My grandfather never forgot the woman on fire, in Cospicua well over a century ago, and the De La Salle Brother, his teacher, who saved her. It’s as though the fire left the woman and flared up in his imagination.

He was one of the first pupils at the school founded in 1903 by the Frères, pioneers in the teaching of French in Malta. The young boy grew up to be Erin Serracino-Inglott, a lexicographer, translator of Gaston Leroux’s crime novels  and a dramatist whose plays are about characters whose willpower catches fire.

Now, 120 years later, on an anniversary that the Lasallian community celebrates next week, we can reflect on the chain of accidents and consequences needed for young Erin to be in that school and that Brother, based in North Africa until a short while before, to be at hand.

It took a late 19th-century Anglo-French entente cordiale; a travelling Brother who died unexpectedly on the island while on his way elsewhere; a decision in France not to be disheartened by the breakdown of first talks; and, just when three despondent Brothers were about to return to North Africa after a failed search for suitable property, a chance encounter with Canon Carmelo Bugelli that led them to 96, Strada Buongiorno.

It’s always like this. The tiniest event is a microcosm of a much larger context, actively shaping our lives and imaginations without our noticing. Our lives are the result of a much wider, longer chain of causes. And, even as we stop to think about that, we are ourselves acting to shape the lives of others.

It was seven decades later that I arrived as a schoolboy at De La Salle. By this time, the school had transferred to much larger premises, with extensive sports grounds and an innovative gymnasium planned against the odds. The school now hosted pupils from across the Muslim and communist worlds. Its sixth form was known for its annual rock opera.

By this time, the chain of consequences and context had grown longer and broader. It was built thanks to the guts and vision of Brothers I never knew.

The school I attended was there at all because, over the years, it had repeatedly survived the threat of closure.

After the war, some local Brothers defied a superior general and continued building the new school (they outlasted him). Drydocks workers were taught and teachers were trained.

We know something of what it took because, in 1984, the then minister of education, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, accused the Brothers of “fraud” and Bro. Thomas Bilocca retorted with a letter to the soon-to-be prime minister. When the letter wasn’t even acknowledged, it was published as an open letter in The Sunday Times.

The 12 “frauds” at De La Salle, Bro. Thomas wrote, had over 300 years of service between them. If you counted all the Brothers’ work for the (then) 80 years since 1903, you’d find 1,000 years of full-time employment.

That wasn’t counting the overtime. After school hours, these men, who took no salary and lived in a simple cell, painted walls, mixed concrete and built, cleaned, levelled ground and took care of carpentry, welding, engineering, cooking and, even, farming.

My friends and I never knew it. We raced down the tennis court steps thinking we were Knights of the Round Table or a band of American Indians. The Brothers must have temporarily missed the small-but-unfenced ledge above the basketball court, two metres below; boys lined up to jump off, thinking they were Zorro or James Bond, skiing into an abyss in The Spy Who Loved Me.

We unpicked parts of a large, high wire fence that closed us off from the forbidden valley, slid down the storey-high outdoor balustrade linking the assembly space to the administration and chased each other in the prohibited parts of the school. How else could we escape from Colditz, or be the Count of Monte Cristo duelling Fernand Mondego, let alone Biggles hunting down the elusive Erich Von Stalhein?

We thought we were evading the Brothers when their zeal for us was in the tissue of the very spaces they built and in which our imaginations were fired up.

In other ways, the chain of consequences was clear even then. When a thuggish government threatened all Church schools, the Brothers took a lead, with their style setting an example.

At Stella Maris, Bro. Louis Camilleri and Bro. Emmanuel Sciberras led with calm and spiritual fortitude. I’ve heard them praised by a tough negotiator who’s not easily impressed.

At De La Salle, we had Bro. Edward Galea, a member of the generation that had seen off the rash superior general, and Bro. Martin Borg, our General Patton.

Those risk-filled actions made our schooling possible. But they were defending something deeper, a style of life. In a polarised, close-minded, stagnant Malta, we saw Bro. Martin drive the Muslim students in his care to the mosque on Fridays; Bro. Charles Buhagiar helped his lateral thinking pupils correspond with Edward de Bono and Bro. David Mizzi taught wind surfing (and turned it into a geography lesson).

It was a style that bred confidence in one’s individuality. It taught that timeless truths need not come at the cost of personality or conviviality. Love of life strengthened faith.

For each boy, such examples had long-term consequences, now unfolding across the globe as numerous Facebook pages attest. A whole century and a fifth of another may have passed but no single event or strenuous effort has yet run its course. The long chain stretches beyond what the eye can see into the future.

It has been 120 years of plenitude, testifying that the glory of God is a school fully alive.