It is interesting to note that every example of the educator and pastor described in the Memoirs of the Oratory, even if only fleetingly, has some typical feature of the notion Don Bosco has of the Salesian. We see it right from the opening lines when he writes of his parents: “They were farmers, who made their living by hard work and thrifty use of what little they had”. It is not hard to understand how the combination of “hard work and thrifty use” mirrors the Salesian motto “Work and Temperance”, which starting from the time he was putting the Memoirs together (1873-1875) Don Bosco was insisting on more and more. Similarly, describing the death of his father, Francis – “actively interested in promoting a good Christian upbringing for his offspring” – informs us that he died “recommend[ing] to my mother confidence in God”¹. This is a neat summary of the essential elements which make up Salesian spirituality: a family where through work, a thrifty lifestyle and confidence in God, we are fervently consecrated to the Christian upbringing of the young.

Immediately following, in the story of the Memoirs he recalls the everyday experience of poverty, a tough life of struggle and hard work. There are the especially dramatic months of famine in 1817. Don Bosco notes people lying dead in the fields, “their mouths full of grass”, the time when all food stocks had run out, the frantic and unsuccessful search for something to feed themselves with:

“ We were all in a panic .... My mother, not allowing herself to be discouraged, went round to the neighbours to try to borrow some food. She did not find anyone able to help. – "My dying husband," she told us, "said I must have confidence in God. Let's kneel then and pray.". After a brief prayer she got up and said, "Drastic circumstances demand drastic means." Then she went to the stable and, helped by Mr Cavallo, she killed a calf. Part of that calf was immediately cooked and the worst of the family's hunger satisfied. In the days that followed, cereals bought at a very high price from more distant places enabled us to survive.

“Anyone can imagine how much my mother worked and suffered in that disastrous year. The critical lack of wheat supplies was overcome by constant hard work, by continuous thrift, by attention to the smallest details and by occasional providential help”².

Don Bosco gives plenty of space to all this to emphasise his mother’s exemplary role, her courage, practical patience, her resourcefulness and hard work. But he especially wants to foreground God’s providential presence, which Margaret’s trusting confidence had taught him to see as active and at work in day to day events. As a child John learns from faith that there is an inseparable link between our fragile humanity and the merciful and provident love of our Father in heaven. He learns from experience that trust in God is never in vain, even at the most desperate moments, if joined with responsible effort, self-sacrifice, and a hard-working, thrifty lifestyle.

Anyone who understands Don Bosco’s personality sees in these narrations a way of seeing and sensing things, something that is clearly him. Carrying out his own mission, faced with life’s challenges, he always maintained this inner calm (“let nothing disturb you”) which was the result of faith and hope but where he also sought a solution. Then trusting himself to Providence and with the courage that comes of faith, he made the necessary decisions, including “drastic” ones too, sometimes, tackling their consequences in everyday life with strength of being and a spirit of sacrifice, tireless work and a very essential lifestyle. The story then aims to attribute to Margaret the origins of a spiritual, practical approach which is one of the dynamic factors in the historical success of Don Bosco and his work.

It is true that we find this sort of thing in all strong, strong-willed and enterprising people by their very nature. The difference is the outlook of faith and complete offering of self inspired by charity:

“When that terrible scarcity was over and matters at home had improved, a convenient arrangement was proposed to my mother. However she repeated again and again, "God gave me a husband and God has taken him away. With his death the Lord put three sons under my care. I would be a cruel mother to abandon them when they needed me most.” On being told that her sons could be entrusted to a good guardian who would look after them well, she merely replied, "A guardian could only be their friend, but I am a mother to these sons of mine. All the gold in the world could never make me abandon them.”³.

Here we see the high ideal emerging of the educator as an individual moved by love, totally consecrated to looking after those who he (or she) is to educate, ready to generously put aside any personal advantage, not interest in personal gain but also attentive and industrious where the task is concerned, a keen witness to the very values he or she is teaching. Margaret is an icon of all this:

“Her greatest care was given to instructing her sons in their religion, making them value obedience, and keeping them busy with tasks suited to their age. When I was still very small, she herself taught me to pray …. I remember well how she herself prepared me for my first confession. She took me to church, made her own confession first, then presented me to the confessor. Afterwards, she helped me to make my thanksgiving. She continued to do this until I reached the age when she judged me able to use the sacrament well on my own”.

Don Bosco’s language takes on more intimate nuances in the following chapter where he talks about his first Communion. We see Margaret giving special care to this. As we know from other things he wrote, this was an event which shaped his life. For him it was not just an essential step in Christian initiation, a favourable circumstance for gaining necessary understanding of enlightened faith, or a privileged occasion for ethical formation. First Communion is seen in terms of formation and spirituality: a special religious experience for bringing the child to a point of personally accepting the values of faith, leading him to a first conscious conversion of heart to God and introducing him to the dynamics of interior life. Don Bosco highlights his mother’s educational wisdom in leading him to an understanding of the Eucharist as mystery, preparing him for a good Ca sincere manifestation of conscience with a promise to improve. In particular he reveals her educational strategies for setting up a suitable inner atmosphere and giving the whole event an unusual solemnity. Here we pick up on the features of loving, attentive accompaniment, clever educational resourcefulness:

“My mother coached me for days and brought me to confession three times during that Lent. … At home, she saw to it that I said my prayers and read good books; and she always came up with the advice which a diligent mother knows how to give her children. On the morning of my first communion, my mother did not permit me to speak to anyone. She accompanied me to the altar and together we made our preparation and thanksgiving ….

“It was my mother's wish for that day that I should refrain from manual work. Instead, she kept me occupied reading and praying. Amongst the many things that my mother repeated to me many times was this: “My dear son, this is a great day for you. I am convinced that God has really taken possession of your heart. Now promise him to be good as long as you live. Go to communion frequently in the future, but beware of sacrilege. Always be frank in confession, be obedient always, go willingly to catechism and sermons. But for the love of God, avoid like the plague those who indulge in bad talk.” I treasured my mother's advice and tried to carry it out. I think that from that clay on there was some improvement in my life, especially in matters of obedience and submission to others. It was not easy for me to be submissive because I liked to do things my way and follow my own childish whims rather than listen to those who gave me advice or told me what to do.⁴

The story’s intensity returns to this atmosphere of spiritual intimacy between mother and son, and highlights spiritual features which were dear to the Saint’s spiritual pedagogy – constant recommendations for a sincere confession, sorrow and good resolutions – and he loads the event with a message that goes beyond the simple recall of a personal event. We find parallel texts in other writings by Don Bosco – the lives of Dominic Savio and Francis Besucco –, but there the focus is on the exemplary nature of the boys concerned. Here the emphasis is on the formative role played by his mother, who becomes a symbol of personal accompaniment and Salesian spiritual conduct. Here she is setting up an educational relationship which is able to establish, through reason, religion and loving kindness, an intense flow of communication which reaches out to her son’s mind, heart and conscience. The pedagogical art borders on the terrain of spiritual mystagogy and personal testimony.

I have spent time on these events, not only because we are here where Don Bosco spent his childhood. They highlight an essential aspect of the motto Work and Temperance.

A few days ago, on 13 February, Pope Francis, meeting those who were attending a plenary meeting of the Congregation for Catholic Education, told them:

“To educate is an act of love and giving life. Love is demanding, requires that we put in our best resources, re-awaken our passion and patiently walk together with our students. The educator in the Catholic school first of all has to be competent, qualified, and at the same time rich in humanity, able to be amongst the young in a pedagogical way to foster their full human and spiritual growth. Young people need both quality teaching and values, not just spoken of but witnessed to. Consistency is an essential factor in educating the young. Consistency! There is no growth, no education without being consistent: consistency, testimony”.

It is precisely this horizon of meaning, the semantic framework in which we need to locate any consideration of the Salesian “emblem”: Work and temperance will make the Congregation flourish. Our Saint’s insistence is not only to be interpreted from the point of view of the ascetics of consecrated life, but also from the point of view of mission. This is what requires tireless work and temperance. We Salesians are to be hardworking and temperate as Don Bosco was, in the context of our vocation as educators of the young. It is for them that we are consecrated to God through vows and live in fraternal communities. It is pastoral zeal, our love for “the salvation of souls” that makes us become hard-working and temperate…

This direction of Don Bosco’s is already to be found in the spiritual programme he laid down for himself in preparing for his priestly ordination: “Suffer, work, be humble always and in everything when saving souls is at stake”⁵. In the three years he spent at the Pastoral Institute, his pastoral zeal became stronger. At the same time his perspective of “salvation” became broader, more all-embracing. Pastoral activity was allied with concern for education and social assistance, all of which required more energy and availability, with inevitable consequence for personal life and time management.

In the years that followed, even when he had developed a personal charismatic dimension and a clear approach to things, he would continue to firmly maintain the reference points he had picked up while at the Pastoral Institute. From Cafasso Don Bosco learned to be the pastor who was in love with God and warmly dedicated to his neighbour, ready for any sacrifice while carrying out what had been entrusted to him, just as the Redeemer did, that of “spreading, setting the divine flame alight more and more on earth: ignem veni mittere in terram, et quid volo nisi ut accendatur?”. The pastor, Fr Cafasso used say, has the task of “blowing on, stoking this fire, so that it spreads, extends, sets for as much as possible to the face of the earth”⁶.

At his teacher’s funeral, Don Bosco described his manifold, tireless pastoral activity: “His ardent charity inspired him to heroic courage”⁷. And one of the secrets of such pastoral fruitfulness shows up in his ascetic commitment⁸. “It was a familiar and frequent saying of his, especially in moral lectures: blessed is the priest who consumes his life for the good of souls, but especially blessed is the one who dies working for the glory of God; he will certainly receive a great reward from the Supreme Master for whom he works”⁹.

This charitable and apostolic energy, translated into life choices, attitudes of detachment from self and sacrificial availability, fervent and intelligent hard work, was the main driving force at the Oratory. Don Bosco made it his programme of life: Da mihi animas, caetera tolle. He taught it to Dominic Savio as a way special way to spiritual perfection; he pointed it out to his Salesians as the purpose of the Congregation: “The purpose of this Society,” he wrote around 1858-59 in one of the early drafts of the Salesian Constitutions “is to bring its members together, clerics and lay, so they may become perfect by imitating the virtues of our Divine Saviour, especially in love for poor young people”¹⁰.

Again it is the Memoirs of the Oratory which offer us the clue to understanding the inseparable connection between the Salesian mission, confidence in God, ascetics and hard work.

Faced with the need to choose between serving in Barolo’s work or the Oratory, Don Bosco had no doubt: “I've thought it over already, My Lady Marchioness. My life is consecrated to the good of young people. I thank you for the offers you're making me, but I can't turn back from the path which Divine Providence has traced out for me.”¹¹.

Those who were helping him thought it a silly choice: what could he do without financial resources? “Poor Don Bosco”, Borel cried, “his mind has flipped”¹². His health was seriously affected by too much work. The Marchioness wrote to Fr Borel:

“Both the Superior at the Refuge and I have seen that his health is not allowing him to work. You will recall how many time I have asked him to look after his health and allow himself some rest etc. etc. He took no notice; He said that priests had to work etc. Don Bosco’s health got worse up until when I left for Rome; meanwhile he was working, got sick, was spitting blood …. I was prepared to continue letting Don Bosco have his stipend so long as he did no more, and I am ready to keep to my word. Do you, Father, think that hearing confession, encouraging hundreds of boys is doing nothing?”¹³.

Don Bosco could see the situation but felt lost: alone, abandoned by his helpers, “my energy gone, my health undermined, with no idea where I could gather my boys in the future”¹⁴. But he did not stop. And a few weeks later his health collapsed on him and he was at death’s door.

After his convalescence he decided to go back to his boys. He suggested his mother come with him: “If you think such a move is God's will, I'm ready to go right now” she told him. Once they had set up the Oratory home at Valdocco which was firstly just a place for educational and pastoral activities, it became a community of life. Telling us about this Don Bosco draws our attention to four spiritual attitudes.

The first is readiness to promptly, generously do God’s will, and this urges us to leave aside the thought of a peaceful life: “My mother made a great sacrifice. At home, even though we were not well off, she was in charge of everything, everyone loved her, and to young and old she was a queen”.

The second was trusting themselves unconditionally to Providence, who helped them detach themselves from material goods and just keep what helped their mission: “But how were we to live? What were we to eat? How could we pay the rent and supply the needs of the many children who constantly asked for bread, shoes, clothes, or shirts, which they needed to go to work? From home we had brought some wine, corn, beans, wheat, and so forth”.

The third attitude was detachment from human affections, even the most sacred ones, symbolically expressed through Margaret’s choice to sacrifice her wedding trousseau: “which up to then she had jealously preserved intact. From some of her dresses we made chasubles; from the linen we made amices, purificators, surplices, albs, and altar cloths …. My mother also had a little gold necklace and some rings; they were quickly sold to buy braid and trimmings for the sacred vestments.”. This separation from things that were dear to her, reminding her of a happy marriage, and all for the needs of the Oratory, takes on the meaning of unconditional consecration to the mission with a free heart.

And the fourth attitude is the poverty of spirit which transformed their efforts and privations into beatitude and joy: “My mother was always in good humour. One evening, she laughingly sang to me: Woe to the world if it should learn We're just penniless strangers”¹⁵.