THERE IS STILL GOOD GROUND WHERE THE SEED CAN FALL

- Introduction. - 150 years since Bartholomew Garelli. - A pressing appeal of the GC23: faith and vocation. - The new perspective of youth pastoral work. - Challenges of the present day. - Reawakening of transcendent values and processes to be developed. - Communities with ideas. -Making the journey of faith something personal. - Fostering experiences that develop maturity . Knowing how to call and follow up. - Conclusion: those who bear the primary responsibility

Rome, Solemnity of Mary Immaculate 8 December 1991

My dear confreres,

My cordial greetings to you, together with those of the members of the General Council. Some weeks ago we came back from the Holy Land where we made a special annual retreat and were able to live a deep experience contemplating the history of salvation.

We were able also to celebrate the centenary of Salesian work in Palestine with our well-deserving Salesian confreres and the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, of those provinces which have been so sorely tried. We prayed for all our communities and for every single confrere, as we became absor­bed with Mary and Joseph in the mystery of the In­carnation and felt ourselves involved in the Pass­over events of the passion and death of Jesus, his resurrection and the Pentecostal gift of the Spirit.

We came back with Christ in the forefront of our minds and a renewed determination to commit ourselves to the fulfillment of his mission in history.

With what great joy would our father Don Bosco have contemplated so ardent an experience in the land of the Holy Family and the Apostles, if on his visits to Rome he had already shown such interest in the witness of the early Christian mar­tyrs and the tomb of St Peter. His first successor, Blessed Michael Rua, went twice on pilgrimage to the Holy Land (in 1895 and 1908) as an expression of gratitude and in search of a sure stimulus for the Congregation's future.

We too felt ourselves in the Holy Land as repre­sentatives of Don Bosco's whole Family. The con­ferring on the Rector Major and Mother General of honorary citizenship of Bethlehem was a symbolic gesture which brings all of us more closely together with the Lord's davidical roots. For my own part I asked for the Congregation in the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem the gift of being able to bring about an efficacious renewal in the vocational dimension of our pastoral work.

The Holy Land is the home of the richest and best documented story of vocations. God gave pre­ference to this region when taking on his human experience. He called many collaborators who dif­fered widely one from another: patriarchs, leaders, prophets, judges, kings, priests, champions, men and women for specific missions. He called them at all ages, from the mother's womb (as John the Baptist) or in the fullness of manhood (like the twelve Apostles and Saul of Tarsus).

It was exhilarating at Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem, to meditate on our Lord's exhortation: the harvest is rich but the laborers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest insistently to send out laborers to his harvest.¹ It is inspiring to think that Jesus himself is the first of the workers in the vine­yard, looking always for collaborators; he it is who taught us in the parable of the sower that some of the seed fell on good ground and bore fruit. We need to realize that throughout the centuries, and therefore also in our own day, there is still good ground where the seed sown by the Lord, who is always alive and active in his Church, can germin­ate and bear fruit.