St John Baptist de la Salle, teaching teachers of inner-city kids, patron saint of teachers. sorely needed today

Saint John Baptist de La Salle, not unlike today, saw that most inner city  children had little hope for social and economic advancement, while teachers were struggling, lacking leadership, purpose, and training.

Saint John was moved by the plight of  the poor who seemed so "far from salvation" either in this world or the next, he used his own talents and advanced education at the service of the children "often left to themselves and badly brought up".

April 7 marks the feast of Saint John Baptist de La Salle ( 30 April 1651 – 7 April 1719) a French priest, educational reformer, founder of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools and the patron saint for teachers and of youth. 

Saint John was born to a wealthy family in Reims, France, on 30 April 1651. He was the eldest child of Louis de La Salle and Nicolle Moet de Brouillet. Nicolle's family was a noble one and operated a successful winery business; she was a relative of Claude Moët, founder of Moët & Chandon. 

Complete dedication to what he saw as God’s will for him dominated the life of John Baptist de La Salle. In 1950, Pope Pius XII named him patron of schoolteachers for his efforts in upgrading school instruction. As a young 17th-century Frenchman, John had everything going for him: scholarly bent, good looks, noble family background, money, refined upbringing. At the early age of 11, was tonsured, in an official ceremony that marked a boy's intention, and his parents offer of their young sons, to the service of God  - "Tonsured" refers to the practice of shaving or cutting a portion or all of the hair on the head. A term that traditionally relates to religious orders and can be associated with entering monastic life or a new level of religious commitment.

He was named canon of Reims Cathedral when he was sixteen, and at seventeen received minor orders. He was sent to the College des Bons Enfants, where he pursued higher studies and on 10 July 1669 he took the degree of Master of Arts. When De La Salle had completed his classical, literary, and philosophical courses, he was sent to Paris to enter the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice on 18 October 1670. His mother died on 19 July 1671 and his father on 9 April 1672. This circumstance obliged him to leave Saint-Sulpice on 19 April 1672. He was now twenty-one, the head of the family, and as such had the responsibility of educating his four brothers and two sisters. In 1672 he received the minor order of subdeacon, was ordained a deacon in 1676, and then finally completed his theological studies and was ordained to the priesthood at the age of 26 on 9 April 1678. Two years later he received a doctorate in theology.

Saint John knew that the teachers in Reims were struggling, lacking leadership, purpose, and training, and he found himself taking increasingly deliberate steps to help this small group of men with their work. First, in 1680, he invited them to take their meals in his home, as much to teach them table manners as to inspire and instruct them in their work. This crossing of social boundaries was one that his relatives found difficult to bear. In 1681, Saint John decided that he would take a further step and so he brought the teachers into his own home to live with him. De La Salle's relatives were deeply disturbed; his social peers were scandalized. A year later, when his family home was lost at auction because of a family lawsuit, he rented a house into which he and the handful of teachers moved.

Saint John decided to resign his canonry to devote his full attention to the establishment of schools and training of teachers. The priesthood primarily required him to focus on the sacraments and he needed to give full devotion to education, even in his free time to connect with students. He had inherited a considerable fortune, and on the advice of a Father Barre of Paris, he sold what he had and sent the money to the poor of the province of Champagne, where a famine was causing great hardship.

Saint John thereby began a new religious institute, the first one with no priests whatsoever among its members: the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, also known as De La Salle Brothers. The institute is sometimes confused with a different congregation of the same name, founded by Edmund Ignatius Rice in Ireland and known in the USA as the Irish Christian Brothers.

One decision led to another, and Saint John found himself doing something he had never anticipated:  Man proposes, God disposes. God had other plans for Saint John, which were gradually revealed to him in the next several years. During a chance meeting with Monsieur Adrien Nyel, he became interested in the creation of schools for poor boys in Rheims, where he was stationed. Though the work was extremely distasteful to him at first, he became more involved in working with the deprived youths.

Once convinced that this was his divinely appointed mission, John threw himself wholeheartedly into the work, left home and family, abandoned his position as canon at Rheims, gave away his fortune, and reduced himself to the level of the poor to whom he devoted his entire life.

The remainder of his life was closely entwined with the community of religious men he founded, the Brothers of the Christian School (also called Christian Brothers or De La Salle Brothers). This community grew rapidly and was successful in educating boys of poor families, using methods designed by John. It prepared teachers in the first training college for teachers and also set up homes and schools for young delinquents of wealthy families. The motivating element in all these endeavors was the desire to become a good Christian

In 1685 La Salle founded what is generally considered the first normal school, a school whose purpose is to train teachers, in Reims.

Saint John wrote:"I had imagined that the care which I assumed of the schools and the masters would amount only to a marginal involvement committing me to no more than providing for the subsistence of the masters and assuring that they acquitted themselves of their tasks with piety and devotion .. Indeed, if I had ever thought that the care I was taking of the schoolmasters out of pure charity would ever have made it my duty to live with them, I would have dropped the whole project. ... God, who guides all things with wisdom and serenity, whose way it is not to force the inclinations of persons, willed to commit me entirely to the development of the schools. He did this in an imperceptible way and over a long period of time so that one commitment led to another in a way that I did not foresee in the beginning."

Yet even in his success, Saint John did not escape experiencing many trials:

Saint John's enterprise met with opposition from ecclesiastical authorities who resisted the creation of a new form of religious life, a community of consecrated laymen to conduct free schools "together and by association". The educational establishment resented his innovative methods. He met with  heart-rending disappointment and defections among his disciples, bitter opposition from the secular schoolmasters who resented his new and fruitful methods, and persistent opposition from the Jansenists of his time, whose moral rigidity and pessimism about the human condition Saint John resisted vehemently all his life.

Afflicted with asthma and rheumatism in his last years, he died on Good Friday at age 68, and was canonized in 1900.

Prayers to Saint John Baptist 

 "O God, You chose your blessed confessor Jean-Baptiste to give Christian education to the poor and to confirm young people in the way of truth, and through him You established a new religious congregation in your Church. Grant that through his intercession and example, we may be inspired with zeal for Your glory and the salvation of souls and be found worthy to share his reward in heaven, through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you".
Amen

"Saint John Baptist de La Salle, pray for me, that I will always be open to the plan God has for my life, and will generously respond to that plan no matter what."

"Saint John Baptist de La Salle, patron of teachers, pray for us" .

"Saint La Salle, our dearest Father, earnestly we ask of you: Pray to Jesus that his Spirit comes alive in us anew. Model of the Christian teacher, Patron of all searching youth."

"Saint John Baptist de La Salle, you recognized the value of competent Christian educators, make your followers continue to be Christlike models for their students