RECOLETOS EDUCATION: AN ENGAGEMENT

By: Albert C. Danan




Education plays the most significant role in developing a total personality in every individual. It is the foremost role of all academic institutions, especially Catholic schools, in order to ensure that all individuals within their sphere of commitment be constantly oriented with the values and virtues that will enable them to live life in harmony with God.

The Order of Augustinian Recollect takes a renewed stance in strengthening its commitment to further quality Catholic Christian education by declaring 2011-2012 as the Recoletos Education Year carrying the theme “Kindling the Heart, Empowering the Mind for Responsible Stewardship”.

Taking the initiative to bring the thrust clearer and closer to all the Recoletos community in the country is no less than Rev. Fr. Lauro V. Larlar, OAR.

In his talk held last August 3 and 6 at San Sebastian College-Recoletos Manila Auditorium, he was introduced by Rev. Fr. Renie C. Villalino, OAR as “a well-respected Recollect leader and school administrator who could harmonize freedom with order and firmness with amiability”. Fr. Larlar was also described further as “a highly-spirited, intelligent, self-driven fellow who has the gift of expressiveness, dynamism and self-assurance”.

Speaking before the crowd of faculty , administrators, students, parents and guardians in three different Formation Sessions of SSC-R Manila and Canlubang, Fr. Larlar took this series of talks as an opportunity to engage in order that the “integral formation” that the Recollect educators envision will lead directly to the community’s being “responsive and value-laden members of the society”. He divided his talk in three parts, namely, “Finding the Treasure Within”, “Dynamics of Studying” and “Caritas et Scientia in Reading and Discerning”.

Why engagement? Fr. Larlar set his talk according to the perspective of St. Augustine on education whose thinking on EDUCATION relates to what it means to be HUMAN. St. Augustine, according to him, offers no recipe but an APPROACH involving (a) being with others and (b) being at their service of listening to the Teacher of all, and with a sense of (c) being “at school” with all human beings. He talked about FORMATION as a process which embraces the whole life of the person and as a way which can only end in the definitive encounter with the Lord. He stressed that FORMATION happens within the historical dimension of the person; all human dimensions, biological, psychological and spiritual, mutually influence one another, requiring the person to grow and advance.

The seminar intended to engage everyone in strengthening their practice of education and/or formation. He even encouraged the participants, through a workshop, to reflect on social realities and provided inspirational thoughts through powerpoint presentations.

The Formation Series were organized by the Campus Ministry Office through the leadership of its Campus Minister Rev. Fr. Renie C. Villalino, OAR.

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FR. LARLAR’S TALK

PART I - FINDING THE TREASURE WITHIN
From the wealth of our monastic tradition we are happy to share with the participants ways to investigate and find the “treasure” within the self. This treasure will help the person retrieve rest and silence, experiences and virtues that are hard to find in a culture, which, with its “segmentation of knowledge” and splintered approach to truth and consequent fragmentation of meaning, keeps people today from coming to an authentic and deep communication with God, with the self and others, and the world at large.

PART II – DYNAMICS OF STUDYING
“Formation Session: A Series” invites us to venture into the deeper, denser and more transcendental experience of studying. In Latin “to study” is studere. The noun, studium, in our language means, “striving, desiring, longing, in which affections join with duty and continued work in a growing joy of discovery and hope. It entails going beyond a mere intellectual curiosity” (OAR Studium Sapientiae, 10). Augustinian spirituality intends us to consider life in this world as a way of studying, an inquiry that translates into continual “asking, seeking, and knocking at the door” until our “heart rests in God”. It is for this reason that we are to make use of knowledge like scaffolding to help build the edifice of love (C.f. Letter 55, 21, 39).

PART III – CARITAS ET SCIENTIA IN READING AND DISCERNING
There is need to reclaim the true vocation of the human person and the real purpose of education. For this to happen we begin with the adults, we should direct to ourselves “the question of life’s meaning” and learn to sketch an answer to the question (C.f. Reform, Ecclesial Studies of Philosophy). It is time also to rediscover the value of reading for growth as person and member of family and society, that sort of reading that leads to discernment, both individual and communitarian. This generation has to learn to separate the true from what only appears to be true in everything they do. We discern for “integral formation” in “caritas et scientia” to become professionals with heart ablaze with love and a mind that leads in the exercise of responsible and love-filled stewardship!