COMING TO KNOW DON BOSCO

PASCUAL CHÁVEZ VILLANUEVA

The President of the United States, Barack Obama, on a visit to Brazil on 19 and 20 March 2011 to extend and optimise political and commercial relations between the two countries, in an address to business men recalled Don Bosco’s dream about the city of Brasilia.

In concluding his address which lasted about twenty minutes, Obama referring to Don Bosco’s dream said: ““Brasilia is a young city -- it will turn 51 next month.  But it began as a dream more than a century ago.  In 1883, Dom Bosco, Brasilia’s patron saint, had a vision that one day, a capital city of a great nation would be built between the 15th and 20th parallels.  It would be a model for the future and ensure that opportunity was the birthright of every Brazilian.”

A SMALL DARK MAP OF THE WORLD

The most poignant object in Don Bosco’s rooms at Valdocco is a small globe of the world dark and rather approximate. It is hard to make out the frontiers between the countries and the world is strangely fused together in a compact whole.

“Young Michael Rua often heard him exclaim, «Oh how much good I could do if only I had twelve priests at my disposal! I would send them out to preach our holy Faith not only in the churches, but in the streets as well!» Whenever he glanced at a world map he would heave a deep sigh at seeing so many regions still lying in the shadow of spiritual death, and he would eagerly long for the day he could carry the light of the Gospel to places not opened up by missionaries” (Biographical Memoirs III, 383).

The same apostolic zeal acquired at the school of Cafasso, which led Don Bosco to identify as his field of action the world of poor and abandoned youth, will gradually be the basis for the decision to open the Salesian Family to the missions ad gentes. Don Rua repeated it: «It was this need to save souls that made him think the old world was too narrow and led him to send his sons to the far off Missions in America» (BS 21 [1897] 4).

In his years at the Ecclesiastical College, influenced by his reading about the missions, DB had fondly dreamed of joining the Oblates of Mary Immaculate for the missions among the Indians in North America. He was an avid reader of the Annali della Propagazione della fede from 1848. But the decisive factor in accelerating the development of the missionary vocation of the young Congregation came with the Vatican Council I (1869-70): many bishops from America, Africa and Asia, taking advantage of their coming to enlist clergy and sisters; they made contact with Don Bosco, visited Valdocco and made suggestions about foundations. He saw in this a sign of God’s will and was enthusiastic. It is in this context 1871/72 that the first missionary dream finds its place.

«I seemed to be in a wild region I had never seen before, an immense untilled plain, unbroken by hills or mountains, except at the farthest end where I could see the outline of jagged mountains … Then I saw a small band of other missionaries, led by a number of young boys, advance cheerfully toward those savages. I feared for them, thinking: They are walking to their death. I went to meet them: they were clerics and priests. – When I looked closely at them I recognised them as our Salesians. I personally knew only those in front, but I could see that the others too were Salesians.»

Influenced by the spirit of his century, he thought of the missions in a stricter sense, in partibus infidelium, and in a more romantic sense: among cruel and savage peoples. His vision of the Church as Catholic, sent to all peoples, also played an important role, and his perception of the Salesian vocation as a gift from God to the young of the whole world, as well as anti-protestant concerns. The principles of missionology in those days were of the transforming leaven, of the struggle of conquest, of evangelical witness even to martyrdom. The ’Euntes in mundum universum’ in his ears was like a juridical-ecclesial mandate, for this reason he sent his missionaries to Rome to receive the Pope’s blessing.

THE VANGUARD OF A GREAT ARMY

Among the alternatives, the practicalities/practical nature of it led him to prefer the Argentina proposal/option: thousands of immigrants were heading there and his missionaries would not find themselves isolated; there was a civil society there ready to support the work; and there too were the “savages” of his dreams. The letters and news from Cagliero and the others about the real Patagonia would have radically altered the romantic vision of Don Bosco, always ready to adapt himself to circumstances and to see the voice of the Lord in them. The strategy changed: the founding of works like Valdocco (colleges, parishes and oratories), which would be places of formation for the transformation of the new nations of Latin America and from there set out for the missionary service in the missions among the native peoples.

In this way the traditional model of the mission updated with elements taken from the charism of the oratory, which gave great importance to the education and care of the young. Even the organisational aspects changed: the Salesian missionaries were not only witnesses and apostles who left everything to proclaim the Gospel; like the top of an iceberg, like the vanguard of a great army, they felt that there were representing the whole Salesian Family which was supporting them spiritually and materially, and which shared their joys and sorrows, their successes and difficulties.

Don Rua reminded the Cooperators: «The Salesians and the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians like the hosts of an army in the field will do their part, placing at the service of God and of their neighbour their wills, their health, their lives; the Cooperators on their part will do what good fathers and mothers of families do for their children when they go to war.» (BS 14 [1890] pp. 4-5).

The letters of the missionaries published in the Bulletin spoke about every particular detail, every project, every achievement, every success, every suffering, every difficulty. Everyone could know about and share in the apostolic labours, enjoy them, be proud of them, suffer with all of them, support them with their prayers, collaborate financially. And the missionaries, who felt themselves part of the great family of DB, appreciated, supported, encouraged and loved, know how to plant in an effective way the Salesian charism in every part of the world.