Don Bosco

Narrator

Fr Pascual Chávez

• The words of the holy Gospel that tell us that our divine Saviour came down from heaven to earth to gather together all the children of God spread throughout all parts of the earth, it seems to me, can be applied literally to the young people of our own day.

• This part of human society, the most fragile and the most precious on which the hopes for future happiness rests is not in itself wicked.

• What these young people really need is for some generous soul to take care of them, educate them, guide them in the way of virtue and keep them away from harm. The real difficulty consists in finding some way of gathering them together so as to be able to talk with them, teach them to behave well. This was the mission of the Son of God; only His holy religion can do it.

• This was the profound conviction that guided Don Bosco! He paid attention to every aspect of his boys’ lives, recognised their greatest needs and identified those that were hidden.

• Precisely so as not to lose this heritage I wanted to propose for 2008 a Strenna on the subject of education.

Let us educate with the heart of Don Bosco,

to develop to their full potential the lives of young people,

especially the poorest and most disadvantaged,

promoting their rights.

• Again this year the Strenna follows on from the previous ones. Life is the great gift that God “the lover of life” has entrusted to us like a seed that needs to “fall into good soil,” where it can germinate and bear fruit; this soil is the family!

• It is a Strenna chosen for you dear friends as educators, who, like Jesus, feel yourselves “consecrated and sent by the Spirit of the Lord to proclaim the good news,” to free captives, restore sight to the blind and offer a year of grace to those to whom our work of education is directed.

• The Strenna that Fr Pascual Chávez has decided to give to the Salesian Family for 2008 is an appeal to recover, renew and put into action the great heritage Don Bosco left us: his educational approach focused on respect for young people, on their great potential, on their weakness and on their dignity as children of God.

• The Strenna this year has three main themes:

• Salesian Pedagogy and the Preventive System, a patrimony to be known and lived;

• a new educational approach for the full development of the young;

• education to and the promotion of human rights, especially the rights of juveniles.

• According to Don Bosco, educating the young means accompanying and following them as they grow up, in the way a good farmer cultivates the soil and takes care of the plants as they grow there.

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• Educating with the heart of Don Bosco

• Don Bosco loved to say: “Education is a matter of the heart, and only God is its master” and he, Don Bosco, felt himself called to be “open-hearted” for his boys. With an anticipating love that for him became an essential, fundamental element in his whole educational approach.

• The pieces of advice he gave his clerics, or those who asked explanations about his system, are all extremely simple and expressed in terms of “loving kindness” an expression of evangelical charity.

• Giving a boy attention, each individual boy, in practice becomes “assistance”, that is “knowing how to speak to his heart,” how to offer him a family atmosphere in which to grow up with serenity, but above all an educator with a deep sense of being a father.

• For Don Bosco, the place to get to know a boy was in the playground where he behaved with spontaneity.

• And still today, the works that draw their inspiration from Don Bosco preserve the characteristics that he gave to Valdocco and its surroundings. Places that try to respond to the needs of the young with a practical all-inclusive programme: teaching, accommodation, preparation for work and recreation.

• The secret is not so much in providing the facilities but in maintaining an atmosphere in which the youngsters feel at ease, and so encouraging the development of the entire human and spiritual potential they possess.

• It is here that Salesian educators are called on to live out their roles, not merely in a professional capacity but as a very real vocation that comes from God.

• A vocation, that of its very nature, should be lived by going out to those youngsters in particular who on account of the circumstances of their lives or because of the twisted criteria of some of today’s dominant cultures, are deprived of opportunities for the future, and of love.

• The educator needs to try to find and to create new “spaces” in order to meet the youngsters on their own ground, as Don Bosco did.

• For the total development of the young

• In order to imitate Don Bosco’s choices nowadays, it is necessary, as the Salesian Family, to make our own those such as:

1. a shared confidence in the value of education,

2. starting with the bottom of the pile,

3. thinking up a new form of education that takes into account the way the faith of youngsters matures.

• Nowadays, on the part of society and even of State institutions, there is greater confidence in education so that it has become one of the topics of public debate.

• The Church shares in this, and sees the link with its main role: evangelisation.

• Don Bosco and the Salesian Family are following this line giving priority to those situations where the gap between aspirations and possibilities is widest; going to those places where it is easy to meet those most in need, especially where education is under threat from political conflicts, economic divides or lack of services whether it be in developing countries or in the so-called advanced ones.

• It is necessary to think in terms of a new kind of education that is capable of helping each one to become a complete individual with a formed conscience, a developed intelligence, and an awareness of one’s own destiny.

• But it is precisely in this that problems arise, and different ways of understanding education emerge.

• Technological developments, social issues, the idea of ”having” being emphasised rather than that of ”being” and the great variety of sources of education and information are some of the things that undermine a sound educational approach.

• The quality of life is no longer linked to absolute values, but to the possibility of modifying one’s terms of reference.

• Young people nowadays are living in a world where there is considerable confusion about good and evil (right and wrong). There is no obvious source of authority capable of proposing in an authoritative manner a common vision regarding the world and human life and living by it.

• The tendency young people have always had to try to discover their own identity is nowadays undermined by the complexity of society and a variety of cultures. Freedom, on everyone’s lips, places before young people decisions involving responsibility that they are not always ready or willing to accept.

• And so it is that young people vacillate in some confusion between seeking their own interests which leads to a self-centred approach to everything, and being open to others in a spirit of generous solidarity.

• And the Faith… does not escape from this conflict!

• As in the parable of the sower and the good seed, there is a minority who take their Christian life seriously and appreciate it;

• there are some who, after having heard the good news, go away without any regrets;

• there are some others who having recognised the need for some sort of religion are satisfied with a superficial or pick and choose response. Even the truths of faith become a matter of personal opinion, … purely subjective.

• What is the role of the Salesian Family in this situation?

• Nowadays the number of formal and informal educators is multiplying but it is the youngsters and young people themselves who by being prepared to open their hearts and minds to them “choose” their own educators.

• This is the challenge we face: having a credible form of education to offer, being authoritative witnesses to it and being capable of communicating it. To do this it is necessary to return to the young more effectively.

• The one who has a genuine knowledge of young people is a real “Salesian”. Our being faithful needs to put us in contact with the “key issues” of today’s culture, with those great challenges that require serious analysis and the ability to respond adequately.

• It is necessary to be able to offer young people not just somewhere to go but above all “life-giving places” modelled on the Valdocco oratory. Just like the place Don Bosco succeeded in creating there.

• As the Salesian Family it is necessary for us to re-establish the importance of Don Bosco’s “good Christian and the honest citizen” which is an expression of the need for an education to personal involvement in society and the political field and for the promotion of policies that benefit young people without forgetting that this involves discovering a vocation that leads us to life in Christ.

• Through the Promotion of Human Rights

• The third main theme of the 2008 Strenna is the promotion of human rights, in particular those of juveniles.

• Recalling the recommendation Don Bosco gave the first missionaries – “Take special care of the sick, of the young, of the old and of the poor, and you will win the blessing of God and the goodwill of men” – Fr Pascual Chávez indicates for the Salesian Family education to human rights, in particular the rights of juveniles, as the ideal way to fulfil in different contexts the task of prevention, of all-round human development, the building of a world that is more fair, more just, more healthy.”

• Speaking about human rights opens the way to a dialogue with the different cultures in the world and the possibility of introducing them to Salesian pedagogy.

• Unfortunately, violations of human rights are an everyday occurrence and it is clear that the existing measures and safeguards are not sufficient to eliminate them.

• It is the task of the Salesian Family, following the teaching of the Church to promote and defend human rights starting from a view of mankind that takes account of all that is entailed in being an individual.

• Faced with this sad picture of the wounds afflicting the world of youth, we Salesians “are on the side of the young since - like Don Bosco – we have confidence in them, in their willingness to learn, to study, to escape from poverty, to take in hand their own future.

• We are on the side of the young because we believe in the value of the individual, in the possibility of a different kind of world, and above all in the great value of education. We invest in the young!

• Let us make a commitment to education a global issue and in this way prepare a positive future for the whole world.

• The treasure of the educational method inherited from Don Bosco is the well-known Preventive System that Fr Chávez, in his commentary on the 2008 Strenna, presents anew, interpreting it in the light of human rights, indicating objectives, contents and methodology.

• In order to put the Preventive System into practice today, the Rector Major exhorts the Salesian Family to adopt once again two approaches:

1. choosing to act together in common with others, as is a typical Salesian way of doing things,

2. and with a consciously pastoral approach following the Church’s programme that reaches out to the young in order to lead them to the Faith.

• This year I want to give you, not a fable or a parable, but the very seed that God planted in the heart of Don Bosco and that gave direction to his whole being and his whole life: the dream he had when he was nine years of age.

It was at that age that I had a dream. All my life this remained deeply impressed on my mind. In this dream I seemed to be near my home in a fairly large yard. A crowd of children were playing there. Some were laughing, some were playing games, and quite a few were swearing. When I heard these evil words, I jumped immediately amongst them and tried to stop them by using my words and my fists.

At that moment a dignified man appeared, a nobly dressed adult. He wore a white cloak, and his face shone so that I could not look directly at him. He called me by name, told me to take charge of these children, and added these words: "You will have to win these friends of yours not by blows but by gentleness and love. Start right away to teach them the ugliness of sin and the value of virtue." Confused and frightened, I replied that I was a poor, ignorant child. I was unable to talk to those youngsters about religion. At that moment the kids stopped their laughing, shouting, and swearing; they gathered round the man who was speaking. Hardly knowing what I was saying, I asked, "Who are you, ordering me to do the impossible?" "Precisely because it seems impossible to you, you must make it possible through obedience and the acquisition of knowledge." "Where, by what means, can I acquire knowledge?"- "I will give you a teacher. Under her guidance you can become wise. Without her, all wisdom is foolishness." "But who are you that speak so?" "I am the son of the woman whom your mother has taught you to greet three times a day." "My mother tells me not to mix with people I don't know unless I have her permission. So tell me your name." "Ask my mother what my name is." At that moment, I saw a lady of stately appearance standing beside him. She was wearing a mantle that sparkled all over as though covered with bright stars. Seeing from my questions and answers that I was more confused than ever, she beckoned me to approach her. She took me kindly by the hand and said, "Look." Glancing round, I realised that the youngsters had all apparently run away. A large number of goats, dogs, cats, bears, and other animals had taken their place. - "This is the field of your work. Make yourself humble, strong, and energetic; And what you will see happening to these animals in a moment is what you must do for my children."

I looked round again, and where before I had seen wild animals, I now saw gentle lambs, They were all jumping and bleating as if to welcome that man and lady.

At that point, still dreaming, I began crying. I begged the lady to speak so that I could understand her, because I did not know what all this could mean. She then placed her hand on: my head and said, "In good time you will understand everything."

With that, a noise woke me up and everything disappeared.

I was totally bewildered. My hands seemed to be sore from the blows I had given, and my face hurt from those I had received. The memory of the man and the lady, and the things said and heard, so occupied my mind, that I could not get any more sleep that night.

• We know that next morning little Johnny told his family about the dream, causing his brothers to laugh and his grandmother to express her doubts. Only his mother, Mamma Margaret, saw in it a hint of the future.

• And so we entrust ourselves to Mary, so that she may help each one of you to keep alive in our days Don Bosco’s dream: to see youngsters happy in this life and in the next. This is the task of Salesian education.