On September 8, 2025, Lasallian Reflection 11 (2025-2026) will be published under the title: “All is Connected: The Community of Creation and Universal Fraternity”.
On this provocative theme, its authors, Brothers General Councillors Chris Patiño and Joël Palud, talk about the experience of “two voices together” the text which will inspire the Lasallian Family’s paths of faith, fraternity and service for a whole year, in continuity with the previous reflections: “Our heart is in the peripheries” (2024-2025); “Where is your focus?” (2023-2024).
“For me it has been a very interesting experience, I think that the theme of ‘All is connected’ means that we have to work together to develop the message, and yes, I think that the elements it calls us, to feel and also to be examples as Brothers, to connect and develop a project like this together, seemed very interesting for me”, remarks Br. Chris.
For his part, Br. Joël says that having to work in English was a particular challenge, since it is not his mother tongue, “but also the process of working online, because of the many trips we have to we make; and this was not the fruit of a spontaneous dialogue, but each time, but rather of having time to reflect on what the other had done and having to find the path forward. I found that to be a productive phase of the process. It’s not the result of a two-hour meeting, it’s a long process”, he assures us.
Integral ecology and universal fraternity
With regard to the content of this year’s Lasallian Reflection, Br. Chris recalls the inspiring words which Pope Francis addressed to the members of the 46th General Chapter in May 2022, “when he told us that the two most serious issues right now, caring for our Common Home and renewing fraternity, are challenges of education”.
Hence, Lasallian Reflection 11 takes up the legacy of the Argentinian Pope in the encyclical letters Laudato si’ (2015) and Fratelli tutti (2020), on the centrality of integral ecology and universal fraternity.
In this sense, Br. Joël underlines the need to assume “the care of our Common Home as a duty for every person of good will, and that transcends even religious boundaries”. In the same way, “everyone should feel responsible for setting in motion some process of fraternity, because that is the key”.
With regard to the style and the use of dialogue between two characters (Peter and Emilie) which accompany Lasallian Reflection 11, Brothers Chris and Joël considered that the reader should be able to internalise the text progressively and “not swallowing it all at once”. “We want everyone in their own context to be able to respond” to the proposed theme: “All is connected: The Community of Creation and the Universal Fraternity”.
See below the dialogue between Brothers Chris Patiño and Joël Palud, authors of Lasallian Reflection 11.