Fraternal greetings to you along with the hope that you are enjoying much peace and are enthusiastic in carrying out the ministry that the Lord has entrusted to you. I have received hundreds of messages from you and I would like to respond personally to each one but I'm afraid that would be impossible. So I am using this medium which during the Chapter allowed you to be familiar with what we were experiencing and it will permit me now to say thanks. Thanks for your sentiments of fraternal support which have come from every continent. Thanks for your promise of prayers expressed in nearly all the messages and which have given my joy and strength. Thanks for your love for and faith in our Institute and in the Lasallian mission.

Brothers, partners and associates, Lasallian Family, I believe that this is a time of hope for us - a hope that comes from the faith and the certainty of God's gratuitous love who is always near and who guides the history of men and women with wisdom and love and to whose work we are committed.

This is a hope that springs forth from the many signs of life that I discover in the Institute and in our Lasallian Family. Among other things, I can point out: the human and religious quality of Lasallians; the witness of fidelity of our older members; fraternity as a distinctive sign; the desire to respond to today's needs and to the new forms of poverty; respect for persons and the range of outlooks that I sense generally among the Brothers and other Lasallians; the incredible wealth of our incarnated and unifying spirituality; the efforts that are being made in the field of the pastoral ministry of vocations and initial formation; the progressive inculturation of the Lasallian charism and its new faces; sharing mission and spirituality by associates in movements already in existence such as Signum Fidei or in new forms that are beginning to take shape; youth and volunteer movements; the richness of an international Institute; the spiritual concerns of many young Brothers; a greater awareness of ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue...

The challenges today are also very great but we are not alone. We know that we can count on the Lord and with our ongoing prayer and our fraternity we can reach what today might seem unreachable.

Know, Brothers and all members of the Lasallian Family, that you can count on my prayers of intercession every day before the Founder. May he fill us with his spirit to continue to "respond with ardent zeal to the appeals of the Lord, the Church and the world, in order to procure the glory of God." (Rule 149).

Fraternally in De La Salle