1988: AN INVITATION TO A SPECIAL RENEWAL OF PROFESSION

50 years of salesian life - Religious profession and the turning point of the Council - The laborious search for identity - A further look at the holiness of Don Bosco - The test of his spiritual School - The spirit of Don Bosco in the perspective of ‘88 - Kinds of reflection to promote - Objectives of salesian sanctity - Conclusion.

Rome, 1 September 1986

My dear confreres,

I am writing to you on the day which is the anniversary of my first religious profession. 50 years have gone by since that date! Just half of the 100 years we are preparing to celebrate in ‘88. I finished my novitiate two years after Don Bosco’s canonization and I am keeping the Golden Jubilee of my profession a couple of years before the centenary celebrations of his death: a period of time sufficiently long and significant to prompt some reflections on salesian experience.

Profession was for me the beginning of a concrete way of following Christ, of an apostolic commitment in the Church, of predilection for the young, of a missionary inculturation overseas and of a growing awareness of the salesian identity in a plurality of cultures. It made possible a kind of unforeseen adventure impossible to program which, when the half-century is looked at with the eyes of faith, manifest the creative presence of the Spirit, a sharing in the saving mission of the Son and the daily provision of the infinite mercy of the Father.