SALESIAN SPIRITUALITY

PASCUAL CHÁVEZ VILLANUEVA

Holiness is for all

A necessary foreword

Among the many things I have written, you will search in vain for my spiritual diary, a description of my intimate journey, or an autobiography in which people might see my spirituality. It was not my style.
Maybe because of that natural reserve which is typical of country people, or more likely because of the formation I received, I never felt like opening up. I preferred to keep in my heart the memory of so many experiences, struggles and apostolic achievements, rather than express them in public.
For this reason, you will not find in my books and in my conversations or confidences any evidence of my personal relationship with God and his mystery.

My experience with the Lord

I was not born a saint. I tell you that directly and in all simplicity. I struggled a lot to be faithful to the Lord, and to live up to my Christian commitments. I can assure you, it was not always easy. Saints have to become saints, little by little. Nobody has yet invented an instrument that measures holiness. Everything is grace, the collaboration of the creature with the Creator. And grace is beyond human control, because it is a gift from God.

I've always been an optimist by nature and out of personal conviction. I was never careless, much less naive. For me, life has always been, and continues to be, a wise and demanding teacher. I knew that it entails challenges and is never without difficulty or trial.

So that you can understand the ideal I had in my heart, I am going to write down now some reflections I had when I was about to enter the seminary in Chieri. I was 20 years old at the time! I was no longer a kid or a naive teenager dreamer ... "My life as it had been up to then, needed to be radically reformed. I had not been bad up to that, but I was dissipated, boastful, busy in games and sport, jumping, amusements and other similar things that made me happy at the time, but did not satisfy my heart." For her part, my mother - despite the intense emotion she felt when she saw me dressed in a cassock – said to me very clearly: "You have the garment of a priest. Remember that it is not the dress that honours your state. It is the practice of virtue. I would rather have a poor farmer for a son than a priest who neglects his duties."

In all humility and sincerity, I have always tried to serve God and work for his glory. Believe me, this is not a cliché. In my time that was a real life programme. It was the secret of my relationship with God, summed up in a phrase that also explained my service to young people. I really believed in it, you know. I was convinced, and experience confirmed it for me day after day, that the young people I met in the bars and on the streets of Turin, in the prisons, or employed by inhuman masters, really needed a helping hand, someone to take care of them, look after them, and lead them away from their bad habits to a better way of life. The dream I had at Becchi when I was nine or ten years old continued to pound my mind and my heart. I became convinced that only a holy priest totally committed to God would be able to offer them security and confidence, a full sense of life, joy in their hearts and, above all, hope. That's the conclusion I reached - holiness would be the best gift I could give them.

When I met St Francis de Sales

Obviously, I did not meet him in person - I was born 250 years after him! There was one of his books in circulation in Piedmont at the time. I read it and found there a sentence that struck me and became the programme of my priestly life. I remember reading, "It is a mistake, or rather a heresy, to try to banish the devout life from the military, from the mechanic’s workshop, the court of princes or the home of married people ... Wherever we are we can and must aspire to a perfect life." That became my goal! I tried to live it and offer it to my boys. It demanded courage! Speaking of holiness (yes, I did use that word!) to those boys seemed to most people an impossible task, but I believed in it. And I can say with conviction that to be holy is a wonderful ideal, and it’s not difficult! Our friendship and fidelity to the Lord will one day be rewarded. I presented holiness as a vocation, something beautiful and attractive, but I also explained that it was demanding. It required sacrifice and renunciation. Practical holiness means fulfilling your daily duties well and living in friendship with the good God who made ​​us all friends. This was a way of holiness that made young people apostles of their companions with friendliness and simplicity. I called it “the holiness of everyday life”. Then I added a feature that I have always considered fundamental: it had to be a joyful holiness, which attracts us to what is good, that fascinates us and makes us "saviours of other young people".

Almost blocked in the Vatican…

At that time I felt I was already in heaven. I knew that here on the earth people were talking about an issue that, in my opinion, never existed! Given the immense amount of work and worries that beset me, some people were convinced that I did not have the time to pray. They began to ask, "When does Don Bosco pray?" The question could not be evaded. Indeed it merited a response. They discovered then a secret that I always thought did not need to be shouted to the four winds: the whole of my life was a prayer, because I prayed life! I taught this programme to my Salesians and I recommended it to young people as well. Spending hours in the confessional was prayer. So was writing dozens of letters late at night in the flickering light of a candle, going up and down the endless marble steps of the many houses I visited, having a friendly chat with the boys in the yard,

celebrating Mass, gazing into the face of Mary Help of Christians… all this was prayer! Prayer was living in God's presence, as I had learned as a boy from my good Mother. For me, prayer was abandoning myself in total confidence to God’s Providence. But teaching young people a trade, finding a job for many young men so that they could always be "good Christians and honest citizens" – this was also prayer. I prayed when I gave the farewell kiss to the first missionaries departing for Argentina, when I visited the Pope, when I welcomed bishops who had been driven from their diocese, when I wrote one of the many books of the Catholic Readings, when I multiplied the loaves in the basket or the hosts at the time of communion, when I was travelling from Turin to Barcelona or Paris to find the money needed to build the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Rome, or the money that was needed to spread the Gospel in the Argentine pampas. I was always going full swing, but my heart was always in intimacy with the Lord.

A Young Saint for Young People

I have said it many times: I was called for young people, especially those who were most in need of love and hope. They have always been the reason for my being and my actions. But I did not want them for myself. A priest, a very dear friend of mine, once said: "As a mother nourishes herself in order to nourish her child, Don Bosco nourished himself with God, to be able to nourish the rest of us.” With all humility, I assure you that I see myself in these simple but true words. I wanted the young people to be my friends because I passionately wanted them to become friends of God. When one is a friend of God, one is on the way of holiness!