De La Mennais Brothers: Making Jesus Christ better known and loved by young people

A Facebook memory from a 2006 young adult event in Ploërmel with #TeamWin. I am still at the feet of our Founder, guide and mentor. Fr. Jean-Marie De La Mennais, help us to know how to respond to the needs of young people today.

Bro. Hervé, Superior General of the De La Mennais Brothers (far right) together with two other General Council members (Bro. Jean-Paul, 2nd left + Bro. Miguel, 2nd right) at the Town Hall with Ploërmel's Mayor. An article in the local Breton press described how the 4 Brothers of  our General Council were received by the Mayor of Ploërmel at the local Town Hall in early June in the context of our ongoing Bicentenary celebrations. The Mayor talks about our Ploërmel Mother House as being our "vaisseau amiral", the "admiral's ship" of the congregation.  # TeamWin   got there before him, as we've been calling it the "Mother Ship" since I began taking groups there from Liverpool nearly 20 yrs. ago. Here's the article: http://bit.ly/2LimaOd I actually prefer the image of a "Ship" to that of a "House" as it suggests a flotilla of ships journeying together, on pilgrimage together, with the Mother Ship in the vangu...

A little bit late, but a couple of weeks ago I shared in our Staff Bulletin some brief notes from my staff training day (INSET) reflection with which we started the day: Our Lady of Perpetual Succour (Thurs. 27th) “Succour”  - “sub” (under/below) + “curro” (run) (Latin) = (self) run for cover, (another) run to someone’s aid, run to catch them  Click below for inform ation about this feast and the above icon: http://www.bishopeton.org.uk/novena-details2/shrine-to-our-lady-of-perpetual-help-2.html Father Jean-Marie De La Mennais He believed that we should educate “ avec douceur et fermeté ”, “gentleness and firmness”... at the same time! Here’s the song (based on a Breton dance) with which I began the reflection, written by one of our French Brothers, asking Fr. Jean-Marie to inspire us to live out the values that he felt were important for educators back in the 19th century but which are still relevant for us today: https://youtu.be/Q4ttpM0mxHg ...

The final day of our four day preliminary Chapter meetings in Ploërmel, Brothers and lay people together. Photo 1 = me and the 2 Corentins, 2 of our young adult youth movement leaders, providing musical accompaniment to a time of prayer. Four days of smiles, laughter, fellowship, productive small group and plenary discussions. I think we all left energised and renewed by the multitude of ideas and potential projects that we came up with for taking our work with young people forward as a Mennaisian Family.   

Weds. Feb. 13th was the second day of the first part of our Provincial Chapter, held at our Mother House in Ploërmel and involving 21 De La Mennais Brothers + 21 lay people, fired up by the desire to serve young people, “making Jesus Christ better known and better loved”,  inspired by the charism of our founders, Fr. Jean-Marie De La Mennais + Fr. Gabriel Deshayes. Delegates attended  a Mass for the young people of our “Foi et Prière” (“Faith and Prayer”) youth movement who happened to also be in Ploërmel.    One of our French Brothers (Frère Pierre Orain) has written a new hymn to mark our religious order’s bicentenary, in a style suitable for use at youth events. Here’s an extract of the hymn being sung at the end of Mass.