KNOWING DON BOSCO

PASCUAL CHÁVEZ VILLANUEVA

THE FIRE HAS TO SPREAD

This description of the early years of the Oratory is quite moving: «He had also other chores to do. Since he did not think it advisable to hire domestics, he and his mother did all the household work. Mamma Margaret managed the kitchen, saw to the wash and mended the linen and the boys’ clothes. Don Bosco handled the many other chores. In those early years he lived the life of the boys, and unless he was out , he did any kind of work. In the morning he saw to it that the boys washed properly. He combed the hair of the smaller ones gave all of them haircuts, cleaned their suits, made some beds and swept the rooms and the little chapel. Mamma Margaret lit the fire, while he drew the water from the well and sifted the cornflour and the rice. Sometimes he shelled beans and pealed potatoes, Often, too, he set the table and washed dishes and kitchen utensils as well as the copper cooking pots which some kind neighbour occasionally loaned to him. When necessary he made and repaired benches and chopped wood.

To save on clothing expenses, he cut and stitched trousers, underwear and jackets. With his mother’s help he could make a boy’s suit in a couple of hours. » (Biographical Memoirs III, 254).

History tells us how Don Bosco began with boys he met in the ’40s, most of them migrants, abandoned to themselves. His first contacts are mainly pastoral, but soon they extend to charitable activities, providing assistance, education and all-round formation, in order to respond to all their needs, material and spiritual, temporal and eternal. The “fire of love” which urged him on to work for the “salvation of souls,” guided him towards a saving activity that was practical, religious and at the same time civil and moral.

The “segment” of hope

In 1849, Don Bosco had an Official Church Notice printed in which he wrote: «Youth is the segment of society upon which we build our hopes for the present and for the future; it warrants our closest attention. If young people are educated properly, we have moral order; if not vice and disorder prevail. Religion alone can initiate and achieve a true education” (Biographical Memoirs III, 425).

While he is offering the boys an all-round education to make them «good Christians and upright citizens», he is aiming at the regeneration of society and of culture. His approach is not that of the philosophers or ideologists. Don Bosco is not a thinker nor a revolutionary, but an educator. He begins to respond to the immediate needs of the boys he meets. In this way he moves on from the catechism to the festive Oratory, then to the “attached house” with workshops and grammar school, to the apostolate of the press, to the founding of the Salesian Society and that of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, to the opening of Colleges and Homes outside Turin, to the missions, to the Union of Cooperators, to the care of the vocations of youths and adults…

The mind and the heart

With time and the changed social conditions, the idea of “poor and abandoned youth” expands to embrace ever wider sections. To the economic poverty and educational abandonment of the boys he welcomed in the early years, was added the awareness of other forms of poverty: affective, educational, social, cultural, in values, moral, religious, spiritual… Between 1841 and 1888 world society changed under the pressures of progress, of commerce, of industry, of popular liberation, of ideologies, of laws, of political and nationalistic ambitions, of colonialism, of migration. Poor and abandoned youth increased in numbers at all levels and in all parts of the world. To “save” these young people catechism and a Sunday pastoral ministry is not enough: what is necessary is an all-round formation, which impacts on minds and hearts.

A structured project

Don Bosco broadens his horizons, formulates proposals, extends the sphere of his activities. The festive Oratory remains the basic model, but it is no longer enough. To reach an ever growing number of young people and to give them the means of salvation and of education in the new circumstances, he takes on ever greater enterprises, taking it in his stride he responds above all to the demand for scholastic and vocational training. The simple practical approach to education of the first years and the family way of running the house are re-thought and a more systematic plan suited to the new works which brings together former experiences and new needs formulated: the ’70s and ’80s see Don Bosco reflecting and producing documents of considerable pedagogical value. The organisation of the works also needed a more informed regulation: 1877 saw the printing of the Regulations for the externs and those for the Houses (cf OE XXIX), which are real educative and pastoral plans adapted to complex works and varied educative communities.

Like yeast in the world

In the meantime, at ecclesial level, there was emerging a new kind of believer, an involved active witness, who was looking for a spirituality tailored to his mission in the world, suitable formation and pastoral procedures. This too urges Don Bosco to act: from a concern to form good Christians and upright citizens he moves on to a more ambitious aim: it is also necessary to prepare people for a charitable and apostolic mission which offers a witness to society. The talks he gave reported in the Bollettino during the’80 clearly show this opening up. The Cooperators and the Past Pupils are now seen from this actively engaged perspective.