Lord all
of our needs. God, who knows us through and through,
knows what we need. Nevertheless, God wants us to
ask, to turn to him in times of need, to cry out, implore,
lament, call upon him, indeed, even to struggle with him
in prayer.

3. it causes us to depend on him

5. INTERCESSION: To pray for the needs of others.
4. because our hearts long to encounter God

5. our prayers move the heart of God

The Basic Forms of Prayer
6. it helps us discover his will
Blessing and Adoration

– in prayers of adoration we praise God and acknowledge our

dependence of Him.
Why do we pray?
Example: The Gloria and the Act of Faith
1. because we are full of an infinite longing and God has
created us men for Himself.
Petition
2. because we need to.
– in prayers of petition, we ask God for things we need both
3. because it purifies, strengthens us in our weakness.
spirituality and physically.
4. because it removes our fear.
Example: Our Father
5. because it increases our energy.

6. because it makes one happy.

Intercession

– in prayers of intercession, we make requests to God on

Motives and Purposes of Prayer behalf of other people

1. ADORATION of GOD: expressing to Him our love and Example: Watch, O Lord (St. Augustine)
loyalty, to give Him pleasure and delight. It is the
acknowledgment of the presence of God, the Creator
and Lord of the Universe.
Thanksgiving

– in prayers of thanksgiving, we thank God for the good things

2. CONTRITION: To ask and obtain forgiveness of our
sins and the remission of their punishment. or to resist Example: Grace before meals
temptation: The insight into one’s personal guilt
produces a longing to better oneself; this is called
contrition.

Praise
– in prayers of praise, we express our love for God, the source
of all love
Example: Act of Charity
Models of Prayer
Abraham (Old Testament)
Abraham listened to God. He was willing to set out for
wherever God commanded and to do what God willed. By his
listening and readiness to make a new start, he is a model for
our prayer.
Blessed Virgin Mary (New Testament)
Profound and constant prayer enabled the Virgin Mary to
embrace God’s will in her life. The Blessed Virgin Mary,
“teaches us the necessity of prayer,” through which God gives
believers the courage “to reach the ends of the world and
proclaim everywhere the Lord Jesus, savior of the world.”
What do Christians express by prayer postures?
1. Standing – in the presence of God expresses reverence
(you stand up when a superior enters) and also vigilance and
readiness (you are ready to set out on a journey
immediately).
If at the same time the hands are outstretched in praise of
God (the Orante position), the person praying assumes the
original gesture of praise.
2. Sitting – in God’s presence, the Christian listens to what is
happening internally; he ponders the Word in his heart (Lk
2:51) and meditates on it.
3. Kneeling – a person makes himself small in the presence of
God’s greatness. He recognizes his dependence on God’s
grace.
4. Prostrating – a person adores God.
5. Folding the Hands – a person overcomes distraction,
“recollects himself” (gathers his thoughts) and unites himself
to God. Folded hands are also the original gesture of petition.
Types of Prayer
According to the Cathecism of the Catholic Church, there are
three types or ‘expressions’ of prayer in the Christian life.
1. Vocal – “by words, mental or vocal, our prayer takes
flesh.” It is the spoken prayer, through which we translate
our feelings externally” e.g. Our Father
2. Meditative – “Meditation is above all a quest.” to discover
what the lord wants from us, it engages thought,
imagination, emotion, and desire.
3. Contemplative – “Contemplative prayer is silence.” is the
type of prayer in which we are one with Christ, it is a
communion of love and a gaze of faith.
How do you pray the Rosay?
The ROSARY is the name of a set of prayer beads and the
name of a devotional prayer that originated in the twelfth
century, particularly among the Cistercian and Carthusian
monks, whose lay brothers did not participate in the Liturgy
of the Hours and had in the Rosary their own form of prayer
(the “Marian Psalter”).
Later the Rosary was promoted by other religious orders,
especially by the Dominicans. The Popes have recommended
this prayer again and again, and for many people it is a
beloved devotion.
The Holy Rosary
The Joyful Mysteries (Monday and Saturday)
The Glorious Mysteries (Wednesday and Sunday)
The Sorrowful Mysteries (Tuesday and Friday)
The Luminous Mysteries (Thursday)
In Western Christianity (such as Roman Catholicism,
Lutheranism, or Anglicanism)
Lectio Divina (Latin for "Divine Reading") is a traditional
monastic practice of scriptural reading, meditation and
What is God’s Presence?
prayer intended to promote communion with God and to
increase the knowledge of God's word. 1. Loving
This method of prayer intends to promote: 2. Forgiving
1. Communion with God 3. Empowering
2. Provide an outlet of reflection and insight for the word of 4. Healing
God.
5. Uniting
3. It promotes a way of praying with the Scriptures that calls
one to study, ponder, listen and finally, pray from God’s
word. Contemplation

– allow God to speak to us

How do you pray lectio Divina? – no words, actions, images (pure and intense sacred silence)
Lectio Divina – is a practice of scriptural reading. It involves “Contemplatibus In Actione” – St. John of the Cross
meditating on a passage of the Bible, preferably the Gospel of
the Day

Steps to Pray Action

1. Invoke – invite the holy spirit – Actualizing what is prayed and contemplated into one’s life

2. Read – what is this passage saying on the bible? – the practical expression of prayer

3. Meditate – moment of silence “ora et labora” – St. Benedict

4. Pray – begin to dialogue with Lord – Done in the Spirit of Love/Charity

5. Contemplate – listen closely with your heart, and practice

what he has told you
Kinds of Prayer
1. Vocal Prayer
Lectio Divina Steps
2. Silent Prayer
Lectio – what does the text say that everyone should
3. Spontaneous Prayer
understand?
4. Formal/Liturgical Prayer
Meditatio – what does the text say to me, today, and to my
life? 5. Divine Office Prayer

Oratio – what can I say to the Lord in response to his word? 6. Praying the Rosary

Contemplatio – what conversation of the mind, heart, and life 7. Meal Prayer
is the Lord asking of me?
8. Holy Eucharist
Actio – how can I make my life a gift for others?

The Holy Eucharist

The Lasallian Interior Prayer
1. Liturgy of the Word
Recollection – an invitation to pause and remember that we
are in God’s holy presence 2. Entrance Procession
3. Prayers of the Faithful

4. Liturgy of the Eucharist

5. Offertory

6. Final Blessing

“Prayer does not change God, it changes the one who is

praying.” – Soren Kierkegaard

The De La Salle Brothers of the Christian

Schools
“FSC” – an abbreviation place after the names of the Brothers
to denote their membership to the institute. It means
“Fratres Scholarum Christianarum” in latin.