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Newsletter for Salesian Missionary Animation
A Publication of the Missions Sector for the Salesian Communities and Friends of the Salesian Missions
D ear friends,
In places where
schools are on holidays, we
have seen in recent weeks a
real tsunami of young volun-
teers. Not a few discover or
rediscover the meaning of
their lives, and even their
own vocation, through the
Salesian missionary volunteer
service. In fact Pope Francis
states in his message for
World Mission Sunday 2015:
“I appeal in particular to
young people, who are
capable of courageous
witness and generous deeds,
even when these are
countercultural: Do not allow
others to rob you of the
ideal of a true mission.”
These are the young people
Don Bosco dreams of today!
Young people who are ready
to lose everything to gain the
best, that “one thing neces-
sary” (Lk 10, 41). Educators
of vast horizons plus gener-
ous young people: no doubt
this is a winning formula.
Indeed this is what Salesian
youth volunteer service is all
about!
Fr. Guillermo Basañes SDB
Councillor for the Missions
S
L “P #$ % & S% % ' M ' ”
A s a Congregation which goes forth in a
Church without frontiers and whose doors
are wide open (Evangelii Gaudium, 20-24,
46, 210), this missionary re-reading is synthesised in
the need for every Salesian to rediscover the missio-
nary dimension of his Salesian vocation in order to
reach out to others, and above all towards new fron-
tiers and existential peripheries [CG27,22]. This de-
mands overcoming our ‘self-referentiality’and the
lack of missionary boldness [CG27,2, 7] which is seen
in the feeling of fatigue, tension, fragmentation,
inefficiency and burnout [CG27,27]. To this end, it is
necessary to move from a life marked by a middle
class lifestyle to one that is missionary and prophetic
[CG27,74.1] and live our Salesian life permanently in
a state of mission as disciple missionaries(Evangelii
Gaudium, 24, 25). Here we recall the statement of
St. John Paul II: “All renewal in the Church must have
mission as its goal if it is not to fall prey to a kind of
ecclesial introversion”(John Paul II, Ecclesia in
Oceania, 19).
It is especially crucial that Salesians are helped
to understand that today mission cannot be seen only
in geographic or unidirectional terms. Mission is pri-
marily the proclamation of Jesus Christ in three inter-
penetrating contexts, where either the mission ad
gentes, ordinary pastoral activity or new evangelisa-
tion is required (John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, 33-
34).
In the light of Project Europe it is essential to help all
Salesians to appreciate the multidirectional movement of mis-
sionaries from all continents to all continents as a concrete
sign of the fruitfulness of the missio ad gentes (Benedict XVI,
Africae Munus, 167). In this new context, the Sector for the
Missions continues to play a role in ensuring, coordinating and
guiding missionary options [CG27,43] on the new frontiers and
in existential peripheries and in promoting the missionary pro-
jects of the Congregation [CG27,75.5]. Through this service it
would become the “sentinel of the new frontiers” for the Con-
gregation.
