Announcing the Gospel to the Poor: The Spiritual Experience and Spiritual Teaching of St. John Bapti

From the book:

"Our decision to publish a work of whose imperfect character we are well aware is inspired by a twofold hope: that in its present form it will provide nourishment to those who are courageously "spending their lives" to make the Lasallian charism a reality in their situation by endeavoring to announce the Gospel to young people who are often in great distress; and that it will spur more extensive research in the days ahead, stimulate still other "readings" of St. John Baptist de La Salle himself, and lead to new understandings of a spiritual message that in our view possesses compelling relevance despite the difference in situation, problems, and language between the age of Louis XIV and our world in the last quarter of the twentieth century. ... We shall point out here two charactistic traits of De La Salle's spiritual teaching that have impressed us more and more as we have become more familiar with the Founder: its existential character and its dynamic unity."

"De La Salle's spiritual teaching was worked out entirely in terms of the Brothers and for their spiritual formation. He does not offer us an abstract, deductive spirituality. His point of departure is the life of his disciples. ... The essential source of Lasallian spirituality is actual experience and sacred Scripture as a unity."

"De La Salle's spiritual teaching on the bond between a vocation and a mission, the inseparability of faith and zeal, the demands of the apostolic spirit, and responsibility for the salvation of others, has its basic existential source in his own spiritual experience."