At the heart of the Mennaisian
Any charisma is a gift of the Spirit to the Church and to the humanity to answer its needs.
It is a question of living the Gospel in an original way, according to the intuitions of our Founders, and of the history of our origins.
In peace and joy, rooted in God, called by Him
- We are in the hands of the Him of whom we feel ourselves received daily. That constitutes our roots, our support and our horizon: God alone.
“We do not belong to ourselves, we belong to God alone”. - We are in an abandonment to his loving attention – The Providence, lived in the availability and the audacious confidence which dispose us to carry out the mission in peace and joy.
“Let us throw ourselves blindly, into the hands of Providence. “ - We are simply searching for his will, as a daily attitude, following the example of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. This desire is source of plenitude and peace because it is born of the experience of God as a Project of love that makes us free.
“Go to the Garden of Olives, and say, “Father, not my will but yours be done. “
Being the face of Christ in a fraternal community
As in any consecrated Christian life, we are called to be IN Him and BY Him, memory of his love, he who “loved us, giving up his life.” (Eph 5:2)
- With the desire to reproduce his face among the children and young people, basing passionately our existence on his words: “Let the little children come to me.” (Mc 10: 13-36).
“Jesus, who said: Let the little children come to me, and who inspired me with the desire of leading them to you, may you bless my vocation”.
- With the clear consciousness to be sent towards them, as Jesus, Sent by the Father.
“A Brother is someone sent, as Jesus-Christ himself was sent”. - Living education, not as a profession or a duty, but as a ministry: it is the place of meeting between God and those who follow him. It is the real path of our sanctification.
“Your school is a temple… by working at the sanctification of the little children entrusted to you, you are also working at your own sanctification”
Living in a community of believers as Jesus and his disciples.
- Place of brotherhood, where we all meet to share what we are, what we do and what we have.
- Place of humility, of service and of obedience: without privileges, without titles, in the joy and the certainty that “we are all brothers.” (Mt 23: 8)
“Grow steadily more and more in grace, in peace, in charity and in Our Lord’s humility”.
Sent by the Spirit to educate and take care of
On the path of education, two keys are for us as the genetic code, inherited from our predecessors, and of which we have to take care and put in practice every day.
- The Mennaisian Education goes where others do not, to the peripheries, to the last.
“This Congregation was founded not for the important and rich towns, but for the smaller and poorer ones”. - The Mennaisian Education is a way of being and of doing that connects instruction, education and evangelisation in the same act and the same person.
“In these schools we form the entire man, his heart as well as his spirit”.
A family at work today
The Mennaisian charism, born in two Congregations founded in the XIXth century, has grown up and today opens itself with joy to all those who feel called to live their Christian vocation with the traits of this charism.
Together – Brothers, Sisters and Laity – we live in family, embodying the same spiritual traits, in the service of the same mission to which we are sent.