The spirit that should animate consecrated Salesians

In the retreat in September 1869, following the pontifical approval of the Congregation, Don Bosco for the first time offered Salesians his overall vision of consecrated life. The notes he drew up for this occasion, broadly re-worked, were a basis for his draft of the instruction Ai soci salesiani (To Salesian confreres), which is the introduction to the first Italian translation of the Constitutions, or Rule of the Society of St. Francis de Sales (1875), and was then refined and notably added to with collaboration from the master of novices, Fr Giulio Barberis, for the third edition of the Constitutions (1885). It is from this final version that we take the beginning and central parts that best represent Don Bosco's thinking on Salesian consecration.