Some Young Lasallians become Associates: Saturday September 10th - We were having our first free day for two weeks. Nevertheless we had to get up at dawn to go to Mont-Bénilde, in the heart of Quebec, a journey of an hour and a half. We were going there to meet some friends and confreres, but also to a new stage in our lives….

We are 6 young group leaders at Camp De-La-Salle, a work belonging to the Brothers of the Christian Schools. This place has contributed a lot to each of us, either as former campers or as trainees. Today we are devoting ourselves to giving back to other young people what has been given to us by others before us, Brothers and lay persons. This is why, at Mont-Bénilde, we have pronounced our commitment as Associates with the Brothers of the Christian Schools of French-speaking Canada.

What we wish above all, is that our commitment to the young should continue down the years and even become more intense. We wish by means of our “La Poursuite” (The Pursuit) camps, to help deprived young people live an enriching group experience, while talking to them about Christ and allowing each one to develop himself, an opportunity which these young people do not always have in the city.

We pronounced our commitment as a group. We had already taken various steps as a team, so it was important for us to make this gesture together. We did so in front of our peers, in front of the Brothers and in front of God. Made for a period of two years, this commitment will gain vigour and strength as the years go by, so that it will eventually be renewed to become more powerful and deep-rooted in each one of us.
^{(Catherine, Marie-Hélène, Étienne, Lucas, Philippe and Simon)}

20th World Youth Day Cologne. August 2005: “We have come to adore Him” besides being the slogan of the last World Youth Day was also that which a million young people
lived and bore witness to for a week. We came in pilgrimage to Cologne, like the Magi, because we wished to adore Christ in our lives! Among the many who gathered in Germany, we were a group of about 40 young people, from all over Italy, all united by the same charism, the Lasallian charism.

As members of the Lasallian Youth Movement (MGL) we arrived in Cologne after a year of preparation rich in hope, expectation and dreams. But as often happens in these cases, especially when it is a question of World Days, all our expectations were thrown into disorder and the World Youth Days became much more than we had planned. For a week we were immersed in an atmosphere of faith and tradition, in places steeped in the living and tangible testimony of centuries of Christian tradition. Many were the initiatives organised and many the possibilities for prayer, reflection and deepening of our faith. In two weeks we learned, as persons, that God is adored in everyday life: we learned it in the eyes of the families and of the persons with whom we stayed and who took care of us before and during the World Youth Days. Apart from participation in the traditional World Youth Days we also had the opportunity of four days of ‘twinning’ in two small villages in Bavaria: Mittenwald and Farqant. Here we were able to share our faith, our ideas and our work with other young people from the area, who had opened up their neighbourhood to welcome us in a way that truly and sincerely amazed us.

We left Bavaria heading towards the city of the Magi with our hearts filled with this experience and we assembled in the open space at Marienfeld, for the final vigil, camped with hundreds of thousands of other young people, tired but happy. Happy to be there to bear witness to our faith: happy to be there to say, first as Christians and then as Lasallians, our ‘yes’ to Christ , who, immolating Himself on the cross, calls us to be the builders of the Civilisation of Love.

Many are the things which we brought back with us on our return from Cologne, but many also are the things which wait for us in our daily lives, in our schools, universities and families. It is true: we arrived in Cologne to adore Him, but we left it with the enthusiastic feeling that truly “Herod will not return” !
^{(Davide Smaldone)}

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