1.1 “STARTING AFRESH FROM DON BOSCO”

1.2 Towards the end of our Spiritual Retreat, in an atmosphere of prayer and encounter with God, we wish to live the fundamental objective of our Chapter, which is: “starting afresh from Don Bosco, to reawaken the heart of every Salesian to return to the young with a renewed Salesian identity and a more ardent apostolic passion” (cf. Letter of the Rector Major, AGC 394).

1.3 It is evident that “starting afresh from Don Bosco” does not mean a return of the prodigal son to his father’s house because, in truth, “we have never left our house”, our charism. Nonetheless, there are objective elements that invite us to renew our fidelity to Don Bosco and to our Salesian charism in the face of the new challenges emerging in our history and in the lives of the young. In his letter convoking the GC, the Rector Major tells us: “Today more than yesterday, and tomorrow more than today, the risk grows greater of breaking the living bonds that keep us united to Don Bosco. More than a hundred years have now gone by since his death. Dead are the generations of Salesians who were in contact with him and knew him close at hand. The chronological, geographic and cultural distance from the founder is increasing. The spiritual climate and psychological closeness which prompted spontaneous reference to Don Bosco and his spirit is beginning to disappear” (AGC 394, p. 9).

1.4 Obviously, our reflection has no intention whatsoever of producing a “synthesis” of Don Bosco: apart from the objective impossibility of accomplishing such a feat for a colossal figure like him, I would be the last person suitable for the job. All of us know our Father, Don Bosco, too well for me to pretend to say “new” things about him.

1.5 However, I would like to set out from the extraordinary greatness of Don Bosco, which fills our hearts with legitimate pride but is not without its risks. One of these, for instance, would be to lose ourselves in the complex multiplicity of his traits, and so to be unable to grasp the essential elements of his person and his charism, which the Holy Spirit has bestowed on the Church and humanity through him. As the proverb says, there are times when “we cannot see the wood for the trees”. Suffice it to recall the several professions and activities that have Don Bosco for their patron, all of them giving prominence – no doubt, in a superficial and simplistic way - to the many-sided richness of his personality.

1.6 Speaking of St. Francis of Assisi, the genial English writer, G. K. Chesterton, remarked that the profile of his sanctity has been interpreted, on occasion, in the most diverse ways - from iconoclast to patron of ecology - forgetting the most important thing which gave meaning to all the other aspects, viz. his love for Christ. And, with his habitual irony, he adds that these interpreters are like the person who wishes to write a biography of Amundsen with only one constraint, viz. that no mention be made of the north or the south pole. Perhaps a more contemporary comparison would be writing a biography of Pelé or Maradona in which everything is spoken of, except one: football.

1.7 In the same letter referred to above, Fr. Pascual gives us a sharp reminder: “At the foundation of everything, as the source of the fruitful results of his action and actuality, there is something we may often overlook: his deep spiritual experience, what we might call his ‘familiarity’ with God. Maybe this is precisely the best thing he has left us in which to invoke and imitate him, and set ourselves to follow him so as to make contact with Christ and bring Christ into contact with the young” (AGC 394, p. 12).

1.8 An illustration of these words of the Rector Major is the following not-so-familiar testimony found in the Biographical Memoirs:

1.9 On one occasion when Don Bosco was visiting a seminary, “spiritual reading was replaced by an exhortation by Father Rua who chose as his theme God’s love for us... His fervent words revealed a heart burning with divine love. It was contemplation rather than meditation, but it became ecstasy for Don Bosco. Big tears ran down his cheeks and as the superior noticed this, he remarked out loud with his warm loving voice: ‘Don Bosco is weeping.’ It would be impossible to describe the effect those simple words had on us. The Saint’s tears were even more influential than Father Rua’s fiery words. We all felt deeply moved and recognized Don Bosco’s holiness in his love, and we no longer needed any miracles to lead us to display our veneration for the Saint” (BM XVIII, 99-100).

1.10 In this sense, “starting afresh from Don Bosco” is nothing else but growing in what constitutes our Christian identity, viz. the centrality of God in our lives – something that our Founder wrote in the first article of the Constitutions: “The purpose of the Salesian Society is that its members, while striving after Christian perfection, shall be engaged in the various works of charity, spiritual and temporal, on behalf of the young, especially those who are poor.” It is the continual effort to attain that “high standard” of Christian and consecrated life, viz. holiness, by experiencing the threefold God-centred attitude which enables us to live as he lived, “as seeing him who is invisible” (C 21).

1.11 In this regard, the canonization of our Founder, Don Bosco, as we know very well, has a significance that goes beyond the simple recognition of his heroic virtues or the proof of God’s extraordinary intervention in the miracles he worked. It is what Vita Consecrata states in all clarity: “When the Church approves a form of consecrated life or an Institute, she confirms that in its spiritual and apostolic charism are found all the objective requisites for achieving personal and communal perfection according to the Gospel” (VC 93). The statement found in the first article of our Constitutions echoes the same idea: “The Church has acknowledged God’s hand in this, especially by approving our Constitutions and by proclaiming our Founder a saint” (C 1).

1.12 “Dear Salesians, be saints,” was the Rector Major’s invitation to us in his first letter in which he listed the characteristics of Salesian sanctity (cf. AGC 379, pp. 8–10). The entire letter was an invitation to take up this challenge, for “our sanctification is ‘the essential task’ of our life, in the words of the Pope. If we attain this, we shall have attained everything; if we fail to do so, all is lost, as is said of charity (cf. 1 Cor 13, 1-8), the very essence of holiness” (ibid. p. 11).

1.13 Don Bosco calls us, in the first place, to become saints in such a way that the mission itself becomes an expression and a consequence of this holiness, and at the same time a path to grow in it. “The witness of such holiness, achieved within the Salesian mission, reveals the unique worth of the beatitudes and is the most precious gift we can offer to the young” (C 25).

1.14 A second point I would like to make is drawn from the Prologue of the book, Jesus of Nazareth, written by the Pope (or, as he himself says, by Joseph Ratzinger). What I shall say here does not intend to be anything more than a simple analogy.

1.15 There is no doubt that we have at our disposal today many more tools from the various scientific disciplines (history, linguistics, psychology, sociology…) to study Don Bosco, and for this we must thank so many Salesian confreres - some of whom are present here – for dedicating their lives to this study and communicating the results of their qualified research. Still, it is possible to run the risk the Holy Father points to, concerning the use of the historical-critical method. To use a simple (perhaps too simple) but meaningful example: we may oftentimes content ourselves with, or attach great importance to, an “x-ray” of Don Bosco rather than his living and actual countenance. When a surgeon has to perform an operation on his mother, the photographs he has of her are of little or no use: what he needs instead are the most specialized studies available. But, in his office or on his writing-desk, he generally does not place an x-ray but the most faithful and “live” photograph he has of his mother.

1.16 As a Congregation, and still more, as a Salesian Family, we must always strive for a synthesis which makes it possible for us to know the authentic Don Bosco in a dynamic way, because, as we said in the title of this section, he has been given to us by God as our Father and Teacher.

1.17 2. “….WE STUDY AND IMITATE HIM, ADMIRING IN HIM A SPLENDID BLENDING OF NATURE AND GRACE” (C 21)

1.18 In our previous reflections, we sought to “put into practice” this blending of nature and grace. I shall now take up once more some of the elements - among many others – that we have meditated upon and that were marvellously blended in the person of Don Bosco, the most complete person there has ever been. On the one hand, as we have said before, he was gifted with an extraordinary richness: “deeply human, rich in the qualities of his people, open to the realities of this earth – just as deeply the man of God, filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit”. On the other hand, he was capable not only of a “splendid blending” but a fusion in his closely-knit life project, the service of the young. Seen from this “formal” angle, the Salesian too is equally gifted (of course, not in the same measure) with gifts of nature and grace, and is called to be a man of synthesis, equilibrium and good sense, someone who does not inflate or deflate any of his basic qualities. The Salesian must be, in the best sense of the word, a normal man – if we are to go by the description given by Cardinal Pironio at the inauguration of the GC22 - not “mediocre” but just the opposite: a person who is on fire with a passion of love for the young and seeks their highest good, their salvation.

1.19 1. We spoke of gratuitous giving – which in the faith-context is understood as grace - as the atmosphere surrounding every person, be he Christian or not - an expression of God’s loving presence. Don Bosco was extraordinarily sensitive to this “sense of gratuitous giving”. We drew drawn attention to it at different moments, especially when we spoke of our predilection for the most “insignificant”.

1.20 Let us recall what the Rector Major writes in his letter, “Looking at Christ through the eyes of Don Bosco”. It concerns Don Bosco’s lived experience with the pupils of the Jesuits: “As a student of philosophy John Bosco had assisted some boys of well-to-do families at a summer camp of the Jesuits near Turin, to which they had sent some of the boarders from their schools during an epidemic. Although he had no difficulty in relating to them – indeed some of them were friends who loved and respected him – he became convinced that his ‘method’ was not compatible with a system of ‘mutual payment’. At Montaldo (…) he came to know that he could not exercise over boys of this social class that influence without which it is impossible to help them spiritually. He became convinced then that his field of work was not among the children of the wealthy” (AGC 384, p. 17).

1.21 I would like to examine the topic further, using an example which seems quite relevant. We saw that life, every human life, is a gift par excellence in so far as all of us possess it and also in so far as it is the basis for all the other gifts “of nature and grace”. It would be rhetorical to say that Don Bosco too felt the same way. But there is something more: I think that, in this matter, we come across an extraordinary gift of God in his life.

1.22 Though all of us know that life is a gift, we do not always experience it that way. As the proverb says, “nadie sabe el bien que tiene, hasta que lo ve perdido” (“no one appreciates what he has, until he has lost it”… or is in danger of losing it). We do not need to demonstrate the fact that, whoever has seen his life threatened by death and survived, has learned to appreciate it immeasurably. There is a classical description of this experience in the life of Dostoevskij in connection with a situation described by Stefan Zweig as “one of the crucial moments of humanity”. Here is how the novelist narrates it, in the third person:

1.23 “Only five minutes remained for him to live, no more. He remarked that those five minutes seemed an eternity to him, an immense richness (….) He was dying at the age of 27, a healthy and strong man (….) In that moment, nothing was more distressing to him than the repeated thought: ‘Oh, if I didn’t have to die! If they gave me back my life, what an eternity it would be! And it would be all mine! Oh! I would turn every minute into a full century, I wouldn’t lose anything, I would count each minute, I wouldn’t waste even a single minute!”1

1.24 We are all acquainted with the inspiring text of the Biographical Memoirs narrating Don Bosco’s mortal illness, but I cannot resist transcribing some of its paragraphs:

1.25 Don Bosco wrote the following comment on his illness: “I think I was fully prepared to die at that moment. I was sorry to leave my boys, but I was glad to end my days knowing that the oratory now had a permanent base”. This certainty of his flowed from the conviction that God and the Blessed Mother had wanted and founded the oratory (…) Early in the week, as the sad news of his sickness spread, the oratory boys were overwhelmed by indescribable grief and anxiety (…) Touching scenes would take place. “Just let me take a peek at him,” one would ask. “I won’t make him talk,” insisted another (…) “If Don Bosco knew I were here, he’d let me in,” said a third (…) Don Bosco could hear them talking to the nurse and was very much affected (…) Realizing that there was little hope for him in human remedies, they appealed to heaven with admirable fervour (…) It was a Saturday in July, a day sacred to the Holy Mother of God.

1.26 We know the outcome of this decisive moment, a real watershed in Don Bosco’s life. Invited by the theologian Borel to say at least a little prayer for his own recovery, Don Bosco, with great difficulty, finally said: “Yes, Lord, if it pleases you, let me be cured.” “That morning his two doctors, Botta and Cafasso, came to see him, fearing to find dead, but when they felt his pulse, they told him: ‘Don Bosco, you have good reason to go to La Consolata and thank the Madonna’.”

1.27 No pen can describe the scene when the beloved father returned among his sons. “The reception was a scene easier imagined than described (...) Don Bosco addressed a few words to them. Among other things, he said: “I want to thank you for the love you have shown me during my illness. I want to thank you for the prayers you said for my recovery. I am convinced that God granted me an extension of my life in answer to your prayers. Therefore, gratitude demands that I spend it all for your temporal and spiritual welfare. This I promise to do as long as the Lord will permit me to remain in this world; on your part, help me to keep my promise” (BM II, 385-386).

1.28 I believe that our Rector Major had a similar experience, and curiously, around the same age as Don Bosco, at 31. Most of us will probably never have such an experience. The most important thing is that we be convinced that, if God has called us to life, and to this life as Salesians, it is in order that we might say, like Don Bosco: “For you I study, for you I work, for you I live, for you I am ready even to give my life” (C 14).

1.29 2. When we mentioned earlier that the key to understanding the entire life of Don Bosco lay in the centrality of God in his life, we presupposed something that we now need to make explicit, viz. faith in God is inseparable from following and imitating Jesus Christ. For our Father, Don Bosco, to speak of religion was to speak of Christianity. In the social, cultural and religious context of his time, this was obvious and beyond dispute. Today, Don Bosco would certainly be the first one to invite us to take an active part in ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue because of his conviction that Jesus Christ is – in the words of the Magisterium and present-day theology – “the one universal Saviour of all humanity”.

1.30 It was Jesus Christ who guided and directed all of Don Bosco’s actions, from the first years of his life. It was Jesus Christ who, in the dream he had at the age of nine, pointed out to him his mission and made him understand that his whole life would be determined by this vocation and mission, and that he would receive a Teacher, “without whose help all knowledge becomes foolishness”.2 It was Jesus Christ whom he discovered, loved and served in every person whom he encountered in his life, above all poor and abandoned youth, taking seriously the word of the Lord in Mt. 25, 31ff. It was Jesus Christ whom he sought to “form” in them, following a path in which education and catechesis were fully integrated: “Like Don Bosco, we are all called to be educators to the faith at every opportunity. Our highest knowledge therefore is to know Jesus Christ, and our greatest delight is to reveal to all peoples the unfathomable riches of his mystery. We walk side by side with the young so as to lead them to the risen Lord, and so to discover in him and in his Gospel the deepest meaning of their own existence, and thus grow into new men” (C 34).

1.31 For Don Bosco, holiness was not an ethical ideal but the fullness of friendship with a Person, Jesus Christ.

1.32 In his giving the first place in his life to the Lord Jesus, he was led by a certain charismatic instinct to accentuate some aspects of the inexhaustible figure of Christ (cf. C 11). Among these, as the Rector Major reminded us some years ago, there was the image of the Apostle of the Father and of the Good Shepherd. In his contemplation of Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, Don Bosco “learned” – and all of us, Salesians, are called to the same apprenticeship – the Preventive System, viz. gratitude, the preoccupation for those on the margins, love in the form of loving-kindness, a personal knowledge (“the Good Shepherd knows his sheep and calls each one by name”), and above all, the need of giving oneself and everything to the point of “giving one’s own life for the sheep” (cf. AGC 384, 26-28).

1.33 3. The figure of the Good Shepherd and his concern for each of his sheep, together with his amazing predilection for the lost one, prompts us, towards the close of our Retreat, to examine more closely a particular theme that we only mentioned during the first days, viz. the unity of agape and eros in the life and activity of our Father, Don Bosco.

1.34 Confronted by the traditional semantics of the word eros which is wrongly taken to be a synonym of “sexuality” (and often, “morbose” sexuality), and provoked by the thinking of some twentieth-century Protestant theologians (especially in Northern Europe) who saw a radical opposition between eros and agape, Pope Benedict XVI, in his highest teaching post in the universal Church, has had the merit of restoring the human, Christian and – why not say it? – theological value of eros, capping in this way a whole current of humanistic thinking in this direction.

1.35 We can say very briefly that “we know what eros is not”; but, what is it? Even after an attentive reading of Benedict XVI’s Encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, and especially his Message for Lent 2007, we can remain with the impression that there is no clarity in the matter and that there even remains some difference of opinion. For instance, if, in the light of the Encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, n. 7, we take agape to mean “descending love” and eros “ascending love”, can we speak of the God’s eros toward man? Similarly, what other kind of love can man have for God, if not the “ascending” type, and therefore, only erotic love? In my opinion, it is possible to find at least five or six descriptions of eros in these documents of the Pope: ascending love – a response of love – an “ecstatic” feeling or emotion – a possession of what is lacking to one who loves – a yearning for union… In actual fact, all these descriptions are not alternatives, but various attempts from different points of view to define what is in itself indefinable in as much as true love lies beyond logical human understanding. St. Anselm’s words are applicable here: “rationabiliter comprehendit… incomprehensibile esse” (we understand with our reason that love is beyond reason itself). But this incomprehensibility does not mean to say that it is impenetrable, but only that it is inexhaustible when it comes to knowing what it is.

1.36 The path I would like to suggest sets out from the two elements I have already mentioned. On the one hand, the Holy Father gives us to understand that eros is indispensable, even for the realization of agape (cf. among other texts, Deus Caritas Est, 7); on the other hand, we have insisted on the need to examine love from both sides – the experience of loving, certainly, but also the experience of being loved. In both these aspects we discover an essential factor which is so evident that it paradoxically risks being passed over without our noticing it: we refer to the uniqueness of the person loved. Without it, agape itself (and, paradoxically, at the other extreme, sexuality!) becomes impersonal; without it, the person cannot feel himself loved in the depths of his being. I think that the description – a babbling description, of course – of eros must be bound up with a recognition of the person loved as unique. And this must occur in the entire gamut of love – from sexuality which must become true human love by being personalized in this way, to agape which also needs to be personalized by eros3 lest it turn into a narcissistic egoism in which one hides behind the mask, saying, “I love everyone”, when, in reality, he loves no one.

1.37 With this explanation, we can perfectly understand what we called the various “attempts” to define eros in the documents of Benedict XVI, including feelings and emotions which are doubtless essential not only in the experience of love in general, but especially in the amazement arising from the face-to-face encounter with a person in all its uniqueness, and which is expressed in the simple words: What a wonderful thing that you exist!

1.38 The Good Shepherd, who left the ninety-nine sheep in the sheepfold (or on the mountains! cf. Mt. 18,12) to go in search of the lost sheep, understood this to perfection (cf. also AGC 384, p. 27). So did our holy Father, Don Bosco: it was so evident in him, and I would add, it fires us with enthusiasm. To be still more precise, I would say that the structure and orientation of his love was his agape, while the content and dynamics of that same love was his eros. In realizing himself through love, Don Bosco did not look out for those who fascinated him or “gave him fulfilment”, but for those who had a greater need of his agape-love. But this love was totally personal and affective (obviously, effective too) so that every boy felt himself personally loved by him, and even considered himself to be the object of his predilection, as though he were the only one whom Don Bosco loved. How the words of those street-boys at the door of a dying man resound in our ears and in our hearts: “If Don Bosco knew I were here, he’d let me in!”

1.39 Thanks to this agape-love which became an intimate affection - “entrañable”, we say in Spanish, using a psycho-somatic expression - his boys felt loved by God to such an extent that, as Fr. Giacomelli testifies, they “loved him dearly and held him in such veneration that all he had to do was express a mere wish to be instantly obeyed. They avoided also whatever might displease him, but there was not a trace of servile fear in their obedience; it stemmed from their filial affection for him. Indeed, some boys avoided wrongdoing more out of regard for him than for fear of offending God. When he would come to know of this, he would reprimand them severely, reminding them that, ‘God is much more than Don Bosco!’.” (BM III, 411) And towards the end of his life, the theologian Piano said to him: “We still feel the love we felt for you then (...) Was it not here at the Oratory that the majority of us were fed and clothed when we were destitute? (...) This heart of mine will beat no more, before it ceases to love you. We hold that loving you is to us a symbol of loving God” (BM XVIII, 311-312).

1.40 On another occasion, also in the last years, he said to a group of past-pupil priests and lay people: “Now it is my turn to say who it is I love the most. Tell me. This is my hand; which of my five fingers do I love the most? Which of these could I do without? Certainly, I would not do without any of them because all five of them are equally dear and necessary to me. Therefore, I can only say that I love you all, all of you without any difference in degree or measure” (BM XVIII, 124-125).

1.41 I believe that the most daring statement of Benedict XVI (he himself makes us understand it so) is the one he makes towards the end of his Message, and it can be applied, analogically, to Don Bosco: “One could rightly say that the revelation of God's eros toward man (in the cross of Christ) is, in reality, the supreme expression of his agape.” Not surprisingly, the great Origen went against a great part of the Church’s Tradition with his interpretation of a beautiful expression of St. Ignatius of Antioch (“My Eros has been crucified”). He wrote: “At least I remember that one of the saints, by the name of Ignatius, said about Christ: ‘My Eros has been crucified’, and I do not think he deserved to be censured because of that” (Commentary on the Song of songs, Prologue).

1.42 All this enables us to discover once more the deep meaning of Don Bosco’s invitation: “Strive to make yourself loved!” Desire, and above all, the desire for a response is in no way opposed to the totally gratuitous nature of love, much less is it an expression of a disguised egoism. When it is authentic, love implies a most radical kenosis, viz. the total emptying of ourselves so that Jesus Christ may live in us (cf. Gal. 2, 19-20) and be the one who loves and is loved through our personal love. Would that each of us could hear from our youngsters the very same words Don Bosco heard: “We hold that loving you is to us a symbol of loving God!”

1.43 Once again I wish like to wind up this section by quoting the synthesis Benedict XVI gives us: “In all truth, only the love that unites the free gift of oneself with the impassioned desire for reciprocity instils a joy which eases the heaviest of burdens.”

1.44 3. “…WE TOO FIND IN HIM OUR MODEL” (C 97)

1.45 To conclude: I find it necessary to add a word of clarification about our relationship with Don Bosco, our Father, Teacher and Model. No doubt, we have oftentimes heard statements of unease or even reproach from persons who do not belong to the Salesian Family because of the way we remember, venerate and strive to imitate Don Bosco. Some even go so far as to say that we put Don Bosco in the place of Jesus Christ. Obviously, these judgments are unfair but they point to something we ought to reflect upon, because our relationship with Don Bosco, our Founder, is not the same as the relationship that other Orders and Congregations have with their Founders. This ought not to worry us, much less make us feel ashamed. But, it is possible that we can fall into the danger of calling ourselves “sons of Don Bosco” without being so in reality (cf. Lk 3,8; Jn 8, 39.42), and this for different reasons. For example, because we can confuse fidelity with nostalgically hanging on to the past, or because we can “invent” Don Bosco for ourselves, with each one imagining his own answer to the question: “What would Don Bosco do here, today?”

1.46 I think that the article of our Constitutions from which I have drawn the phrase which I placed at the beginning of this section, offers us a precious response. On the one hand, it reminds us that at the beginning of our Congregation (not only in time but also with regard to our charism), “the first Salesians found their sure guide in Don Bosco. Living at the very heart of his community in action, they learned to model their own lives on his. We too find in him our model.” But, on the other hand, “the religious and apostolic nature of the Salesian calling dictates the specific direction our formation must take, a direction necessary for the life and unity of the Congregation” (C 97).

1.47 Leaving aside the context of this article (which is about life as formation), we are called to forge a synthesis or an underlying unity between the concrete figure of Don Bosco and the nature of our charism. Dispensing with the second element can lead us to a nostalgic repetition of anecdotes about Don Bosco, and he himself would be the first one to reprove us for this. But the contrary position can lead us to concentrate on a collection of ideas and concepts of a theological, pedagogical and spiritual nature, and forget that all this is part of a charism which God gave to the Church and to humanity, above all to the young, in a concrete person called John Bosco.

1.48 The synthesis we seek, I would make bold to say, is to be found in Don Bosco himself: “If you have loved me in the past, continue to love me in the future by the exact observance of our Constitutions” (Constitutions: Foreword). “We willingly accept the Constitutions as Don Bosco’s will and testament, for us our book of life and for the poor and the little ones a pledge of hope” (C 196).

1.49 4. CONCLUSION

1.50 As we approach end of our Retreat, I would like to offer you two concluding reflections.

1.51 If I were to describe Don Bosco’s personality in a few words, I would say: by putting God and the following of Jesus Christ at the centre of his life, and by spending his whole life for the young for whom he had a passion by virtue of the charism he had received, our Founder and Father showed himself to be, simultaneously and inseparably, a holy and a happy man. He united perfectly in himself the two aspects of his personal fulfilment in Christ: the “objective” aspect = perfection, holiness; and the “subjective” aspect = happiness. The old adage, often applied to him (and also to St. Francis de Sales, his patron and ours) was not just a play on words: “Un santo triste es un triste santo.” (A sad saint is a sorry saint.)

1.52 Our second reflection is, in a certain way, a closing synthesis. In our various reflections, we sought to “put into practice” the blending of nature and grace which is typical of Don Bosco (cf. C 21). In a way, all we really did was to go deeper into nothing else but … the Preventive System. In fact, for our “theme” and main content we took “loving-kindness”, understood as an expression and a manifestation of love, set between the two poles of reason (human experience) and religion (theological reflection). It was the shortest and most profound synthesis we could make….