The post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consecrata of the Holy Father John Paul II on Consecrated Life and its mission in the Church and in the world devotes the fourth part of the first chapter, entitled Confessio Trinitatis, to the question of the call of consecrated persons to holiness, the fruit of the living presence of the Spirit’s action throughout the history of the Church.¹

Sanctitatis Spiritu ducti,² consecrated persons have the task of courageously re-proposing the holiness of the founders and foundresses as a response to the signs of the emerging times in today’s world.³

In this context, two paragraphs are dedicated to the exhortation to fidelity to the charism of the founder which, ultimately, must take the steps of an increasingly full conformation to the Lord;⁴ the next paragraph, entitled Precatio et ascesis, then indicates that it is in the silence of adoration before the infinite transcendence of God that is the only “place” where this call to holiness can be accepted and cultivated:

Recipitur ad sanctitatem vocatio atque percoli potest tantummodo in adorationis silentio coram infinita Dei transcendentia: “Fatendum est nos omnes hoc silentio indigere, adorata praesentia imbuto… Omnibus nempe, credentibus et non credentibus, discendum est silentium, quo Alter sinatur loqui, quando et quomodo volet, nobis vero verbum illud intellegere liceat”.⁵ Re autem ipsa permagnam hoc prae se fert fidelitatem liturgicae precationi atque privatae, spatiis orationi mentali contemplationique destinatis, recessibus menstruis nec non spiritalibus exercitationibus.⁶

This consideration of the Holy Father, John Paul II, is placed “before” any distinction between institutes of active life and contemplative life.

Many other pronouncements of the magisterium on religious life show the same awareness.⁷ The very mission of the Church, in which both active and contemplative religious participate in a particular way, does not consist in an activity of external life, but is the very mission of Christ who, in obedience to the Father, continues to offer himself for the life of the world.⁸

Prius enim quam missio ad exteriora opera sese describant – the post-synodal Exhortation again states in this regard – iam explicatur in Christo mundo proponendo per personalem testificationem inter homines. Haec quidem est provocatio, hoc principale vitae consacratae officium! Quo amplius quis sinit se Christo configurari, tanto magis Illum praesentem refert operantemque in mundo ad hominum salutem.⁹

This spiritual worship that has the Eucharistic celebration as its source and culmination finds the precondition for authentic participation in adoring silence, in mental prayer.¹⁰ Already in 1966, Paul VI stated in the norms for implementing the Council decree for religious, Perfectae Caritatis:

Quo intimius ac fructuosius religiosi sacrosanctum Eucharistiae mysterium et publicam Ecclesiae orationem participent, ac tota spiritualis eorum vita abundantius nutriatur, prae multitudinem precum amplior locus orationi mentali tribuatur, servatis tamen piis exercitiis communiter in Ecclesia receptis, necnon debita adhibita cura ut sodales in vita spirituali ducenda diligenter instruantur.¹¹

A certain contrast between subjective piety and objective piety has sometimes characterised the post-conciliar theological debate.

Father Euloghio Pacho wrote about this as early as 1975, after presenting the different perspectives and terms of this debate, in the Dizionario degli Istituti di Perfezione:

Having clarified the positions and doctrines, on both sides there has been a gradual orientation towards a line of convergence…

The encyclical Mediator Dei... openly stated that there is no opposition between subjective and objective piety; that the superiority or greater dignity of liturgical prayer, the supreme norm for the others, does not imply any depreciation of the forms of prayer and piety of the Church in the modern era... In this context, the contrast between liturgical worship and intimate prayer, both personal and individual, meditative and devotional, has gradually and imperceptibly disappeared, while a better understanding has been gained of how integration at the personal and community level is possible.¹²

The awareness of the at least theoretical solution of this contrast and the conviction that, as Paul VI said, “personal religion is an indispensable condition for authentic liturgical participatio”" is one of the main prerequisites of my study.¹³

The same pontiff said in 1970:

It will be the liturgical life, well cared for, well absorbed in the consciences and habits of the Christian people that will keep the religious sense of our time, so profane and so desecrated, vigilant and operative, and that will give the Church a new springtime of religious and Christian life.

But we must at the same time complain that personal prayer is diminishing, thus threatening the liturgy itself with inner impoverishment, outward ritualism, and purely formal practice. Religious feeling itself can be lost due to the lack of a dual character indispensable to prayer: interiority and individuality. Everyone must learn to pray within themselves and by themselves. The Christian must have his or her own personal prayer. Every soul is a temple.¹⁴

The conviction that this analysis is still relevant today and, therefore, the observation that this decline in personal prayer persists and with it the risk of liturgical formalism that is produced by any loss of interiority, has been a stimulus for me to undertake research that attempts to understand more deeply the role of mental prayer in the charism of the founder of the Salesians and in the project of life he proposed for the spiritual movement that originated from him.

The bibliography on Don Bosco over the last forty years,¹⁵ in my opinion, shows a degree of imbalance between publications and articles focusing on spiritual theology and pedagogical and historical studies.¹⁶

Already in 1973 Salesian historian Fr Pietro Stella noted:

The research on the spirituality of Don Bosco and the Salesians today is perhaps not as advanced as research on the educational system. This factor must be taken into consideration by historians and anyone wishing to predict possible future developments in the Salesian movement...

Despite the circular letters of Don Bosco’s successors and the writings of Salesians such as Bishop Giacomo Costamagna, Fr Andrea Beltrami, Fr Giulio Barberis, Fr Eugenio Ceria, Fr Alberto Caviglia, it cannot be said that spiritual reflection has produced something of great prominence comparable to the works of Alfonso Rodríguez, Lallemant, Bérulle, Álvarez de Paz, Teresa d 'Ávila, Luís de la Puente, Alphonsus Liguori: works of great resonance throughout the modern age. Nor did the Salesians have theologians comparable to the greats of the mendicant orders or to Vásquez, Suárez, Molina, Lessio, de Lugo of the Jesuits in the 16th and 17th centuries. It is certain that theological and spiritual reflection in our times has a different function from that found three or four centuries ago. Nevertheless, it could be argued that the emergence or non-emergence of spiritual reflection, whether internal or contiguous to the Salesian movement, could be taken as a symptom of what the Salesian Family will be among ecclesial groups of the same type that have flourished throughout history.¹⁷

Some reaction to the abundant hagiographic literature, which is edifying but not always adequately documented, and the growing awareness of the modest originality of the spiritual production of the founder of the Salesians and his first disciples have, in my opinion, contributed to a decline in interest in research in the field of spiritual theology. The need to reflect on the educational experience has, on the contrary, encouraged the interest of scholars of pedagogy and pastoral theology.¹⁸ Furthermore, as a positive effect of the awareness of the importance of greater rigour in historical research, there has been no shortage in the publication of several critical editions and a constant effort to reconstruct the history of the founder and the founding experience, freeing it from the excesses of a supernaturalist or apologetic interpretation.

These important advances in research can encourage a documented hagiography and be an indispensable premise for research in spiritual theology, research that requires, however, to develop with its own method.

In his article Prospettive di ricerca su Don Bosco (Research Perspectives on Don Bosco) in 1990, Fr Pietro Braido, an expert in Salesian history and pedagogy, pointed out nine topics as worthy of critical study due to their particular complexity, relevance or topicality: the history of the “beginnings” of Don Bosco and his work, Don Bosco in the fabric of the local and universal church of his time, his relations with civil society and popular culture, the migrant and missions problems, the foundation of the Salesians and the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, Don Bosco the “dreamer” and miracle worker, the exploration of ecclesiastical and civil archives.¹⁹

This list would seem to confirm the loss of interest, in research, in the most characteristic issues of spiritual theology: religious life, vows, prayer, asceticism, the spiritual experience of the founder and his first disciples; these are matters which demand a continuous comparison with changing historical and ecclesial realities.

The experience of the origins must then be addressed in its entirety, without “discounts” and with the rigour of scientific research, when it comes to focusing on the charism of the founder, the special gift given by God to the founder for his religious family and for the Church.

“Accomodata renovatio vitae religiosae” the Council Fathers said in the Council’s Decree Perfectae Caritatis, “simul complectitur et continuum reditum ad omnis vitae christianae fontes primigeniamque institutorum inspirationem et aptationem ipsorum ad mutatas temporum condiciones.”²⁰

There are fundamental questions that every congregation must continue to put to its sources. Starting from the experience that the congregation is currently going through, as we will say, and returning to the sources only when seeking a kind of confirmation of current orientations, can put us at risk of reducing the charism, neglecting its consistency and its total and complex reality.²¹

This awareness motivated me to return to questioning the sources in relation to an issue I felt is relevant in the current ecclesial context and on which there are no specific studies.²²

My study therefore falls within the realm of spiritual theology and, more particularly, the history of spirituality.

Some insights from spiritual theology will therefore form my initial frame of reference; in particular, this science will provide me with the necessary contextual and semantic references in relation to the question of mental prayer and its different forms.

The goal of clarifying an aspect of a founder’s charism then represents, as we shall see, a particular hermeneutical problem.

Having assumed some general criteria for interpreting the founding charism, again from the field of spiritual theology but with the help of philosophical hermeneutical methods, I will go on to an analytical and critical study of the numerous sources, which can essentially be classified into four different categories: the published and unpublished writings of the founder, the documents that allow us to reconstruct his life and spiritual experience as well as the milieu in which both developed, the acts concerning the history of the origins of the institute and the first official “magisterium” of the fledgling congregation, and finally, the writings and historical experience of the first group of disciples.

In the next phase, the inductive method and what, in contemporary hermeneutics, is commonly called the principle of totality, will allow me to draw some conclusions in relation to the theme of this study.

This overview which encompasses the entire life of the founder, will allow me to interpret each fragment of my research in the context of his life experience. This was necessary for two main reasons:

– there is no theoretical-systematic discussion of Don Bosco on the question mental prayer in religious life;

– despite the copious amount of published and unpublished writings of the founder of the Salesians, the scholar is faced with an extreme need for autobiographical sources on his inner life; there is no spiritual diary, and in his letters Don Bosco does not indulge in personal confidences. The various written memoirs offer a chronicle of events rather than the author’s spiritual emotions. The study of the spiritual experience of the founder of the Salesians, a study that is the basis of a correct interpretation of the founding charism, must therefore make use of some indirect tools.

This latter consideration introduces, in our particular methodological approach, the help of the human sciences and, in particular, psychology. This science, which is normally an important support to the method in the study of spiritual theology, can also help us to formulate reasonable hypotheses about the inner life of the founder of the Salesians.

Finally, I note that in terms of the scientific methodology adopted, I have sought to “optimise” clarity rather than the essence, making it as easy as possible for scholars to find references, reducing acronyms and abbreviations to a minimum, repeating the title of the studies at each reference and, at the beginning of each chapter, the full citations of previously cited texts.

Before introducing the general plan of my study, it is essential to proceed with some terminological clarifications.

In the next chapter I will focus more broadly on the meaning I intend to attribute to expressions such as charism, charism of the founder, charism of foundation or founding charism, charism of the Institute and on some general criteria suited to the hermeneutics of the founder’s charism. Here, instead, I will attempt to clarify the semantic value I am attributing to the term mental prayer.

In its most common and general sense, the term prayer is specified as mental²³ in contrast to vocal. Fr Joseph De Guibert states: ‘Solet dividi oratio in vocalem et mentalem: modo generali prior habetur quando actibus internis intellectus et voluntatis iungitur externa eorum expressio per locutionem; altera vero his actibus internis absolvitur’.²⁴

Carmelite Fr Albino of the Child Jesus writes in his Compendio di Teologia Spirituale: “Prayer is called mental when it takes place in the powers of the soul without any external manifestation. Every act of faith, hope, love, every thought and spiritual affection is mental prayer, that is, an encounter with God.”²⁵ Similarly, the Dictionnaire de Spiritualité specifies: “Plus communément mental et vocal sont opposée. En réaction contre la routine et le formalisme, dès l’antiquité, nombreux sont ceux qui rappelent que le désir du coeur import plus que le bruit de la voix.”²⁶

In this more general sense, the expression mental prayer can therefore be identified with the silentius adorata praesentia imbutus in reference to John Paul II’s Orientale Lumen.²⁷

Instead, in his text Metodi di orazione mentale, Cardinale Giacomo Lercaro attributes this semantic content to the expression diffused mental prayer, which he defines as “any pious thought that has God or things related to God as its object”,²⁸ distinguishing it from formal mental prayer, which for him is “that particular exercise of spiritual life whereby we devote a certain amount of time each day or at regular intervals, to the exclusion of all other activities, to conversing with God, without the use of pre-established verbal formulas.”²⁹

This distinction of Lercaro’s allows us to focus on a narrower and more particular meaning of the expression. Alongside the more general meaning of non-vocal prayer, the expression mental prayer has been and continues to be used to indicate that particular practice of piety which consists in setting aside a specific time of the day to the exclusion of all other activities for non-vocal prayer, a practice already found in the Old Testament and in Jesus’ own prayer, then attested to by the Fathers, but probably introduced into religious life by Benedictine monasticism after the eighth century and becoming part of the constitutions of many religious orders, especially in the sixteenth century.³⁰

Mental prayer in this narrower sense is also called meditation.³¹

In the history of spirituality these two terms, meditation and mental prayer, have often been used interchangeably³² and both to indicate, according to Lercaro’s terminology, formal mental prayer, that is, a particular practice of piety. This is the meaning we find them used more often than not in the texts of the Salesian tradition; it will be the particular context, then, that will enable us to understand the semantic content of the expression.

An example could be helpful.

In the first printed text of the Costituzioni della Società di S. Francesco di Sales, definitively approved in 1874, we read, in the chapter dedicated to the pratiche di pietà (practices of piety): “Ciascheduno, oltre le orazioni vocali, farà ogni giorno non meno di mezz’ora di orazione mentale…” (In addition to vocal prayers, each person shall spend at least half an hour each day in mental prayer).³³ The context here leaves no room for doubt that the text refers to formal mental prayer.

On the other hand, in a sheet of notes by Don Bosco, dated around the end of the 1870s and used for the preaching of the first retreat of the fledgling congregation, we find written: “Vocal prayer without the intervention of the mind is like a body without a soul – Lament of the Lord: Populus hic labiis me honorat: cor autem eorum longe est a me (Mark 7: 6).”³⁴

Here, clearly, the expression mental prayer is not used in the narrow sense of a practice of piety, but in the more general sense seen above; it indicates the inner act of the intellect and will by which the person praying is called to make the vocal prayer true. It is this act, in fact, that can transform the word spoken with the lips into an inner dialogue, into prayer. It is therefore a question here of diffused mental prayer.

The context, therefore, will allow us to make the correct semantic attribution on a case-by-case basis.

1. 4.1 Some distinctions

Some further terminological clarification may be helpful before focusing on the subject of this research.

Mental (formal) prayer is commonly referred to as methodical when it uses a method.³⁵ However, we note here that in some authors, such as Lercaro, the term methodical refers rather to the regularity, daily routine, or habit of prayer; whereas to refer to the previous semantic content, it is preferable to say prayer with the aid of a method. In this case too, however, the particular context will allow us to avoid any misunderstanding.

Another useful distinction is between active or ordinary mental prayer and passive or extraordinary mental prayer, also called mystical, infused, contemplative, etc. In the first case, it is the soul that actively and positively disposes itself to communicate with God; passive mental prayer, on the other hand, is more immediately a gift of the Spirit, in which the soul participates only with a particular act of the intellect. to communicate with God; passive mental prayer, on the other hand, is more immediately a gift of the Spirit, in which the soul participates only with a particular disposition, but which does not lose its fundamental aspect of a free and unconditional gift. “The Holy Spirit”, Cardinal Lercaro says, “introduces the soul if and when he wants,without the soul being able to dispose itself except negatively by removing obstacles; in the act of prayer, God produces knowledge and love in the soul; and the soul, while acting freely, feels guided, fulfilled, and moved by a higher principle.”³⁶

Passive or extraordinary mental prayer is then often distinguished into four degrees, which correspond to the last four dwellings of the inner Castle of St Teresa of Avila: prayer of stillness, simple union, ecstasy, spiritual marriage.³⁷

A final terminological clarification can be made by distinguishing discursive mental prayer, in which reasoning, the intellect, dominates, from affective mental prayer, in which the affections and therefore the will have a predominant role.

2. 4.2 The purpose of my study

At the end of these semantic clarifications and the necessary distinctions, it remains to be asked what the real purpose of my study is. What direction is intended for investigation when referring to the role of mental prayer in Don Bosco’s founding charism?

Let me immediately say that my intention here is to take up the expression in its most general meaning, substantially the meaning which emerges from the aforementioned definition by De Guibert.³⁸ I will therefore be dealing not only with formal mental prayer, but also with any other form of prayer that actibus internis intellectus et voluntatis absolvitur.

The emphasis placed on conscious vocal prayer, the habit and education of constantly recalling the presence of God and adoring silence, the importance given to days of recollection and retreats as “privileged places” for silent personal prayer, judgement on the contemplative experience in general or on certain particular experiences or extraordinary gifts, the importance given to certain particular forms of prayer such as the visit Eucharistic adoration, night prayer and, in a special way, the consideration shown for daily meditation in the plan of religious life passed down by the founder to the fledgling Salesian congregation: all this will be the subject of my study, both in reference to Don Bosco’s spiritual experience, to his founding charism³⁹ and life of the Society of St Francis de Sales until the founder’s death.

Some might argue that an investigation in the field of the history of spirituality should rather start from the semantic content attributed in the nineteenth century to the term mental prayer.

In reality, as we have already shown through the example given earlier, the use of this term is not unambiguous even in the period we are considering, and varies from the general meaning of diffused mental prayer to the more specific meaning of formal mental prayer.

In any case, however, once the semantic landscape has been clarified according to today’s understanding, it is entirely legitimate to investigate the content thus defined in relation to a historical period in which the term a different meaning or even no meaning at all. This is what is usually done, for example, when one wants to know the ecclesiology of the First Vatican Council, the historiography of Benedetto Croce or epistemology according to Galileo Galilei. None of these terms has a semantic equivalent in the period of history covered by the study, but it is still legitimate for scholars, after clarifying the subject of their research and therefore its semantic heritage, to extend their investigation to any historical period.

More precisely, but somewhat more rhetorically, the title of my study could finally be expressed as follows: Contribution to an evaluation of the role of mental prayer, be it diffused or formal, regular or methodical, active or passive, discursive or affective ... in the founding charism of St John Bosco.

After specifying, in this first chapter of the introductory section, the specific subject of my research, I felt it was essential to clarify, in the following chapter, the general criteria I intend to follow for the hermeneutics of the founding charism.

The recent theological landscape, in fact, presents significant differences in perspective both in reference criteria and in the interpretation of the documents of the Magisterium; it therefore happens that the same terms are used with different meanings. It will therefore be essential to clarify the semantic frame of reference and to justify the choice of some hermeneutic criteria.

The central body of this study will consist of the analysis, which is developed over five different chapters.

The first four follow my chronological division of the human and spiritual experience of the founder and the history of the foundation.

The first period considered goes from the birth of the founder until the end of his formation
(1815-1844); the second covers the period from the first establishment of Salesian work to the first draft of the Constitutions (1844-1858); the third includes the entire journey up to the final approval of the Society of St Francis de Sales (1858-1874); the fourth is the period of consolidation until the death of the founder.

The first period, therefore, is the one which goes from Don Bosco’s birth to the end of his formation which, after his ordination to the priesthood (1841), continued with three years at the Diocesan Convitto Ecclesiastico in Turin.

The emergence of religious experience, education in prayer, the role of the family and environment, the content of the first catechesis received, his early spiritual friendships, the formation projects that were part of the regulations of the seminary and the Convitto and the subjective resonance they had for Don Bosco’s reflective awareness, the influence of his formators, the first retreat he made at the Santuario di Sant'Ignazio sopra Lanzo and also his first homiletic exercises: these are some of the main references that will allow us to approach the first thirty years of Don Bosco’s human and spiritual experience, years that were undoubtedly decisive from the point of view of his growth to maturity, his formation in prayer, and his apostolic orientation.

One figure in particular stands out among his formators – Saint Joseph Cafasso, who often contributed to shedding light on Don Bosco’s personal discernment and who for about twenty years, until his premature death in 1860, was his weekly confessor and spiritual director. Fr Cafasso, in whose hands Don Bosco placed “every decision [he] made, all [his] study, every activity of [his] life”, as he himself says his Memoirs of the Oratory of St Francis de Sales, would also introduce him to preaching retreats and the priestly apostolate among young people.

The second of the historical periods considered in the analytical section ends with the probable date of the first draft of the Salesian Constitutions.

It is the time of the establishment of the work of the oratories, a particularly important period for getting to know the educational atmosphere in which Don Bosco’s first young collaborators grew up, and who would sign the document which established the Society.

This latter consideration also leads us to ask about the contents of the formation of young people in prayer. The habit of constantly thinking about the presence of God, Eucharistic devotion, monthly recollections and annual retreats, education in meditation and silence, insistence on attentive vocal prayer or ejaculatory prayer: these are the “indicators” that I will try to observe, trying to reconstruct, in reference to my subject, not only Don Bosco’s thinking and his formation plan, but also some of the customs of his educational practice.

Don Bosco’s feelings about mental prayer can be understood from this analysis and, above all, from the content of the numerous biographies of young people he wrote during this period or a few years later. This will enable me to overcome the difficulties arising from the lack of a theoretical and systematic reflection, of a true and proper “treatise” on the subject.

The third chapter of the analytical section goes into the heart of the founding experience, embracing the entire iter until the final approval of the constitutions.

This was a period of maturity, a period of great fertility in literary production. From some of these writings, from unpublished notes and from his correspondence, I will try to glean further indications to reconstruct Don Bosco’s thinking on mental prayer.

With the beginning of the process of institutionalisation, the various constitutional texts become an obligatory reference point for my research; in particular, the focus is on the chapter concerning the practices of piety and formal mental prayer or meditation. The preserved manuscripts and the critical edition of the constitutions will enable me to lay the foundations for an interpretation of the constitutional text.

Another important point of reference, in relation to this third period, is the beginning of the retreat experiences for the fledgling congregation; this particular “resource” had been constantly valued by Don Bosco since the beginning of his ministry among young people. Starting in 1866, annual retreats became part of the regular practice of the Society of St Francis de Sales. This development was seen as crucial for the growth of the congregation in the following decade, when the first General Chapter of the Society was held.

The sixth chapter of my study, the fourth in the analysis section, covers the last period of the saint’s life and will allow us to approach Don Bosco’s project, now free of institutional concerns, and aimed solely at the expansion, consolidation of the Society and the formation of his men in their awareness that they were religious.

A key reference point for understanding the role given to mental prayer, and meditation in particular, is provided by the teachings of the first canonical novitiate. Other important resources will be the introduction and appendices which Don Bosco wanted, in addition to the first Italian editions of the definitively approved constitutions.

My investigation into the founding charism and model of religious life proposed by Don Bosco to the Salesian congregation will also be enriched by an analysis of some of the first biographies of deceased Salesians. Some indications emerge from the presentation, which is certainly exhortative, of these “fulfilled” lives, regarding the project of religious life proposed by Don Bosco at the beginnings of the congregation.

The first four General Chapters of the congregation were held during this last period of the founder’s life,. From the documents of the first and third Chapters, in particular, we will highlight some findings on the question of formation in meditation and retreats.

All four of these “historical” chapters of the analytical section will be accompanied by brief summaries of the main events in the history of the origins, in order to facilitate understanding of the individual elements within a broader context that will aid interpretation.

The final chapter of the analytical part, the seventh of this study, will instead be dedicated more directly to Don Bosco’s spiritual experience, as it emerges from the depositions at the cause of beatification and canonisation, and from the testimonies of some others who knew Don Bosco “closely”.

The eighth chapter is an attempt to summarise the entire section devoted to analysis.

By applying the so-called hermeneutic principle of totality, I will first try to find some constants throughout the life of the founder and to re-evaluate, in an overall view, every single fragment that emerged in the analytical section.

In the second part of the an attempt will be made to reconstruct, along essential lines, a kind of mini-treatise on formal mental prayer, starting from the elements brought together in the analysis.

The conclusion, referring to what has been said about the hermeneutics of the founding charism, will attempt to summarise some of the contributions that have emerged, with a view to evaluating the role of mental prayer in Don Bosco’s founding charism. The presentation of some possible avenues for further research and some limitations of the study will conclude the study.

Consecrated life, rooted in the examples and teachings of Christ, is a gift of God’s Holy Spirit to his Church.¹

This awareness, which frames the reflection on the evangelical counsels in a Trinitarian and ecclesial perspective and reaffirms the divine initiative in the project of life outlined by many founders, can be considered a given by now in the ecclesial Magisterium on consecrated life.²

During the Second Vatican Council, many interventions by the Council Fathers testified, in particular, to the conviction of the pneumatic origin of religious life.³ “The predominant ecclesiological point of view,” Fr Ruiz Jurado emphasises regarding the elaboration of Lumen Gentium and Perfectae Caritatis, “leads to recognising in religious life, characterised by the profession of the evangelical counsels, an effect of the initiative of the Holy Spirit through his influence on those men or women who feel called to dedicate themselves fully to evangelical perfection.”⁴

The definitive text of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, in the sixth chapter De religiosis, is expressed as follows: “The evangelical counsels of chastity dedicated to God, poverty and obedience are based upon the words and examples of the Lord. They were further commanded by the apostles and Fathers of the Church, as well as by the doctors and pastors of souls. The counsels are a divine gift, which the Church received from its Lord and which it always safeguards with the help of His grace.”⁵

This particular theological perspective, which emerges in some other texts of the Council⁶ and of the immediate post-Council,⁷ finds its foundation and its most common expressive form in the New Testament doctrine of Paul.

The Pauline term charism, in fact, expresses a special gift of divine grace given to believers by the Holy Spirit for the common good of the Church.⁸ This is a neologism probably coined by Paul himself, who uses it 16 times in his letters.⁹

It should be noted that, although the use of the term can be considered relatively recent, the profound reality that the term expresses can be considered a constant heritage of the ecclesial tradition.

In this regard, Fabio Ciardi notes:

Although the use of the term with this precise meaning is relatively recent, it expresses, in new language, a profound conviction that has always been present throughout religious life: those who are at the origin of an Order or Institute have been guided by the Spirit. Their initiative is not simply human, but the result of a divine project that the Spirit, in some way, has manifested to them.¹⁰

1. 1.1 Charism and religious life in official documentation

The term charism in relation to religious life does not appear in the official texts of the Second Vatican Council.¹¹

In fact, it was used for the first time in an official document only in 1971, in number 11 of the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelica Testificatio by Paul VI. Reiterating the need expressed by Perfectae Caritatis to combine contemplation with apostolic love, the Holy Father affirmed: “Solum hoc modo animos hominum ad veritatem amoremque divinum amplectendum erigere poteritis secundum charisma Fundatorum vestrorum, quos Deus in Ecclesia sua excitavit.”¹²

A few years later the well-known directive Mutuae Relationes, on the mutual relations between Bishops and Religious in the Church, took up the Pauline terminology and specified its content in relation to religious life.¹³

Since then, the term charism and the expressions charism of religious life, charism of the founder, founding charism, foundational charism, charism of the Institute, original charism, institutional charism, charism of a religious family have become commonly used in official documents, as well as in the Holy Father’s addresses.¹⁴ This category now seems to unify the different theological perspectives on consecrated life.¹⁵

“Difficulter quidem describitur” John Paul II said, for example in the Encyclical Redemptoris Donum in 1984 – “… immo etiam recensetur, quot variis modis personae Deo consacratae per apostolatum impleam suum erga Ecclesiam amorem. Hic semper ex peculiari illo Conditorum vestrorum dono est ortus, quod, a Deo acceptum et ab Ecclesia approbatum, totius communitatis charisma est factum. Quod donum variis respondet Ecclesiae necessitatibus et singulis mundi historiae temporibus…”¹⁶

Then in the Lineamenta of the Synod on consecrated life, the noun charism was used 67 times;¹⁷ the adjective charismatic occurs 11 times. Fr Fabio Ciardi wrote in 1993:

Perhaps no other ecclesial document concerning consecrated life has made such a massive use of the term charism. The other words used by the Council to designate consecrated life, both as a whole and in its specific forms, are almost overwhelmed by the terminology of charism. We encounter the term gift – preferred by Council documents – only fifteen times... Only 6 times does it speak of spirit to designate the specific nature of an Institute, 3 times of spirituality, 5 times of nature.¹⁸

And again, the Holy Father, on 22 March 1995 during the Wednesday audience, said:

In the Church, the Holy Spirit has always given some people the charism of being founders. It has always been the case that people who share the orientation of the founder’s consecrated life gather around him or her... The Holy Spirit has always created and fostered harmony among the members of the congregation and helped them to develop a life in common animated by charity, according to the particular orientation of the charism of the founder and his or her faithful followers.¹⁹

The Synod’s Instrumentum laboris also makes extensive use of the term; outlining, in general terms, the history of its use in ecclesial documents, it states at number 42:

The Second Vatican Council did not explicitly designate consecrated life with the term “charism”, but it recognised in it the gift attributed to celibacy and the evangelical counsels; consecrated life is the fruit of the action of the Spirit...

Paul VI spoke explicitly of the “charism of religious life... the fruit of the Holy Spirit, who is always at work within the Church” and specifically of the “charisms of founders... raised up by God within His Church”, as well as of the charisms of the various institutes (ET 11, 32).

Even richer and more articulated is the use of the term charism and its derivatives in the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consecrata of 1996. The next paragraph is about this examination; I will also try to underline the use and content of some expressions that, as we will see later, present some semantic problems.

2. 1.2 The term ‘charism’ in the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation “Vita Consecrata”

The term charisma and its plural charismata appear 72 times in the text of the Exhortation; we also find the adjectival form²⁰ charismaticus 5 times.²¹ The expressions charisma fundatoris, charisma fundans and charisma fundationis are found 9 times;²² it speaks of charisma instituti or institutorum²³ 10 times; and on 3 occasions it uses the general expression consacratae vitae charisma.²⁴

The pneumatica origin of charisms is explicitly highlighted 12 times; the ecclesiological perspective (charisms are a gift for the Church) is found 7 times;²⁵ the variety, diversity or multiplicity of charisms is underlined 17 times.²⁶²⁷

Attention and the call to fidelity to one’s own charism emerge in various ways; in addition to the expression fidelitas fundationis (or fundatoris) charismati,²⁸ but it is implicitly referred to at least another 20 times by adding the adjectives proprium, suum, singulum, ipsum, in reference to the noun charisma.²⁹ Twice the expression discretio charismatum³⁰ appears and veritas charismatum³¹ appears once. No. 97 specifically says fideles charismati suisque traditionibus.³²

This simple analysis of the terms and expressions used reveals the document’s constant concern for fidelity to the original inspiration of the founder. This attention also demonstrates an awareness of the Church’s task of safeguarding the heritage of each individual institute.

Already the Council had stated: “In ipsum Ecclesiae bonum cedit ut instituta peculiarem suam indolem ac munus habeant. Ideo fideliter agnoscantur et serventur Fundatorum spiritus propriaque proposita, necnon sanae traditiones, quae omnia cuiusque instituti patrimonium constituunt”.³³ “Competentis Ecclesiae auctoritatis est consilia evangelica interpretari, eorundem praxim legibus moderari atque stabiles inde vivendi formas canonica approbatione constituere itemque, pro parte sua, curare ut instituta secundum spiritum fundatorum et sanas traditiones crescant et floreant”.³⁴

The consensus on the semantic value of the term charism and the judgement of its appropriateness for highlighting the pneumatological and ecclesial aspect of consecrated life can be considered general in theological discussion today. On the other hand, the use that theologians make of some of the expressions already encountered in ecclesial documents, is more varied and articulated.³⁵

“These same expressions”, Giancarlo Rocca rightly points out,“have been used with different meanings according to the different authors, so the charism of founder is the charism of the founder, or the charism of foundation, (founding charism), while for others the charism of the founder is the charism of the institute, and for others the charism of the institute is its mission or end…”³⁶

This semantic confusion makes it necessary for anyone wishing to express an opinion on this matter to first provide an explicatio terminorum. The real problem, however, is the hermeneutics of ecclesiastical documents, which are sometimes read on the basis of different semantic references, and the different theological perspectives underlying some of these choices.³⁷ Ultimately, the real question shifts to the relationship between renewal and fidelity to the founder’s charism and the hermeneutic process for determining the proprium of each religious family; a process that is difficult to objectify, partly due to the significant historical and charismatic differences between the various founders.³⁸

In constructing my particular lexicon, I will also try to bring out some of these different theological opinions.

1. 2.1 Charism of the founder

In my view, it is the personal and non-transferable gift that a man or woman receives from the Holy Spirit and which places them at the origin of a religious family; it is the specific gift that was given to the founder or foundress to found an Institute. “This inspiration,” Fr Regamey says, “involves the perception, through a particular historical situation, of a need of the Church to which the institute must respond with its evangelical life and its ministries.”³⁹

Some authors, such as Fabio Ciardi,⁴⁰ prefer to distinguish the expression charism of the founder from charism of founder [founder’s charism, we might say in English]; in the latter case the preposition⁴¹ of would be declarative; it would specify the type of charism to which one wants to refer and not the “content” of the same.

I do not see much point in multiplying distinctions, especially if they add nothing to the theological discourse; to distinguish the charism of founder from the charism of the founder means believing one can imagine a form in this case without the corresponding content.

The charism of founder, or founding charism is, in fact, a specific, concrete gift oriented to a particular foundation; here as elsewhere it seems to me that it is the theological content of the term charism and, therefore, its divine origin that should be emphasised.⁴² God does not give a man or a woman the gift of being a founder except in view of ‘that’ particular foundation.

The semantic content of these expressions is different in some of what the Salesian priest Fr Joseph Aubry wrote. In fact, he distinguished the charism of founder, which concerns his person and is therefore incommunicable, from the charism of the founder that affects the content of his spiritual experience passed on to his disciples.⁴³

Here, the distinction is not merely formal but also substantive. In my definition, in fact, I have stressed the fact that the charism of the founder is a personal gift for us, since this is the characteristic of all God’s gifts, and for this reason not transferable, even if its effects and the prospect of good that derives from it are permanent for the Institute and for the Church.

The specification of the for me is a kind of absolute possessive; it implies reference to a particular founder of a particular institute. The singular charism, then, does not leave room for potential misunderstandings; we are not talking here about the charisms of the founder, which represent the set of personal gifts of nature and grace that characterise that person’s experience as a human being and a believer, but of that particular gift that was given to the individual in view of and in relation to the task received of giving rise to a new religious family.

The positions of the various authors are different⁴⁴ and, in some cases, perhaps not entirely consistent.⁴⁵ In any case, beyond the different semantic choices, they can indicate a different theological approach to the hermeneutics of the founder’s charism and, therefore, give rise to different perceptions of the mandate that the Church gives to each religious family to live in fidelity to itself.

To better clarify my particular perspective, we can look at some other expressions used by the ecclesial Magisterium or in reflection by theologians.

2. 2.2 Collective or permanent charism of the institute

For me the founder’s charism is that personal gift which, since it is at the origin of the experience of foundation, outlines the essential spiritual features that characterise the Institute’s identity, its mission in the Church, and its particular spirituality.

Giancarlo Ghirlanda introduced the expression “collective charism of the institute” into theological reflection. He states:

At the origin of each institute is the charism of the founder, which includes personal charisms and the collective charism of founder or foundress. Although personal charisms influence the collective charism of the founder in some way, they do not bind the members of the institute because they do not belong to it, being strictly personal, special and often extraordinary charisms. The collective charism of founder, on the other hand, even if it conforms to personal charisms, is by its nature shared with others.⁴⁶

The collective charism of the institute would therefore be a gift given by God to an institution or a group; this, in my opinion, is difficult to understand on a theological level and sometimes contradicted by the history of some foundations that have had internal difficulties and controversies from the very beginning.⁴⁷

This uncertainty is evident in the words of Fr Ruiz Jurado when he states: “Theologians are inclined to think that charisms, as gifts of the Spirit, are granted to specific individuals and not to institutions, although they can be attributed to institutions in a different sense than to the founder. This way of thinking about them seems more in line with the New Testament doctrine of charisms and with the nature of the ‘experience of the Spirit’ with which the charism of the founders is identified in Mutuae Relationes. It would seem that the experience of the Spirit should be attributed to people and not to institutions as such.”⁴⁸

Laurier Labonté, who in 1976 suggested replacing the expression charisme de l 'institut with souci primordial de l 'institut,⁴⁹ also seems to be of this opinion. As early as 1970, Fr De Candido denounced the idea that a person’s charism could be inherited by an institution as theological abuse, attributing the inability to dialogue that sometimes characterises relations between religious, to this fundamental error.⁵⁰

A possible solution to the controversy seems to me to be contained in an attempt by Giancarlo Rocca to regulate the vocabulary. He suggested different levels of interpretation of the term charism: in a narrow sense the term should refer only to the founder, while in a broad sense it could also refer to the institute. “When applied to the explicit function of founding an institute,” he says, “charism is taken in its primordial meaning of a particular, personal, incommunicable gift granted by God to a person for the good of the Church. When applied to the institute, it becomes synonymous with end-of-mission-apostolic task, that is, it becomes a content, a programme.”⁵¹

The expression charism of the Institute, then, can be read in the broad, analogical sense; but in my opinion we must no forget that in a proper sense it refers to the gift that is given to the founder for the Institute and for the good of the Church, a gift that must be constantly safeguarded, more deeply understood and developed⁵² in continuity with his founding experience.

In this sense, I believe we should use all the expressions that refer to particular charisms, such as the Franciscan charism, or the Salesian charism or the Lasallian charism; in the strict sense they refer to the gift made to Francis, John Bosco, John Baptist de la Salle for, in view of, for the benefit of the foundation of their respective institutes and the Church. In current language, then, they generally refer to the spirit, disposition, nature, and mission of the religious family, but they must recall the responsibility that these institutes have to welcome the gift made to the founder for the institute and to grow in continuity with that.

Even the use of the expression charism of the Institute, in some cases, may raise some concerns. For some the wording of the institute seems to refer indistinctly to the period of its origins; for others it refers to the charism in its historical development; for still others it is the charism of the institute today, as it is realised in the changing conditions of the times by its followers.

All this risks “blurring” the necessary reference to the charism of the founder as the only criterion for verifying the fidelity of an institution to the task it is called to carry out in the Church. Distinguishing the charism of the Institute from the charism of the founder, emphasising the possibility of its development, while failing to stress more strongly the need for continuity, can give rise to what Fabio Ciardi condemns as “the danger of replacing the founder”.⁵³

For example, Fr Mario Midali, who distinguishes the founding charism from the development of the original charism and from the charism of the Institute61, writes: “The charismatic experience of the origins⁵⁴ is destined to endure throughout history, to develop and progress, or else face decline and even disappearance from history’s stage.”⁵⁵ And in another, less recent study, he wrote:

The charism of an Institute is necessarily linked to the life and activity of all those who, starting with the founder, have shared its adventure following the call of the Holy Spirit. It cannot therefore be limited to a single period, even if as privileged as that of the origins, and even less restricted to those most directly responsible for the leadership of the respective religious community. It covers the entire span of its history and is present in all its members, certainly in different forms according to the human talents and spiritual gifts of each one, and in proportion to each one’s correspondence to the vocation received.”⁵⁶

Along the same lines, the reflection of another Salesian, Fr Joseph Aubry, who in one of his last theological studies on consecrated life, in a paragraph entitled The “charism of the founder” developed in the “charism of the institute” (ET 32), wrote:

The Church today has strongly asked each institute for two things. The first: reject all genericism, rediscover and re-evaluate its vocation and identity... How? By clarifying its ‘heritage’, which includes ‘its own spirit and intentions’, but also the ‘healthy traditions’ of its history.

Secondly, not to block its charism, either in the past or in the present, which is not something to be preserved but a living reality inherent in the consciousness and heart of all members and is to be translated into meaningful choices. We must therefore accept the effort to re-actualise in the Church and the world today the gift made to the founder....

The Church invites every institute to ‘convert to the Holy Spirit’, to rediscover something of the boldest creativity of the founder, without fear of risk. This undertaking, as difficult as it is essential, is entrusted to all members united in deep communion (all together are the depositories and bearers of the charism), open to communion with other charismatic families... and attentive to what ‘the Spirit is saying to the Churches’ today.⁵⁷

In number 32 of Evangelica Testificatio, to which Fr Aubry refers, we recognise, however, a different concern on the part of the Magisterium: “Nimia enim cupiditas cuiusdam flexibilis mobilitatis et liberae facultatis effectricis inducere possunt, ut rigiditas accusetur etiam minima pars constantis ordinis in consuetudinibus servandis, quam vita Communitatis et sodalium perfectio pro more expostulant. Mentes intemperanter incitatae, quae ad caritatem fraternam provocant vel ad ea, quae afflatu Spiritus Sancti insinuari putantur, Instituta ad interitum possunt perducere.”⁵⁸

Here, as elsewhere, the real concern of the Magisterium seems to be “the excessive desire for flexibility and creative spontaneity” that can “lead institutions to collapse”.

Regarding the distinction introduced by Midali, Fr Ruiz Jurado says: “We tried to distinguish between the charism of the founder and the charism of the institute in other ways by establishing the difference between the charism of the origins of the Institute and the current one. I am of the opinion that no valid basis can be found for this differentiation in the guidelines of the Magisterium.”⁵⁹

Fr Ruiz Jurado’s position seems to me to be completely acceptable in the light of the concern, constantly demonstrated by the Church’s Magisterium, for a significant return to the sources and to the primitive spirit of the institutes,⁶⁰ a criterion that guarantees the authenticity of any attempt to reformulate the charism⁶¹ and the very possibility of ratification, by the Church, of any proposal to change the constitutional dictate formulated by the founder.⁶²

Across the broad spectrum of theological opinions, however, there is no lack of some even more extreme positions. John C. Futrell, for example, said in 1971: “The charism of the founder of any religious community is this charism as it lived now”.⁶³

And the reply from Giancarlo Rocca:

If we accept that the “charism of the institute” is that of the institute as it lives today, then its current position is entirely correct. In this case, the institute would have its own charism that would develop according to the times and places and today’s would certainly be correct. To say that today’s is the correct charism of the institute is not, however, a methodologically sustainable position (in practice, the correct charism would always be the last, and the ways of the past could all be wrong)...

If we accept evolution and development with a view to re-acculturation, it is proposed that the charism of the institute should contain within itself seeds that are constantly germinating. While this position is useful for initiating the necessary update, it does not yet specify sufficiently what the concrete point of reference is (it is not enough to speak of discernment) on which the present and the future can be judged and legitimised.⁶⁴

As Rudolf Mainka points out, the charism of foundation is certainly subject to a natural development and is enriched with an ever new creative capacity; but this growth is nothing more than the “manifestation, clarification and development of the power of the Spirit that the charism, a ‘gift of God’, had in itself from the beginning and of which even the founder and his companions were not fully aware.”⁶⁵

As I will say later, the development of the founder’s charism must be compared to the development of a living organism that continues to grow without losing its identity, remaining substantially unchanged. “Accomodatio enim,” says Evangelica Testificatio, “cuiusvis animantis ad ea, in quorum ambitu degit, non est in eo posita, ut veram suam dimittat identitatem, sed in eo, ut se confirmet vitali vigore sibi peculiari”.⁶⁶

The spiritual experience of the founder, communicated to the first disciples and shared by them, gives rise to a founding⁶⁷ or original experience.

The expressions founding charism or foundational and original charism refer to the experience of the origins of the Institute, to its particular kind of life, its nature, its character as it was “conceived” by the founder. Here too it seems to us that we cannot speak of charism in the narrow sense.

The founding charism, the foundational or original charism would therefore be, as a whole, the set of spiritual gifts common to the founder and the first group of disciples that are at the origin of the foundation experience, an experience that outlines the essential features that characterise the Institute’s identity, its mission in the Church, its particular spirituality compared to those of other religious families.

It is, as Lozano says well, the proprium that characterises the life and mission of the first community. “Un proprium” the author specifies “que deberá mantenerse siempre en continuidad dinámica con los orígenes, a pesar de y a través de toda discontinuidad de las formas contingentes, condicionantes psicológicos, ambientales y teológicos por medio de los cuales ha de expresarse en la historia.”⁶⁸

In fact, in my opinion, the semantic content of these expressions must also be traced back to the founder’s charism, if the risks deriving from a loss of the necessary reference criterion are to be avoided.

This is the opinion of Santiago González Silva, who attributes the same meaning to the two expressions founder’s charism and founding charism, thus highlighting the responsibility of the disciples to carry on the heritage inherited from the founder.⁶⁹

As I have already pointed out in speaking of the use of the term charism in the post-synodal exhortation Vita Consecrata, the Church’s Magisterium has addressed an insistent appeal in this, as in other official documents, to the different institutes, congregations and orders, for fidelity to the charism of the founder.

Number 36 of the Exhortation, in particular, bears the title Fidelitas erga charisma. There we read: “Ante omnia postulatum invenitur fidelitatis ipsi fundationis charismati ac propterea spiritali cuiusque Instituti patrimonio. Hac enim in ipsa fidelitate erga fundatorum ac fundatricum afflatum, Spiritus nempe Sancti donum, facilius deteguntur fervidiusque vivuntur necessaria vitae consecratae elementa.”⁷⁰

The expressions fidelity to the founding charism and fidelity to the inspiration of the founders are equivalent then. A little further on, the document states:

Haec enim semper triplex necessitudo⁷¹, licet cum distinctis variarum vitae formarum proprietatibus, in omni fundationis charismate emergit, eam ipsam ob causam quod dominatur ibi «profundum animi studium sese Christo configurandi ad aliquem Eius mysterii aspectum testificandum»; quae quidem ratio necesse est concorporetur atque enucleetur secundum verissimam Instituti traditionem eiusque ad Regulas Constitutiones et Statuta.⁷²

The founding charism, considered as a gift of the Spirit to the founders, must therefore conform to the rules, constitutions, and statutes of each religious institute or family.

However this fidelity, as the following number of the same Exhortation says in its title Efficiens fidelitatis, musts be creative. “Admonentur ideo Instituta ut magna cum rerum suscipiendarum audacia alacritatem revocent invenctionis sanctitatemque fundatorum ac fundatricum ita sane signis temporum respondentes in orbe hodie exorientibus.”⁷³

Perseverance in striving towards holiness is therefore the best expression of this audacia that characterised the founder; moreover, this dynamic fidelity is called to be docile both to the divine inspiratio, given to the founders, and to the judgement of the Church.⁷⁴

The lack of living contact with the founder’s experience, then, can transform the founding charism into a pile of cold ashes.⁷⁵ To avert this danger, the Council had stated: “Accomodata renovatio vitae religiosae simul complectitur et continuum reditum ad omnis vitae christianae fontes primigeniamque institutorum inspirationem et aptationem ipsorum ad mutatas temporum condiciones.”⁷⁶

The question remains whether and how this continuous return to the sources, urged by the Council Fathers, has been realised in the last thirty years by the various religious families.

Any detailed evaluation would be long and complex and obviously beyond the limits of my study, but some examples are possible.

First of all, it seems to me that in some cases there is still a serious historico-critical investigation to be carried out that allows us to know the writings of the founder, the history of the foundation, the authentic spiritual tradition of the Institute; perhaps not all the congregations have yet invested sufficient resources in this valuable work. In some cases this could even have compromised the complete correspondence of the renewed constitutions to the founder’s original charism.

In other this path has been taken with the help of historical criticism or the human sciences, sometimes perhaps more with the aim of “demystifying” the history of the origins and freeing it from the exaggerations of a certain devotionalist hagiography, than of rediscovering the heart and proprium of the founding experience and thus giving impetus to the spiritual life of the institute.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that the history of the founder, even if canonised by the Church, has rarely been read as a “theological existence”, a mission received, an experience communicated in the Spirit and by the Spirit as a true exegesis of the mystery of Christ. Fr Antonio Sicari wrote:

The existence of a saint is in fact in itself a “theological existence”, the more it tends to identify with the mission received from above.

Theological existence means that there is an objective reconciliation between holiness and theology in the saint, between spiritual and dogmatic theology, since holiness, as a lived, “Marian” acceptance of the divine mystery, is an exegesis of Revelation, therefore of the mystery of Christ. Therefore, it becomes the real place where the kind of “reflected” theology that is the science of theologians can also be nourished and authentically formulated.⁷⁷

While on the one hand, therefore, certain excesses of devotional hagiography have contributed to creating a fracture between theology and holiness, on the other hand a certain modern hagiography has made this fracture deeper, sometimes re-reading the founding experience by starting only from psychological or sociological categories.

“The most important thing in the great saint,” Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote a few years ago, “is his mission, the new charism given by the Spirit to the Church”.⁷⁸ And this gift of knowing or, better, recognising, requires a particular approach, a method that takes into account the nature of the subject: this method cannot be deduced from other sciences whose conclusions remain a valuable resource. It must be the method of spiritual theology.

it seems that there is still a long way to go with regard to the mandate entrusted by the Council to the various religious families.

“It seems that the renewal begun with the Second Vatican Council,” the Congress of the Union of Major Superiors said more generally in 1994, “continues to be an excessively long dawn; day never arrives. Many things can be sensed, but darkness still prevents us from seeing their outline.”⁷⁹

It may be interesting to note, then, that religious life throughout all these centuries has always undergone reforms,⁸⁰ and these reforms have almost always been characterised by a return to the past, by an attempt to revitalise the charism of the origins, to take as a norm the original rule, the spiritual experience of the founder, and to relive the main features of the founding experience in the same radical way. The importance of this fidelity to the charism of the founder was therefore felt in the Church long before the Second Vatican Council indicated it as an authentic criterion of renewal.

The relationship that should bind every institute or congregation to its particular gift, that is, to the charism of its founder, seems to me to be observed, in a dynamic way, in four successive stages:

- a gift to get to know;

- a gift to be discerned;

- a gift to be safeguarded;

- a gift to be developed.

1. 3.1 A gift to get to know

The first, fundamental relationship which characterises an authentic acceptance of the gift proper to each institute, inevitably passes from an adequate, significant knowledge of the founder, his writings, the main sources and the history of the founding experience.

The responsibility for guaranteeing this particular aspect of the initial and ongoing formation of the members of an institute is entrusted in a special way to the Superiors and General Chapters;⁸¹ everyone, however,shares responsibility for this task of maintaining vital and meaningful knowledge of their spiritual heritage.

“For any community member, then,” Antonio Romano rightly points out, “the ignorance of their founders and of the founding experience of the origins is first of all ignorance and lack of fidelity to themselves, to their vocation and spiritual identity and undermines any possibility of genuine community renewal.”⁸² He goes on to say:

Creative stimulus in this process is provided by listening lovingly to the founder, meditating on his writings, which have a charismatic impact within an institutionalising community, caring for the interior life, study, prayer, reflection and communion of life. If this is lacking, it means that the charismatic and institutional fibres of the group have not absorbed the potential of the founder’s charism, and community life is heading towards a sterile survival with an inexorable path towards extinction... Anchoring oneself to one’s origins, as in the Church, is not a nostalgic return to a past that is now history, but uninterrupted contact with the source that makes us young.⁸³

2. 3.2 A gift to be discerned

The rereading of the sources is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to be faithful to the Council’s mandate.

The historical approach must in fact be accompanied, as we said, by a phenomenological, spiritual-experiential, theological and, ultimately, hermeneutical approach, which above all permits a rethinking of the life and the renewed constitutions of the Institute in the light of the founder’s charism; in particular, it is a matter of recognising and distinguishing the characteristics of the founding experience, which represent the proprium of the institute and which are destined to remain, even if they take on new forms, in changing times, from the other elements that are transitory and linked to the particular historical and cultural circumstances of the founding experience.

In this regard, Fr Fabio Ciardi writes:

It is necessary to study whether such and such a particular devotion, for example, was linked to the personal piety of the founder, whether it was inherited from the common custom of the temple, or whether he wanted to instil it as a characteristic element of his religious family as the result of a particular experience linked to the founding project. If these components are not part of the heritage that the founder intended to hand over, they are to be removed from the permanent and transferable charismatic core.⁸⁴

This particular discernment in the Spirit therefore finds its characteristic place and vital impulse in the conformation to Christ which represents the surest way to combine fidelity and renewal.

“Utcumque tamen persuasio vigere debet” says the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Vita consecrata, “in qaerenda pleniore usque cum Domino confirmatione consistere ipsam sponsionem cuiusvis «renovationis» quae consilio pristino fidelis persistere vult.”⁸⁵

Giancarlo Ghirlanda emphasises: “The Spirit is not self-contradictory; therefore, every historical evolution of an institute in its institutional forms, in order to be authentic, must be in continuity and consistent with the original charism of its foundation, otherwise it must be rejected. It is the Spirit who suggests the adaptations necessary for the charism to remain alive.”⁸⁶

This particular discernment, therefore, does not differ, as regards its general characteristics, from any other spiritual discernment. Its particular purpose, however, will allow me to identify, in the last part of this chapter, some possible hermeneutical approaches that make its definition more grounded.

3. 3.3 A gift to be safeguarded

The exhortation to remain faithful to the gift received, as I have already pointed out several times and, in particular, with regard to the Exhortation Vita Consecrata, is found constantly in the Church’s Magisterium. “The key to the realisation of every institute,” said John Paul II “was its fidelity to the initial charism that God found in the founder to enrich the Church. For this reason I repeat the words of Paul VI ‘Be faithful to the spirit of your founders, to their evangelical intentions, to the example of their holiness... It is precisely here that dynamism is found in every religious family’.⁸⁷ And this fidelity continues to be a certain criterion for judging what ecclesial activities the institute and each member should undertake to contribute to the mission of Christ.”⁸⁸

The document Mutuae Relationes, citing no. 11 of Evangelica Testificatio and the Second Vatican Council itself, stated in 1978:

Propterea Ecclesia propriam indolem variorum Institutorum religiosorum tuetur et fovet. Haec autem propria indoles illum secum fert peculiarem quoque stilum sanctificationis et apostolatus, qui suam definitam traditionem ita constituit, ut eius obiectiva elementa convenienter deprehendi possint.

Necesse ergo est hoc tempore evolutionis culturalis et renovationis ecclesialis identitatem cuiscque Instituti adeo in tuto servari, ut vitari periculum possit non satis definitae cuiusdam condicionis, qua Religiosi in vitam Ecclesiae modo vago et ambiguo inserantur, cum in debita consideratione non habeantur definiti operandi modi eorum indolis proprii.⁸⁹

“Fundatorum mens atque proposita – afferma ancora il Codice di Diritto Canonico del 1983 – a competenti auctoritate ecclesiastica sancita circa naturam, finem, spiritum et indolem instituti, necnon eius sanae traditiones, quae omnia patrimonium eiusdem instituti constituunt, ab omnibus fideliter servanda sunt.”⁹⁰

The mandate entrusted to religious families by Vatican II, however, does not imply “archaeologism” (a return to the past), a static restoration. “The return to the origins of Christian and religious life,” John Paul II said a few years ago, “has nothing to do with a backward-looking and impossible revival of a past that is now over. On the contrary, it is the ability to rediscover in the past those living and bubbling springs, those vigorous and nourishing roots that are the ultimate reason for our fundamental choices, our life, our present and future history.”⁹¹

4. 3.4 A gift to be developed

Number 11 of the well-known Mutuae Relationes directive had defined the founder’s charism as follows: “Ipsum fundatorum charisma videtur esse quaedam Spiritus experientia, propriis discipulis tradita, qui secundum eam viverent, eam custodirent altioremque redderent et constanter augerent simul cun Christi Corpore iugiter crescente.”⁹²

From this perspective, the founder’s charism presents itself as a living reality that prolongs its effects in history, creatively actualising the founding experience, in fidelity to the gift received. Progress and return to the origins, renewal and fidelity are realities that must be combined. “It is a dynamic fidelity,” Optiones Evangelicae stresses in 1980 – “open to the impulse of the Spirit, which passes through ecclesial events and the signs of the times, of which the persevering exhortation of the Magisterium is the bearer.”⁹³

It is in attempting to combine the two “poles” of fidelity and renewal that the various authors sometimes seem to diverge, at least in certain emphases or points. For example, Mario Midali, emphasising the need for progress and renewal, says:

Consistent with this order of ideas, it must be recognised that the charism of the Founder and the origins is not a fixed and exclusive experience that, in a certain sense, contains everything in it that is required to feed the growth of an Institute. Instead, it is a reality in motion, open to developments, even considerable ones, with the sole condition that they are consistent with the founding inspirations, because this implies substantial fidelity to the charismatic project of the Founder.

The reasons for this progress can be given. This happens first of all through the contribution of the gifts of nature and grace of individual members... It happens again through growth and expansion, not purely numerical and geographical, but especially spiritual and missionary... Finally, it is required by the urgent need to adapt the founder’s plan to different cultures and regions...⁹⁴

In reality, it seems to me that speaking of considerable developments or referring to the gifts of nature and grace of individual members can cause us to forget that the development of the founding charism must take place ad intra of its life process, the first act of which is its original manifestation. In a similar way to what happens to any vital organism, the charism of the founder or of the Institute does not grow by juxtaposition of other personal gifts of its members or by leaps in quality, but develops while preserving its genetic heritage, its “biological identity”.

This seems to me to be the perspective that Fr Antonio Romano’s reflection takes when he says:

...every community, in making the effort of authentic renewal, must always start from its own original identity, must know how to look at its own past, read it deeply and understand it ever more fully. Only in this way will consecrated persons be able to create their future and be able to respond prophetically to the new ‘signs of the times’. There can be no benefits for the local Church where one is called to live and inculturate one’s vocation unless one remains anchored, in dynamic fidelity, to the spirituality and charism of one’s founder, since the renewal of institutes cannot take place on the basis of sociological motivations, but only in a rediscovery of the specific nature of the founding charism.⁹⁵

From this particular perspective we could say, paraphrasing the title of a pastoral letter of a few years ago, that the founding charism must continually become what it already is.⁹⁶

This development, therefore, as stated by the founder of the Little Sisters inspired by the spirituality of Charles De Foucauld, is nothing more than “the manifestation, clarification and development of that power of the Spirit which the charism, ‘a gift from God’, had within it from the beginning and of which even the founder and his companions were not fully aware.”⁹⁷

Our gaze, therefore, will be constantly turned towards the past, in the awareness that accepting one’s past is, at the same time, creatively accepting one’s present and future.⁹⁸

The founding charism is presented, then, as something alive, an organism that grows while remaining faithful to itself. Fabio Cairdi notes that “We are dealing with a reality of the spiritual order which has an authentic historical continuum; it is not static”.⁹⁹

Being a reality of the spiritual order, the founder’s charism, as I said, can only be correctly interpreted within a process that has the same characteristics as any other spiritual discernment. Its hermeneutics, moreover, are a delicate operation and never definitively concluded. “The interpretation of the charism” says Antonio Romano “... has the characteristics of life and the founder’s sons and daughters are subjected to the flow of time and need continuous reflection and interpretation, without losing over time the essential characteristics that are inscribed in the permanent code of the charism itself.”¹⁰⁰

Faced with such a complex and even “painful^”101 operation, as it may require guidelines and reforms that are not always easy to implement, it is necessary on the one hand to be particularly docile to the Spirit of God himself, the author and dispenser of every gift, and on the other to resort to a science and a method that is as objective as possible.

Some authors agree in identifying three different ways of approaching the founding charism:¹⁰²

* the historical approach that starts from the life and activity of the founder, taking into account the founding experience almost exclusively; this approach includes the risk of a kind of fundamentalism that mummifies the charism, reducing it to accidental and outdated forms which no longer respond to the changed needs of the times and the needs of the ecclesial community;¹⁰³

* the experiential approach which starts from the life of the Institute today, from its demands and expectations and from the awareness of having to respond to changing social and cultural needs. The risk in this approach is the loss of the original identity of the institute, to the point of a real replacement of the founder.¹⁰⁴ The founding experience ends by highlighting only the elements that “confirm” the choices made by the Institute. The founder, therefore, risks being reduced, as Rudolf Mainka says, “to the role of being a tool that we use whenever we can justify our opinion and our activity through him, but which we leave aside at other times.”¹⁰⁵

* the hermeneutical approach,¹⁰⁶ which uses the demands and conclusions of contemporary hermeneutics, enhancing both the contact with the sources and with the founding experience, and the current theological and cultural assumptions and current “experience” of the Institute.

Although not without risks, this latter approach is considered by many authors to be the only one capable of adequately safeguarding both of the issues that emerge from the above reflection: fidelity to the origins and renewal.¹⁰⁷

Even from this perspective, however, we must not forget the particular aim of the interpretative process. Fr Antonio Romano writes:

The charism of the founders is an experience of the Spirit that can only be understood through a profound experiential-historical-theological-spiritual act, that is, a method that adequately takes into account the historical, cultural, religious, social and theological presuppositions of the past, but also a profoundly religious act, an act that is understood through life, reflection and prayer, an act of continuous conversion to one’s vocation.¹⁰⁸

1. 4.1 Contemporary hermeneutics and spiritual discernment

Some of the fundamental instances of contemporary hermeneutics can certainly help us understand how fruitful the relationship between past and present can be in the interpretation of the founding charism.¹⁰⁹

Hermeneutics as a science is usually applied to the interpretation of a literary work or an historical event; but its fundamental canons can also effectively be used to interpret a living and dynamic reality such as the founding charism.

Fabio Ciardi examines some of these instances in his In ascolto dello Spirito. Ermeneutica del carisma di fondazione (Listening to the Spirit: Hermeneutics of the Charism of Foundation):¹¹⁰

* the autonomy of the object (what is being interpreted) that must be safeguarded in its integrity and otherness. This requires a constant effort to minimise the influence of one’s own subjectivity in the interpretative procedures, and great methodological rigour;

* the circularity between part and whole within the reality to be interpreted and between object and interpreting subject. “There is a continuous dialogue,” Ciardi says ”... between the reality of the past, my present and the tradition through which the past comes to me.”¹¹¹

* the relevance of understanding, i.e. the awareness that one’s investigation of the past is conditioned by one’s present experience. “This makes the hermeneutic process active: an experience, an encounter.”¹¹²

* hermeneutic consonance, i.e. the need for a particular affinity between the object and the interpreting subject. “One cannot discover or interpret the ‘founder’s charism’ Antonio Romano notes, “unless one deeply grasps the apex of his soul, his radical intention, his personal love for God…”¹¹³ “The object of the interpretation,” Fabio Ciardi makes “while retaining its autonomy, is in a certain sense immanent to the interpreting subject.”¹¹⁴ The work of the founders, from this perspective, is a reality that transcends them, that goes beyond their own reflected consciousness.

Another of the important “achievements” of contemporary hermeneutics is overcoming the historico-critical study of sources and as an “autonomous” stage.

It is not enough to publish the critical editions of the sources, Fabio Ciardi says, however indispensable they may be. All archival and documentary research and historical analysis must lead to hermeneutics, that is, it must be able to interpret today’s life and result in proposals for the path that every religious family is called to follow in its desire to offer ever new answers to the ever new demands of the Church and the world. We must look to the past not to do restoration work, but to become more rooted in the present, to better read the signs of the times and respond appropriately...¹¹⁵

All this, I would add, must happen not only out of a desire for renewal but in docility to the Spirit who searches the depths of God¹¹⁶ and who makes all things new.¹¹⁷ This is the path sometimes followed by other religious saints in the footsteps of their founders, in a perfect synthesis of fidelity and renewal. In my opinion, these other saints are the best “interpreters” of the founder’s charism.

2. 4.2 The hermeneutical journey

The demands of contemporary hermeneutics therefore come to our aid in this difficult operation of spiritual surgery,¹¹⁸ which can enable us to revisit even a single aspect of a founder’s charism.

What is now needed is a methodologically coherent path that allows me to approach, as objectively as possible, the founder’s spiritual experience in order to determine its proprium, its original inspiration, the radical intention that gives the new foundation its character and identity. The spiritual experience of the founder, in fact, represents the theological place where it is possible to interpret the charism, to know in depth the gift received from him.

We can distinguish two fundamental stages in this journey:

* the investigation of the sources, those in the narrow sense, first of all, in particular the writings of the founder, which almost always require prior critical study; but we can also consider as sources for interpreting the charism, in a broad sense, the life of the founder, the analysis of his spiritual experience and that of his first disciples faithful to his inspiration, the writings of the latter, the history of the institute and any other element that allows us to approach the founding experience;

* the interpretation of the charism, which is the real hermeneutical work and which must lead us to grasp the gift that the Spirit, through the founder, wanted to communicate permanently to the congregation he founded for the good of the Church.

1. 4.2.1 The study of the sources to identify the charism

As I have said, the hermeneutics of charism requires a rational and analytical study, as objective as possible, of certain fundamental “resources”. These are:

a) The founder’s writings

The first stage, which precedes the hermeneutics of the founding charism, consists in the arrangement and critical study of the founder’s writings, particularly those writings to which the founder himself entrusted the task of explaining his inspiration or the charism of the institute. In the first place, therefore, there are the rules or constitutions, which express the nature of the institute, its aims, the means of achieving them, and then also the spiritual writings or writings on religious life.

This often difficult and dry work allows us to reach the original texts and observe them objectively and critically.

It seems important to note, however, that the problem of the originality of some of the founder’s writings can in some cases be considered secondary in order to know the founding charism. Regardless of whether these texts are sometimes the result of compilation rather than the original expression of the founder, or contain contributions from some of the first disciples, they nevertheless preserve his choices, often even his theological vision or his particular inclinations, and are equally valuable for the hermeneutics of the charism. Furthermore, these texts contribute to the not always easy task of “reconstructing” the particular “spiritual climate” that helped bring about the founding experience.

In this work of careful re-reading, the contribution of psychology and, in particular, of content analysis can certainly be useful. Some writings can reveal more than they expressly say, because they offer a glimpse into the author’s inner world; I believe that this study could be particularly interesting in biographies written by the founder, biographies that often indirectly reveal his personal experiences and his personal inclinations.

As we will see shortly, autobiographical writings deserve a special mention due to their importance.

b) The founder’s life and spiritual experience

The founder’s life is certainly one of the main sources for the study of the founding charism. In addition to introducing us to the formative journey that helped shape his personal universe of values and the evolution of his cognitive, affective and emotional processes, knowledge of the personal history and work of the founder is an indispensable tool for a correct hermeneutic interpretation of his writings. Fabio Ciardi says:

The historico-critical investigation is called upon to embrace the entire life and work of the founder as its object of investigation. Simply reading his texts is not enough to get in touch with him. His person and his message emerge only from the overall, organic and unified consideration of his achievements and operational choices, throughout his life. Lived experience is the first locus theologicus from where the charism must be drawn. The charism is an experience of the Spirit; an experience, therefore, even before it is a doctrinal elaboration. Even in the far from infrequent case that founders have not left writings, we can still access the founding experience. Their teaching is all there in their lived experience.¹¹⁹

Particular attention should be paid to knowledge of the cultural and spiritual environment of the origins, the currents of spirituality that influenced the formative experience and the spiritual life of the founder and the fledgling congregation. The founder’s studies, his reading, the characteristics of his language, his formators and spiritual directors, his friendships and, even before that, his family environment and personal experiences take on considerable importance in this work of analysis.

Similarly, it may be important to ask in which cases his choices or his “spiritual paths” are detached from the environment in which he lived or from the formation he received.

These cultural and environmental elements can help us to approach the founder’s spiritual experience.¹²⁰

This intimate life, which sometimes eludes rigorous and exhaustive investigation due to its very nature, can be particularly revealed by any autobiographical writings, especially where these do not merely recount events but also the developments of inner life, spiritual emotions, journey of the soul, or even by letters, which more easily reveal the immediacy of feelings.

However, the founder has not always left writings with these characteristics, sometimes due to a certain reticence shown in “talking about himself”, the result of sincere humility. “It is all these obstacles, and others,”says Fr Gonzalez Silva, “that create the problem of vagueness, of gaps in the text which the reader must fill in and will fill in differently at different times and in different societies. In dealing with them, it will be necessary to know how to combine science with intuition.”¹²¹
Sometimes it will be a matter of applying a principle similar to what is called analogy of faith in the exegesis of Sacred Scripture: every small fragment acquires its true meaning when inserted into the whole of the founder’s human and spiritual experience and receives its authentication from being in harmony with it.
It should be emphasised, however, that the spiritual experience of the founder is, at any rate, a gift of the Spirit, a datum that inevitably shifts our attention from the subject, from his personal psychological and spiritual dynamics, from his personal history to the objective reality that in some way “imposes itself” on him; this consideration becomes more important when we are faced with mystical experiences that involve the gift of passive contemplation.

From this point of view, I reiterate, the spiritual experience of the founder remains a mystery to be approached, on the scientific level, with the awareness of being able to reach, at most, reasonable and documented hypotheses that have the character of moral certainty or ample probability.

A valuable contribution in this regard can be gleaned from the testimonies of those who lived with the founder and were co-protagonists of the founding experience. It may be that these documents require to be read with critical capacity; but it would be a serious mistake to ignore them altogether to avoid the “risk” of any historical inconsistencies or be faced with writings that are not sufficiently objective because influenced by a significant relationship with the founder.¹²²

c) The first disciples

In my opinion, the importance of approaching the first community of disciples is linked to two different reasons.

First of all, this first group contributes, sometimes in a decisive way, to the birth of the religious family. The founding inspiration is concretely embodied in the founding experience. “It is in this work of incarnation,” Fabio Ciardi says “that the first companions contribute to making explicit the contents and essential lines of the particular charism given to the founder or foundress, experiencing them themselves in their own lives and initiatives, so that the inspiration acquires an increasingly defined face.”¹²³ When the contribution of the first disciples is decisive, they can take on the role of real co-founders.

Secondly, the group of first disciples, during the life of the founder, but especially after his death, sometimes directly takes on the fundamental role of discernment in the hermeneutics of the founding charism; discernment that is all the more authoritative the more the spiritual proximity with the founder is demonstrable. As Rudolf Mainka says, “They lived day after day in close communion with the founder; they were able to assimilate his spirit and experience first-hand how the founder overcame and resolved the initial difficulties... And they were able to grasp what was in him the particular charism of the founder of the new religious family.”¹²⁴ “Like the apostles” notes Antonio Romano on the same subject “the first disciples are the main depositories and privileged witnesses of the original charism in its nascent moment.”¹²⁵

In an eminent way, this first group of disciples was able to “read from within” the charism of the foundation and engage in the hermeneutical process of connaturality¹²⁶ which makes the common gift of the Spirit more explicit. “The body interprets itself,” says Antonio Romano, “and, through this same act of interpretation, creates a community of memory and hope, uniting the past and the future in the present and dynamically developing the historical and communal dimension of its members, creatively planning its own future.”¹²⁷

The importance and interpretative authority of each of these disciples can be considered linked not only to the length of time they spent in close proximity to the founder and their loyalty to the Institute, but also to the institutional role that the founder decided to entrust to them.

The first group of disciples, in fact, does not present itself to us as an undifferentiated whole, but often appears ‘structured’ in relation to tasks and roles, in many cases established and assigned by the founder himself.

Therefore, in my opinion, knowledge of the first novice directors and the first formation programmes they implemented, of the first spiritual directors, and also of the first successor, especially if he was appointed by the founder himself and indicated by him as the authentic interpreter of his spirit.

d) The history of the origins of the institute

Another important source for the hermeneutics of the founding charism is certainly the history of the origins of the Institute and its gradual development.

Of fundamental importance are, in particular, any General Chapters held during the life of the founder, annals or chronicles, circular letters, which accompany the growth of the foundation.

It is also necessary to consider that the justifiable interest in the initial inspiration of the founder should not prevail over the study of any subsequent developments in his awareness in relation to the religious family project he founded. In this gradual development or manifestation of the foundation’s plan, our interest shifts to the possible period of consolidation where, in some cases, thanks to dialogue with the ecclesiastical authorities, it is possible to recognise the characteristic features of the “finished product”, the end point of a process of reflection, also the result of the first important checks and evaluations.

e) The understanding of the charism throughout its history

A final element that cannot be ignored for a correct hermeneutics of the founding charism is the understanding of the charism throughout the history of the Institute, especially in the period immediately following the founder’s death.
“As a living reality,” says Fabio Ciardi, “it has been preserved, explored, developed... The ‘hermeneutic circle’ leads the interpreter to embrace the entire tradition of understanding, moving in a circular fashion from the parts, or individual interpreters, to the whole, or the historical tradition of its interpretation, seeking a ‘unity of meaning’ of the charism and recognising the concordances between the various traditions of understanding.”¹²⁸

In this perspective, the interpreter is never “alone”, as modern hermeneutics suggests; on the contrary, he is vitally inserted in a tradition of interpretation,¹²⁹ where each different voice must be evaluated according to the authority that the context in which it is pronounced confers on it.

2. 4.2.2 The interpretation of the charism

The actual hermeneutic work will be based on the analysis of what I have described as the sources of the founding charism and, in particular, on the spiritual experience of the founder which “supports” the foundation itself.

In fact, the ability to continually compare these sources contributes to avoiding any reductive interpretation and any neutralisation of the charism.¹³⁰ Antonio Romano says:

The founder’s charism is not a sterile reality of the past definitively archived, but is a living reality that must be continuously discovered through a dynamic and loving ecology of conversion, faith and listening. When the community loses its contact with this living reality, then it is no longer able to release the potential that is latent in the lives of its members. If, on the other hand, the old charismatic experience has been absorbed and is alive in the fibres of the community, then its dynamic effervescence continues to creatively open up the future of the group at every moment of its history.¹³¹

Rereading the sources means this becomes an existential process of spiritual listening and dialogue. The demands of the current historical situation, the progress of the theological sciences, the path of the Church and the conclusions of the Magisterium thus become the “place” where this rereading can become genuinely fruitful only if it is capable of continually returning to itself with humility and courage.

This hermeneutical circle, in particular, will help to distinguish between the various elements of the founding experience and the personal charisms of the founder, those gifts that have been permanently “given” to the religious family for the common benefit of the Church.

“Hermeneutics” says Fabio Ciardi,“must tend towards the interiority of the charism, in attentive and available listening to the ever new meanings it contains. To the extent that a charism draws on the gospel, it is susceptible to an ever deeper understanding, as is the Word of God of which it is the bearer.”¹³²

In this interpretative continuum, the living word of the founders will thus be able to continue to “irrigate” and make the history of religious families fruitful.

During his address on the occasion of the beatification of Leonardo Murialdo,¹ a contemporary and friend of Don Bosco, Pope Paul VI said:²

We have paid homage and asked for the intercession of a new citizen of heaven...

The question that the solemn event of beatification raises in the minds of all who contemplate him in the glory in which the Church places him today is instinctive, legitimate and obligatory: Who was he?

But before answering, we could ask ourselves another tacit question that reveals the characteristics of modern hagiography: What do we want to know about a saint or a blessed?³

Who was Don Bosco?

This question, only seemingly rhetorical, demands some clarification.

The range of sources and studies that enable us to approach the life of Don Bosco is certainly very rich. Archival documents, stories and chronicles, autobiographical writings, testimonies, published and unpublished works by the saint hundreds of biographies, some of which were written by Don Bosco’s contemporaries, a rich collection of letters and a large number of articles and studies published in various parts of the world:⁴ all this literature may initially discourage those who wish to approach the human and spiritual experience of this founder in a serious and documented manner, but it remains a heritage of uncommon dimensions in the history of spirituality that can lead us to believe that, perhaps at the end of the journey, we will achieve a certain knowledge of his spiritual life.⁵

This conviction clashes, in the first instance, with a more general consideration. Every spiritual experience, as a synthesis between the “objective” and “subjective” aspect of faith, between the fides quae and the fides qua,⁶ contains something unattainable, mysterious and therefore escapes any attempt at rigorous, exhaustive systematisation.

Another historical difficulty is linked to the fact that Don Bosco’s religiosity, his “feel” for God and his relationship with him are inevitably linked to his time and his environment; knowledge of his religious experience therefore also clashes with the difficulty of reconstructing this spiritual milieu in an objective and complete manner.

In addition to these general difficulties, which are common to the spiritual experience of Don Bosco and that of every other believer, there is another of a subjective, personal, “temperamental” nature. From his numerous writings, even those that we can classify as “autobiographical” or from the thousands of letters in our possession, it is not possible to directly derive significant and “first-hand” testimonies about his religious life. Don Bosco tells stories, teaches, admonishes, asks for help, gives thanks, blesses...; but he is the jealous guardian of his profound experiences.

Fr Pietro Stella writes in this regard⁷ in the introduction to his three-volume work Don Bosco nella storia della religiosità cattolica:

To describe the birth and development of someone’s way of sensing God, one would have to be inside them: live their life, in their time, be in their soul, be one soul with them. And with Don Bosco this is not easy. His autobiographical pages, his personal memories are not like those of Teresa of Avila or even like those of Teresa of Lisieux. They are mostly late and very rarely – fleetingly – does one manage to catch Don Bosco expressing his inner religious feelings, the motivations behind his actions. He almost always recounts facts: what his life was like before and after the priesthood, how the Oratory was born, how the works “that divine providence” entrusted to him developed.

However, already in all this a way of sensing and presenting one’s life is discovered. So all we can do is listen, read and peer through the cracks he left us in the massive edifice of his industriousness, striving to see better with the help of tools he did not have at the time and which are available to us today thanks to the development of many sciences.⁸

Despite the large volume of writings, therefore, we are faced with an “extreme lack of sources”⁹ on his inner life. We do not have a spiritual diary or an autobiographical account of Don Bosco’s inner journey. We know almost nothing about his life of prayer from him; he left us no written record or revision of the spiritual resolutions he made at significant moments in his formation.

Even the rich correspondence manifests this confidentiality and “a limited range of emotional reactions”.¹⁰¹¹ Psychologist Giacomo D’Aquino states:

As far as what Don Bosco wrote or said is concerned, he rarely expressed himself with frank immediacy. In fact, he tended to keep his inner life, his conscious conflicts, to himself, and this makes any investigation difficult. It is rare to catch him in his emotional reactions, which surface fleetingly, especially in the last years of his life.¹²

Don Bosco himself confesses, at the beginning of the Memoirs of the Oratory:¹³

Many a time I have been urged to write my memoirs concerning the Oratory of Saint Francis de Sales. Though I could not readily say no to the authority of the one who advised me to do this, I found it hard actually to set about the task because it meant too often speaking about myself. But now there has been added the command of a person of supreme authority, an authority that brooks no further delay. Therefore I am now putting into writing those confidential details that may somehow serve as a light or be of to the work which Divine Providence has entrusted to Society of Saint Francis de Sales.¹⁴

Even some of his contemporaries seem to have been impressed by this reservedness. Bishop Velluti Zati, Bishop of Pescia, expressed himself in this way on 3 March 1888, just over a month after Don Bosco’s death:

Great was his mortification and his piety; and here allow me to move on, for who can ever contemplate the beauty of the crystal-clear water of this diamond of perfection? To know the secret of his intimate relationship with God, to penetrate the sanctuary of his heart, the dwelling place of the purest and most chaste, noble and holy affections?¹⁵

And Msgr. Giacinto Ballesio Vicar Forane of Moncalieri and a former student of the oratory, as he stated a few days later, on 8 March of the same year said:

Don Bosco, his life, his works are within the domain of history which will tell future generations in beautiful and splendid pages that he was the apostle of good for half a century. It will say that with pedagogy learned from the Gospel he directed thousands of the children of the people to the study of knowledge and virtue, to the love of work. It will tell of his ingenuity, saluting him as a renowned writer of asceticism, an easy, popular and feared apologist, a learned and esteemed historian, a proponent of all beautiful and good culture. It will say that in the midst of persecution and the collapse of religious orders, in order to better implement his bold designs, expand and perpetuate them, he established a new flourishing congregation of wisdom, zeal and youth. It will say that after having scattered his works throughout half of Europe with universal acclaim and wonder, his boundless mind, his fearless spirit led him across the seas with missions to America. History will tell these and other things in praise of the humble and great priest and to the glory of the Lord, who wanted not the destroying genius of war in him, but the arts of peace, sacrifice and love, “Del creator suo spirito | Più vasta orma stampar.”

What history will not be able to fully express, what it will not succeed in making us understand well, is his intimate life...¹⁶

Even more outstanding and explicit is the statement that the first biographer of the saint, the French doctor Charles d’Espiney attributes to Fr Joseph Cafasso, confessor, spiritual director, supporter and “financier” of Don Bosco:¹⁷

Savez-vous bien qui est Don Bosco? Pour moi, plus je l'étudie et moins je le comprends. Je le vois simple et extraordinaire; humble et grand; pauvre et travaillé de vastes pensées, des projets en apparence irréalisables... et avec tout cela, constantement traversé dans ses desseins et comme incapable de mener à bien ses entreprises... Pour moi, Don Bosco est un mystère. Si je n'avais la certitude qu'il travaille pour la gloire de Dieu, que Dieu seul le conduit, que Dieu seul est le fin de tous ses efforts, je le taxerais d'homme dangereux, plus encore pour ce qu'il laisse deviner que pour ce qu'il dit... Je vous le répète, pour moi, Don Bosco est un mystère: laissez-le faire.¹⁸

To what do we attribute this objective reluctance to talk about his spiritual life? Is it a character trait, a natural reserve, an “environmental” influence,¹⁹ or rather the result of an ascetic detachment from self,²⁰ as one might assume from the beginning of his Memoirs? It is hard to go beyond assumptions. In any case, the different perspectives appear convergent, rather than opposed.

1. 2.2 Towards a documented and unprejudiced hagiography

Given what I have attempted to say in the previous paragraph, I believe one fact is undeniable: Don Bosco’s holiness, as Fr Arnaldo Pedrini states, would appear to be “both manifest and hidden.” It was made manifest by the prodigious deed which he guaranteed to souls in the name of God and the Most Holy Virgin; and hidden especially because he loved to keep the mystery or secret of the great King to himself as closely as possible.”²¹

This is why many of his biographies, even recent ones, probably contain his “history” in a more documented way, but they cannot claim to contain his “life”.

This consideration is neither original nor recent. Fr Eugenio Ceria²² had already written in 1929:

Rapt by the sight of the wonders of his multifaceted activity, his contemporaries admired his triumphs almost without thinking that he was omnis gloria eius ab intus. Even the generation that came up after his death looked by preference to Don Bosco’s works, studying their forms and developments without giving any thought to thoroughly scrutinising their animating principle, the principle that was the great secret of the saints: the spirit of prayer and union with God.²³

Historical criticism and the progress of the human sciences have today contributed decisively to enriching our knowledge of Don Bosco and other saints; at times, however, we have gone from a devotional, pious, exclusively supernatural interpretation of the first biographers to a simply “horizontal”, natural and psychological interpretation.

As early as 1955, José Herrera and Veremundo Pardo criticised the attitude of some biographers of Saint Vincent de Paul, systematically presenting the reader with uncertainties, question marks, claiming thus to be objective. However, their approach ultimately led them to adopt a stance that questions the very existence of a “life” within a framework they only attempt to depict externally.²⁴

Fr Ceria emphasised:

Yes, it is right to give credit to the followers of the historical method if, in certain circles, the figures of the saints can appear today without arousing the antipathy they once did in some people. But it is also undeniable that this risks undermining their true individuality, because it strips them of the halo that made them who they were and shows us what they really were... How can we ignore holiness in studying the saints? And when I speak of holiness, I am referring to a reality that positive science, whether historical or psychological, tends to overlook, but never those whose eyes are trained in investigating facts belonging to a higher order, where the human encounters the divine and intimately unites with it. This is why writers who believe that it is not worthwhile or that it is irrelevant to consider him as a man united with God are distorting the concept of a Saint. Thus the lives of saints, let’s put it this way, have ended up being secularised or pretty much so.²⁵

Faced with all these difficulties, I ask myself: what path should I follow in order to recognise the most significant traits of Don Bosco’s spiritual experience? Faced with the extreme need for sources on his inner life, how am I to understand the role that mental prayer played in the saint’s life? How can I at least arrive at documented and reasonable hypotheses, overcoming all rationalist and positivist prejudices, but without falling into devotional hagiography?

The only viable path, it seems to me, must start from an attempt to reconstruct, as far as possible, the spiritual milieu into which Don Bosco was born, where he lived through the fundamental years of his childhood and formation, with particular reference to his formation in prayer and mental prayer. Later I will need to broaden the focus to the period of his adult life, what he wrote, his understanding of religious life. It is through this long journey that I will attempt to bring out, always in relation to mental prayer, the characteristic features of his personal charism and also the path he proposed for the congregation he founded.

Documentary evidence, at any rate, requires an interpretation; any claim of “neutrality” which refers to the canons of a positivist historiography clashes with the impossibility of achieving the certainty of an “exact” science in the historical field. Jacques Maritain wrote several years ago:

There are no “brute” facts; a historical fact presupposes and implies many critical and discriminating judgements, many analytical reconstructions, as many as any other “fact”; moreover, history does not aspire to an impossible “coincidence” with the past: it requires a sifting and a selection, it interprets the past and transposes it into human language, it re-composes and reconstitutes the sequences of events that follow one another, and, finally, it cannot fulfil its task without having resorted extensively to abstraction. But history uses all this to connect the singular to the singular; its specific object is the individual or the singular. The explanation offered by the historian as such is an explanation of the individual by means of circumstances, motives, individual events. Historical explanation, since it is individual, participates in the potential infinity of matter; it is never finished and never achieves (as an explanation) the certainty of science.²⁶

The belief that every historical fact presupposes and implies many critical and discriminating judgements makes us understand on the one hand, the need to approach sources critically; on the other hand, we must accept that the criticism of sources is not neutral but is influenced, especially in the case of hagiographic studies, by the particular conception of Christian life and holiness that the historian or theologian has developed more or less consciously in the particular period or context in which they lived.

The study of spiritual experience, then, due to its reference to a reality that transcends both the individual who experienced it and the historian or theologian who approaches it, must take into account, even at the methodological level, the particular nature of its object. That is why, beyond any presumption of certainty, the end point of our journey belongs to a realm of knowledge that is not the same as the so-called exact sciences, but moves within the realm of hypotheses; (the more they can be documented, the better), but they are still hypotheses.

The deep roots of John Bosco’s religiosity are to be found in his family upbringing and the peasant farmer setting of the Becchi²⁷ in Castelnuovo d’Asti at the beginning of the nineteenth century.²⁸

Natale Cerrato writes:

This religious sense of life, which permeated all the works and writings of Don Bosco, was clearly a legacy of his people. Don Bosco’s holiness was drawn from the divine source of Grace and modelled on Christ, the master of all perfection, but it was rooted in the enduring spiritual values of his homeland. The good tree produces good fruit.

Religious observance, in the Piedmontese countryside, was well rooted. Life was punctuated by rest on Sundays, daily practices, and religious festivals.

However, these practices and countless devotions coexisted with folklore and superstition,²⁹ which often caused concern among pastors, who frequently attempted to encourage a more genuine practice of Christian life and observance of the Sunday precept.³⁰

Fr Stella says:

From what can be gathered from the documents, it appears that religion was truly dominant in the Turin and Monferrato regions, permeating both individual and collective life. But to what extent did religious observance respond to an inner need or was it merely an unthinking adherence to prevailing customs? To what extent was it the result of external conditioning or even inner need? Is there not a risk of transposing problems that arose later, when one wants to test the sincerity and solidity of the faith that regulated and nourished customs?³¹

Don Bosco was born and spent his childhood in this simple, rural setting, and probably retained some of its distinctive characteristics for the rest of his life.³²

Left fatherless at less than two years of age,³³ little John would open himself up to this religious sense of life under the careful guidance of his mother Margaret.³⁴

1. 3.1 In the beginning was the mother

In the beginning was the mother...This is how one of Don Bosco’s first biographers, Danish writer Johann Joergensen, begins his work, emphasising it “with all due respect for the holy book”.³⁵ And in fact, the figure of the mother in John’s education to the faith undoubtedly played a fundamental role.³⁶

This awareness was always clear to Don Bosco. In his Memoirs of the Oratory of St. Francis de Sales, he would write about his mother, Margaret Occhiena:

Her greatest care was given to instructing her sons in their religion, making them value obedience, and keeping them busy with tasks suited to their age. When I was still very small, she herself taught me to pray. As soon as I was old enough to join my brothers, she made me kneel with them morning and evening. We would all recite our prayers together, including the rosary. I remember well how she herself prepared me for my first confession. She took me to church, made her own confession first, then presented me to the confessor. Afterwards, she helped me to make my thanksgiving.³⁷

On various occasions the Biographical Memoirs describe her as a woman of great human virtues and a deep spirit of piety. “Margaret’s love of neighbor is not surprising” Fr Lemoyne says “when we realize that she was a woman of prayer. On her way to the fields, during her hours of work, and on her return home she would repeatedly recite the rosary.”³⁸ “She was a truly admirable woman because she always prayed. Prayer is the source of wisdom to the humble and those who lack human knowledge.”³⁹ “For Margaret, apart from the prescribed prayers she recited devotedly on her knees, would continually murmur words of love for God throughout the day, while occupied with the most varied chores.”⁴⁰

Don Bosco’s religious experience, therefore, has its deep roots in this family and daily catechesis, built on witness and example even before it was built on the “truths” of any doctrine that had been handed down.

But is it also possible to reconstruct some of the fundamental contents of this catechesis?

One possible approach would be to study the text of some of the catechisms in use in the dioceses of Piedmont at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and in particular the catechism prepared for the diocese of Mondovì by Bishop Michele Casati in 1765. This catechism was adopted by several Piedmontese bishops and introduced in the diocese of Turin (of which Castelnuovo d’Asti became part in 1817) by Bishop Vittorio Gaetano Maria Costa.⁴¹

These catechisms were evidently intended to make Christian doctrine more accessible. The dialogue structure, simple language and mnemonic repetition made it easy to assimilate even in rural areas, where illiteracy was widespread.⁴²

In this regard, Aldo Fantozzi writes:

The bishop of Mondovì, Bishop Michele Casati, published his catechism in 1765: it was a fortunate text, because several bishops adopted it in their dioceses. It was printed in 1787 in Turin, adopted and completed by Bishop Costa, bishop of Casale.

As a young girl in her parish in Capriglio, Mamma Margaret learned the Catechism from question and answer booklets, repeating them over and over again, in unison, aloud, until they were fixed in her memory.

The catechetical material which Margaret taught her children can be found in the Casati text (cf. BM v. 1, p. 34).

Margaret passed on her solid faith through this family schooling, together with the feeling for the divine that the children breathed in the vastness of creation, in the deep voice of conscience, in the wonder at the starry nights...⁴³

Don Bosco himself testifies:

I was eleven years old when I made my first holy communion. I knew my catechism well. The minimum age for first communion was twelve years. Because we lived far from the parish church, the parish priest did not know us, and my mother had to do almost all the religious instruction. She did not want me to get any older before my admission to that great act of our religion, so she took upon herself the task of preparing me as best she could. She sent me to catechism class every day of Lent. I passed my examination, and the date was fixed. It was the day on which all the children were to make their Easter duty.

In the big crowd, it was impossible to avoid distractions. My mother coached me for days and brought me to confession three times during that Lent. “My dear John,” she would say, “God is going to give you a wonderful gift. Make sure you prepare well for it. Go to confession and don't keep anything back. Tell all your sins to the priest, be sorry for them all, and promise God to do better in the future. I promised all that. God alone knows whether I have been faithful to my resolution. At home, she saw to it that I said my prayers and read good books; and she always came up with the advice which a diligent mother knows how to give her children.

On the morning of my first communion, my mother did not permit me to speak to anyone. She accompanied me to the altar and together we made our preparation and thanksgiving. These were led by Father Sismondi, the vicar forane, in a loud voice, alternating responses with everyone. It was my mother’s wish for that day that I should refrain from manual work. Instead, she kept me occupied reading and praying.⁴⁴

On 3 December 1843 Archbishop Luigi Fransoni, Archbishop of Turin, would reproduce this Casati catechism by promulgating the Compendium of Christian Doctrine for the use of the Diocese of Turin.⁴⁵

In the pages of these catechisms, therefore, it is possible to find the “sources” of Don Bosco’s spiritual experience, of his concept of God, of his religiosity. This was emphasised by Fr Braido, who stated:

Anyone wishing to explore the “sources” of Don Bosco’s religious mentality and spirituality (and therefore also his pedagogy) would find it difficult to overstate the influence exerted by the “Short Catechism” which he learned by heart from his mother and the priests who were his first religious educators. During childhood and adolescence, the contents of this elementary and fundamental handbook for every good Christian of the time had a profound influence on his way of thinking and living, both as a catechist and when catechising, to the extent that it determined the direction of his entire life.

It is therefore not of secondary importance for understanding his inner self to study the various ways in which he related to this reality, without excluding even the most modest expressions.⁴⁶

Contact with these simple texts of pedagogy to the faith reveals, in the first instance, the centrality of the idea of the omnipresent⁴⁷ God.

From his mother’s religious upbringing, little John therefore learned a vision of life and divine Providence capable of reading daily events in the light of the mystery of a God who was constantly present in human history. Fr Stella states: "For young John, God must have been the One whom his mother respected above all else, even though he was invisible...; in whom she had unlimited and unquestioning trust, because he was a good and provident father who gave her daily bread and everything she needed.⁴⁸

This view of life, strongly centred on the continuous and loving presence of God, represents the prerequisite, the necessary condition for rooting the personality of the contemplative, of those who live constantly in union of affection and will with the Absolute.

2. 3.2 The Memoirs of the Oratory of St Francis de Sales

One of the main points of reference in our possession, in relation to the period of infancy and childhood of the saint, is his own account, more than fifty years after the first events narrated, in the Memoirs of the Oratory of Saint Francis de Sales.⁴⁹

The account of those years certainly escapes the strict criteria of historical investigation; some dates are approximate, some events must undoubtedly be interpreted within the particular literary genre and the intentions of the narrator.⁵⁰

The narrative develops as an autobiographical story, a “history” of the origins of the oratory, given as a testimony to the fledgling congregation so that the memory of God’s provident intervention in the past could guide the present and the future.⁵¹ The story is of an edifying nature and it would therefore be naive to “literally” accept all the details and, equally, to judge it with the strict criteria of historiography.

The most important aspect of the work, as Fr Braido pointed out, is probably its being an “historical document” to be located at the end of Don Bosco’s human and spiritual experience, as a ⁵²memoir and a plan for the fledgling congregation.⁵³

In many pages, it clearly appears to be an “entertaining story” featuring a precocious boy, a street performer, a narrator, an intelligent and bright student who becomes an equally “dreamy” priest involved in the dramatic events and happy ending of his Oratory. In other respects, the text seeks to be in some way a narrative evocation of the past, intent on seeing a benevolent and timely Providence in the unfolding of events. More evident, then, is the concern to describe, albeit “poetically”, the origin, development and formation of a typical spiritual and pedagogical experience, which under the “Oratory” formula is presented as the most functional and productive approach to young people of the new era.

The latter seems to us to be the point of view adopted in an absolutely pre-eminent form by the author, who intends to convey this lived experience as a programme of life and action to those who follow him. With this operation, he would anticipate in a more flexible and colourful, vividly “narrative” way the sparse formulations of the pages of the preventive system in the education of youth, from 1877, which were closer to the “collegiate” style.⁵⁴

From the author of the Memoirs of the Oratory, we learn:

Now, what purpose can this chronicle serve? It will be a record to help people overcome problems that may come in the future by learning from the past. It will serve to make known how God himself has always been our guide. It will give my sons some entertainment to be able to read: about their father's adventures. Doubtless they will be read much more avidly when I have been called by God to render my account, when I am no longer amongst them.

Should they come upon experiences related maybe with complacency or the appearance of vainglory, let them indulge me a little. A father delights in speaking of his exploits to his dear children. It is always to be hoped that the sons will draw from these adventures, small and great, some spiritual and temporal advantage.

So, my dear children, when you read these memoirs after my death, remember that you had a loving father who left these memoirs as a pledge of fatherly affection before he abandoned this world. And remembering that, pray for the happy repose of my soul.⁵⁵

This uplifting story, intended to make us understand how God himself has always been our guide, precisely because it was written at a mature age and with the express intention of overcom[ing] problems that may come in the future by learning from the past, also passes on to us, directly or indirectly, the “‘experience of the spirit’ transmitted to [his] disciples to be lived, safeguarded, deepened and constantly developed by them”;⁵⁶ it is a “story” that becomes in some way a paradigm, guide, constant point of reference and that could be translated into a set of “criteria” to verify fidelity to the founding charism.

3. 3.3 A general criterion for interpreting Don Bosco’s “spiritual writings”

These latest considerations lead me to focus, at this point in my study, on a general criterion for interpreting not only the pages of the Memoirs of the Oratory but also other writings by the founder.

Already in 1965 Fr Braido himself, speaking of the Memoirs, had stated:

The events described and the things narrated are real experiences; but, in all likelihood, not with the fullness of meaning and comprehensive vision that the author’s current awareness, having reached maturity in his projects and achievements, gives them. When Don Bosco wrote, he was already 58-60 years old and he was recounting past events in the light of positive achievements and according to guidelines and directives for the future. It is natural that in recounting his early pastoral and educational experiences, three chronological and psychological levels constantly interfere with and overlap each other: the facts and insights of that time and the mature awareness of their meaning in a present that sees them clarified, enlarged and enriched through difficult, clearer and more complete subsequent developments, and in a future to be guaranteed and organised. From a purely historical point of view, this can create problems. However, from the point of view of a faithful and comprehensive reconstruction of the “system” of religious, social and educational action, in its definitive elements, it actually constitutes an enormous advantage. Memoirs are more clearly distinguished from a “family chronicle” in that they are reflective, summarising and programmatic documents.⁵⁷

This same criterion of interpretation, as we shall see, can also be applied, for example, to the numerous “biographies” which certainly contain some historical elements, but which above all provide us with the universe of “meanings” of Don Bosco and the elements of the project of Christian life that he indicates “to his sons”.

Don Bosco, when he writes, has only one objective: the “advantage of religion”:⁵⁸ this is the general criterion that must be taken into account when approaching his writings which, from this point of view, can all be described as “spiritual”.

Any literary or scientific interest is completely alien to his mentality. That is why he makes no effort to be “original”, except where he sees a new possibility to do good. Many of his writings are of a “compilatory” nature, some others are exhortative or constructed according to the hagiographic models of the time, while others are, in some respects, not entirely faithful to history.

Nevertheless, this remarkable patrimony, if interpreted patiently, gives us back his spiritual universe and also allows us to overcome his confidentiality in expressing our own personal religious feelings and to glimpse, albeit indirectly, the traits of his religious experience.

From his writings, it is also possible to highlight elements of that spirituality that outlines the characteristic features of the Christian life he envisioned for the Salesian congregation, even in the absence of a direct and systematic treatment of the subject by the founder himself. As I will say later, Don Bosco is not a theorist, he has not written treatises, he has not left us systematic reflections. His pedagogical method was “constructed” on the basis of a few written pages, but above all thanks to a reflection on his rich experience as an educator, which was subsequently analysed by scholars of pedagogical theory.

Similarly, we can say that Don Bosco is not a theologian, at least according to the modern understanding of the term. He did not write a treatise on prayer, on mental prayer or on the spirituality of the congregation he founded; yet he is certainly at the origin of a “current” of thought, of a spiritual movement. He is the depository of a particular charism; on this spiritual experience it is necessary to base a systematic reflection capable of rewriting the spirituality of the founder in a comprehensive way.

4. 3.4 Education to prayer

At this point I ask myself more directly: what elements does Don Bosco’s story provide me with in relation to the theme of my study and the development of his religious experience, limited to accounts of his childhood?

A first element of a very general nature is the clear perception that the writer has, and which he tries to convey to his “sons”, of God’s constant and mysterious⁵⁹ intervention in his life; Don Bosco’s narrative reveals to us the reflected consciousness of a life “gathered” since childhood around religious experience.

Another more specific element is the memory of early formation in daily meditation, conducted under the guidance of Fr Giovanni Calosso, chaplain at Morialdo, a centre a few kilometres from Castelnuovo.⁶⁰ Don Bosco tells us:

I put myself completely into Fr. Calosso’s hands. He had become chaplain at Murialdo only a few months before. I bared my soul to him. Every word, thought, and act I revealed to him promptly. This pleased him because it made it possible for him to have an influence on both my spiritual and temporal welfare.

It was then that I came to realise what it was to have a regular spiritual director. a faithful friend of one’s soul. I had not had one up till then. Amongst other things he forbade a penance I used to practise: he deemed it unsuited to my age and circumstances. He encouraged frequent confession and communion. He taught me how to make a short daily meditation, or more accurately, a spiritual reading. I spent all the time I could with him; I stayed with him on feast days. I went to serve his Mass during the week when I could. From then on I began to savour the spiritual life; up to then I had acted in a purely mechanical way, not knowing the reasons.⁶¹

Don Bosco’s story can be read, as we have previously stated, according to different “levels” or “chronological planes”.⁶² In any case, it reveals to us, in addition to the importance given by Don Bosco as an adult to the direction of conscience and personal education in prayer, a clear awareness of the distinction between spiritual reading and meditation.⁶³ Furthermore, it highlights the awareness of the importance of a path that leads from a life of piety made up of pious practices or good traditions to a reflective consciousness that becomes capable of “savouring the spiritual life”.

5. 3.5 Work and prayer: the first seeds of a vital synthesis

The years of childhood and adolescence were, for Don Bosco as they probably were also for many of his peers born into a peasant family in the Asti countryside, also years of work and fatigue.

Forced to leave home at the age of twelve due to some disagreements with his half-brother Anthony, John had to work as a stable boy at the Moglia family in Moncucco where he resided for about twenty months, starting in February 1828.⁶⁴

We find no mention in the Memoirs of the Oratory of this long period spent with the Moglias.⁶⁵ However, some testimonies from the cause for beatification allow us to imagine that even as a teenager, John Bosco had the ability to combine work and prayer in a vital way. Giorgio Moglia testified:

From my Aunt Anna I knew that the young Bosco was dedicated to prayer, even when he was busy grazing the flock in the countryside.⁶⁶ I still remember that when the young Bosco was already a cleric, I went to his house and stayed there for about three months, and we slept in the same room. Before falling asleep, he made me pray and gave me good advice.⁶⁷

Fr Lemoyne confirms,

Giovanni Moglia, the owner’s brother-in-law, surprised him one day kneeling under the scorching sun, in the middle of a meadow, motionless, his face turned towards the sky, his eyes closed and raised, so full of grace that he was amazed. He called him by name several times, but seeing that he wasn’t moving, he shook him. “Why are you sleeping in the sun?” John got up all confused and replied: “ No, I was not sleeping.” In fact, he was holding a devotional book.”⁶⁸

Again according to Giorgio Moglia

I also remember hearing my family tell the story of how my great-uncle Giuseppe once came home at midday, tired and exhausted, with his hoe on his shoulder, and saw the boy Bosco kneeling on the first step of a ladder. Seeing this, my great-uncle exclaimed: ‘Oh look, I’m so tired I can’t go on, and you’re standing there praying, saying your midday prayers.” The boy replied immediately: “Perhaps I have earned more by praying for two minutes than you have all morning hoeing.⁶⁹

The particular solitude imposed by life in the fields and the profession of shepherd seemed to be, for the young Bosco, a privileged opportunity for contemplation. “My grandfather Matta Secondo, now deceased,” Fr Secondo Marchisio testified⁷⁰ “assured me repeatedly, even on his deathbed, that their mothers spoke of John Bosco as an example, especially for prayer and obedience.”⁷¹ “He used to withdraw to the shade of hedges and willows to read, pray, and study.

This was confirmed to me by my cousin Rosa Cagliero, née Febbraro, a fellow countrywoman of the servant of God, who was asked to look after his cows so that he could spend more time in contemplation and prayer.”⁷²

It is certainly possible that these stories of childhood have been enriched, over the years and with the growth in popularity of Don Bosco, by some narrative or “mythical”elements; it is certain, however, that the position of the teenaged Bosco differed from that of any stable boy. His spirit of piety, his taste for reading, the propensity already openly manifested for life as a cleric, justify the permission he obtained by the Moglia to go alone, on Sunday morning, to the early mass in the church at Moncucco, where the provost Fr Francesco Cottino urged his weekly attendance at the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist, as well as the privilege granted to him to lead the rosary that the Moglia family said every day before a picture of Our Lady of Sorrows.⁷³

These were important years, therefore, in which spiritual experience matured and took deep root. This is how historian Fr Stella describes them, in an effective summary:

These were not wasted years, nor were they a mere interlude, during which his sense of God and contemplation took deeper root in him, which he was able to explore in solitude or in conversation with God while working in the fields. These were years that could be described as one of absorbed and supplicatory waiting: waiting for God and for people; years in which perhaps the most contemplative phase of his first five years of life can be placed, when his spirit must have been most receptive to the gifts of the mystical life flowing from a state of prayer and hope.⁷⁴

Was it these “contemplative” experiences that enabled Don Bosco, many years later, to “recognise” in Savio’s lengthy “raptures”, remaining there “in prayer, or rather, in contemplation of the divine goodness who wonderfully and mysteriously passes on to mankind the treasures of his infinite mercy”,⁷⁵ the gift of infused or passive mental prayer? We don’t know that.

The fact remains that Don Bosco throughout his life showed that he knew how to recognise everything that manifests a detachment from creatures, a state of perfection, an absorption in God. Fr Stella emphasises again:

Therefore, although he does not confide in us his personal experiences of “contemplation” and of a state of union and presence, nor does he offer us a theory on unitive prayer and contemplation, he nevertheless shows himself willing to explain certain stages of spiritual life found in people with whom he lived as union and loving co-presence.⁷⁶

From the age of sixteen until he turned twenty-six, Don Bosco lived mainly in the town of Chieri, about sixteen kilometres from Turin, first as a student in the public school and, from 1835, as a cleric and seminarian.⁷⁷

The period of adolescence and youth which preceded his entry into the seminary, represents, for Don Bosco as it does for most people, the time for real discernment about his own project of life.

Some significant friendships played a fundamental role in this “phase” of John Bosco’s human and spiritual experience, which certainly influenced his formation and choices.

1. 4.1 Spiritual friendships in Chieri

The period from 1831 to 1835 was a calm one marked by good school successes, the esteem of teachers and the friendship of many good companions.⁷⁸ In relation to the first two years spent in Chieri, Don Bosco mentions two in particular: Gugliemo Garigliano and Vittorio Braja.⁷⁹

They were always ready for some good recreation – says Don Bosco - but only after they had done their homework. Both were reserved and pious, and they gave me plenty of good advice On feast days, after the practices of piety in common at the college, we used to go along to St Anthony’s Church, where the Jesuits gave marvelous catechetical instructions⁸⁰ with plenty of stories that I still recall.

During the week, the Society for a Good Time⁸¹ used to meet at the home of one of the members to talk about religious matters. Any one was welcome to come to these gatherings. Garigliano and Braje were amongst the most conscientious. We entertained ourselves with some pleasant recreation, with discussions on religious topics, spiritual reading, and prayer. We exchanged good advice, and if there were any personal corrections we felt we should hand out to each other, whether these were our own personal observations or criticisms we had heard others make, we did that.⁸²

Two other important friendships, which matured in the years immediately following, were his friendships with Jonah,⁸³ a Jew, and with Luigi Comollo, who would also be his companion in the Chieri seminary until 1839, the year of his premature death.⁸⁴

Don Bosco’s youth in Chieri, in the college as later in the seminary, was spiritually marked by these deep friendships. Don Bosco surrounded himself with young people who loved prayer and the virtues. “Ces pieux et vertueux camarades,” says Francis Desramaut “ prodiguaient à Giovanni Bosco conseils, encouragements et bons exemples. L'affection qu'il leur portait l'entraînait à les écouter, à les admirer et à les imiter. Les amitiés du clerc Bosco étaient authentiquement spirituelles”⁸⁵.

The religious education at the school was regulated by the royal order promulgated by Carlo Felice on 23 July 1822. This is how Caselle describes the spiritual life of Chieri’s students:

On weekday mornings, Holy Mass was heard and each student had to be provided with a prayer book and read it freely. At the beginning of the school day, the Actiones was recited with the Ave Maria, then the Agimus was also recited with the Ave Maria. On Saturdays, everyone had to recite the catechism lesson assigned by the spiritual director, and at the end of school, they had to honour the Blessed Virgin with the Litany.

On public holidays, the students were all gathered in the church of the Congregation. As the young people entered, there was a spiritual reading, followed by the singing of the Office of Our Lady; then the Mass; then the explanation of the Gospel. In the evening catechism, with the obligation for each student to answer the questions asked by the spiritual director,vespers, instruction. Everyone had to approach the Blessed Sacrament; and to prevent the neglect of these important duties they were obliged to bring their Confession card once a month and the Holy Communion card at Easter. Those who had not fulfilled this obligation were no longer admitted to the exams at the end of the year, even if were among the best in their studies. Those whom the spiritual director dismissed from the Congregation because they were disobedient or because they ignored the catechism, were expelled from classes.

A triduum was prescribed in preparation for the Christmas celebrations during which two sermons were given per day, Holy Mass was attended, the Office of the Blessed Virgin and the novena were recited. In Lent, every school day students had to attend catechism, which preceded the usual lessons. Every year, for five days, from Passion Friday to Holy Tuesday, everyone gathered together for the spiritual exercises, with two meditations and two daily instructions, and this spiritual recollection ended with the Easter Communion. Individual young people had to obtain a declaration stating that they had regularly attended these exercises.⁸⁶

2. 4.2 Choosing a state of life and entering the seminary

In this recollected and uplifting environment, of which Don Bosco had fond memories,⁸⁷ his awareness of the importance of choosing a vocation grew and matured, sometimes in a disturbing way. Fr Stella states:

Whatever works he may have read (the Opuscoli relativi allo stato religioso by St Alphonsus, which he later used for the Introduction to the Salesian Rule; or La strada al santuario mostrata ai chierici by the Jesuit Antonio Foresti, which he certainly had in his hands in the seminary, or the Guida Angelica, which he used as a source for Il Giovane Provveduto or Gesù al cuore del giovane by Giuseppe Zama-Mellini, which he included in the same Giovane provveduto among the books to be preferred for spiritual reading, or the Saggia elezione by Piedmontese Jesuit Carlo Gregorio Rosignoli), whatever book he read, as offered him by the subalpine environment of the time, he would have found the belief expressed that the state to be chosen is predetermined by God. This belief stemmed from ancient Christian thought, which in the Middle Ages had given rise to an objectivist way of seeing things, according to which every human choice was resolved in the decision of the individual or the community to follow the divine plan. This belief had taken on an almost distressing character in modern times, because it emphasised the importance of choice as a free decision, as proof of fidelity to God, a matter of merit and salvation, or of guilt and eternal damnation.⁸⁸

The Memoirs of the Oratory reveal how vividly Don Bosco remembered his difficult childhood, characterised by a certain anxiety but also by special fervour and earnest prayer. It was in this “spiritual atmosphere” and with the awareness of an adult, that Don Bosco matured in his decision to embrace the clerical state and enter the seminary in Chieri. The decision to share his doubts with his friend Luigi Comollo proved decisive.

Don Bosco himself recounts that Comollo advised him to make a novena, during which he would write to his uncle, the provost.⁸⁹ On the lat day of my novena I went to confession and communion with this incomparable friend. I attended one Mass and served the other at the altar of Our Lady of Grace in the cathedral. Then we went home and found a letter from Fr Comollo which went something like this: Having given careful consideration to what you wrote me, I advise your friend not to enter a monastery at this time. Let him don the clerical habit. As he goes on with his studies he will better understand what God wants him to do. He must not fear to lose his vocation because aloofness from the world and earnest piety will help him overcome every obstacle.⁹⁰

Fr Comollo’s advice was also supported by that of a young priest, a student at the Convitto Ecclesiastico in Turin⁹¹ and also born in Castelnuovo d’Asti. Don Bosco had met him a few years earlier: Fr Joseph Cafasso.⁹² His gifts of discernment would be decisive on several occasions during Don Bosco’s life.

3. 4.3 Clerical clothing

In October 1835, John Bosco prepared for his clerical clothing with prayer and recollection.

Having made up my mind to enter the seminary, I took the prescribed examination. I prepared carefully for that most important day because I was convinced that one’s eternal salvation or eternal perdition ordinarily depends on the choice of a state in life. I asked my friends to pray for me. I made a novena, and on the feast of St Michael (October 1834) I approached the holy sacraments. Before the solemn high Mass Doctor Cinzano, the provost and vicar forane of my region, blessed my cassock and tested me as a cleric.⁹³

Among the seven resolutions he made during those days and which he passed down to us in his Memoirs, the first five reveal his subjective need for a more stable and virtuous lifestyle, one that was more secluded and temperate. With the sixth Don Bosco promised: “In addition to the ordinary practices of piety, I will never omit to do a little meditation and a little spiritual reading every day.”⁹⁴ Finally, the last one projects him “outside” into a daily apostolate: “Every day I will relate some story or some maxim advantageous to the souls of others....”⁹⁵

On October 30, 1835, cleric Bosco crossed the threshold of the Seminary in Chieri.⁹⁶ The next day a triduum of spiritual exercises began which⁹⁷ ended with the resolution to faithfully carry out one’s duty, first of all by the faithful observance of the rules of the Seminary.⁹⁸

The most important regulatory reference point for the Turin seminaries of that period was the Constitutions of the Turin seminary promulgated by Archbishop Colombano Chiaverotti in 1819.⁹⁹ In addition to this text, there was a Regolamento del Seminario di Chieri, attributed to Fr Lorenzo Prialis, which is difficult to date and whose only known copy was written by Canon Sebastiano Mottura, rector of the Seminary in Chieri from 1829 to 1860.¹⁰⁰

An examination of these regulations reveals a particularly austere view of life in the seminary; the rules laid down do not always appear to be supported by sufficient motivation.¹⁰¹ Everything contributes to forming the attitudes of the future cleric with a certain gravity and composure.

It is of interest, from my particular perspective, to examine the practices of piety.

1. 5.1 Practices of piety at the Chieri seminary

In Part Two of the Constitutions of the seminary, in Chapter I entitled Della pietà e del servizio di Chiesa we read, passim:¹⁰²

1. …. We therefore desire that piety and fear of God be the first qualities of those who wish to live in our seminary, so that, by planting deep roots in their tender hearts, they may in time bear sweet fruits of virtue for the common edification of our diocese.

2. At the signal to rise, each pupil shall get out of bed promptly and, having first raised their hearts to God, shall dress in silence and modesty and, after a quarter of an hour, shall recite, at the signal of the prefect of the dormitory together with the others, the Angelus Domini, and after the half hour allotted for rising has passed, they shall go to the chapel, if the weather is fine, or to their desks, if it is winter, to recite the prayers in common as they are printed for the use of the seminary, with recollection and devotion, kneeling with their faces turned towards the sacred image in the dormitory.

3. There, the prefect shall recite the vocal prayers in a clear and slow voice, and the other pupils shall accompany him in a low voice, with attention of mind and devotion of heart.

4. Once the prayers have been recited in the chapel, weather permitting, the meditation will be read aloud and with the appropriate pauses by the chapel prefect; then Mass will be attended with the greatest possible inward and outward devotion...

7. In the evening after supper, once recreation is over and before retiring for the night, the aforementioned prefect shall recite the vocal prayers, accompanied in silence and sotto voce by all the others in the chapel; an examination of conscience shall be made and, on weekdays, the litany of the Blessed Virgin shall be recited, which will be sung on Saturday evenings, on holy days of obligation, and during the novena of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. In the novenas of St Francis de Sales and St Louis,¹⁰³ instead of the litany the hymn Iste Confessor¹⁰⁴ will be sung.

Meditation, therefore, is read clearly and with the necessary pauses, according to the custom of the time.¹⁰⁵

Note also the reference to the need to accompany vocal prayer with attention of mind and the devotion of heart and the importance given to silence. “Le séminariste” Francis Desramaut stresses, “apprenait ainsi à construire en soi le digne prêtre de l 'avenir dans la prière, l 'étude et le silence, ce silence qui imprégnait la majeur partie de sa journée.”¹⁰⁶

Don Bosco recalls that

The practices of piety were well conducted. Each morning we had Mass, meditation, and rosary; edifying books were read during meals... We were expected to go to confession once a fortnight, but those who wished could go every Saturday. We could only receive holy communion, however, on Sundays and on special feasts. We did receive communion sometimes on weekdays, but doing so meant that we had to act contrary to obedience. It was necessary to slip out, usually at breakfast time, to St Philip's Church next door, receive holy communion, and then join our companions as they were going into the study hall or to class. This infraction of the timetable was prohibited. But the superiors gave tacit consent to it since they knew it was going on and sometimes observed it without saying anything to the contrary. In this way, I was able to receive holy communion much more frequently, and I can rightly say it was the most efficacious support of my vocation.¹⁰⁷

2. 5.2 The “discovery” of the Imitation of Christ

Among the readings that accompanied his spiritual formation, Don Bosco himself recalls one in particular, the Imitation of Christ.

I had some mistaken notions about my studies that could have had sad consequences had I not been saved by a truly providential event. Accustomed to reading the classics all during my school days, I had grown so familiar with the outstanding characters of mythology and pagan fables that I found little satisfaction in anything ascetical. I had reached the point where I could convince myself that fine language and eloquence could not be reconciled with religion. The very works of the holy Fathers appeared to me as the products of limited intellects, excepting always the principles of religion which they expounded with force and clarity.

At the beginning of my second year of philosophy, I paid a visit to the Blessed Sacrament one day. I had no prayer book with me, so I began to read The Imitation of Christ. I went through some chapters dealing with the Blessed Sacrament. I was so struck by the profound thoughts expressed, and the clear and orderly way these great truths were clothed in fine language that I began to say to myself: “The author of this book was a learned man. Again and again, I went back to that golden little work. It was gradually borne in on me that even one verse from it contained so much doctrine and morality as I had found in whole volumes of the ancient classics. To this book I owe my decision to lay aside profane literature.¹⁰⁸

Fr Pietro Stella notes:

It seems that the transition from a “profane” taste to an uncompromisingly religious one took place (according to Don Bosco himself) during his years studying philosophy and culminated in early 1837 with his reading of De imitatione Christi.

But it is possible to indicate some dominant ones. The awareness that he was called by God to the priesthood grew ever stronger within him, together with a sense of the holiness required to ascend to the altar and an urgent desire to break away from habits and attitudes that seemed incompatible with the priestly state.¹⁰⁹

Love and esteem for this text did not diminish with adulthood. The Imitation of Christ would remain among the recommended texts for daily spiritual reading in The Companion of Youth, the widely read prayer manual for young people first published by Don Bosco in 1847, which went through 120 editions and reprints until 1888.¹¹⁰ The same indication also appears in the constitutional text of the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians of 1885:

In the quarter of an hour assigned for spiritual reading, they will use those books which they will see indicated to them by their superiors. Especially recommended are the Imitation of J.C, The Holy Nun and The Practice of Loving Jesus Christ by St Alphonsus, The Devout Life y St Francis de Sales adapted for young people, Rodriguez and the lives of those saints who dedicated themselves to the education of young people.¹¹¹

3. 5.3 Seminarian Louis Comollo

Some shadows remained over the Seminary environment, even years later, in Don Bosco’s recollections.¹¹² But the choice to be a young seminarian needed to be accompanied by “some who were well known as models of virtue. These were William Garigliano, John Giacomelli of Avigliana¹¹³ and, later, Louis Comollo. For me, these three friends were a treasure.”¹¹⁴

It is precisely from the testimony of one of these companions, Giovanni Francesco Giacomelli, who would also be the saint’s confessor for the last fourteen years of his life, that we know:

When I met him at the seminary in Chieri, I admired him for his great diligence and love of study and piety. I never saw him take part in entertainment, even if it was lawful or permitted by his superiors, but during recreation time he either read or studied, or conversed while walking with his companions, always telling edifying things, or he went to the church to visit the Blessed Sacrament.¹¹⁵

In the Memoirs of the Oratory Don Bosco reveals to us:

Comollo often interrupted my recreation time, leading me by the sleeve of my cassock and telling me to come along with him to the chapel; there we would make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament for the dying, saying the rosary or the Little Office of Our Lady for the souls in purgatory.

This marvelous companion was my fortune.¹¹⁶

The friendship with Comollo was certainly the most important friendship of those years. A few years later, in 1844, Don Bosco wrote up his life for the edification of young seminarians, entitled Cenni storici sulla vita del chierico Luigi Comollo¹¹⁷ [Historical sketch of the life of the cleric Louis Comollo],

The booklet, less than a hundred pages long, appeared anonymously in its first edition, but was republished in 1854 and reprinted several times.¹¹⁸ As historian Fr Pietro Stella¹¹⁹ points out, it shows the special bond of ideas and life that had developed between the two men, and completes the knowledge that Don Bosco himself would provide about this spiritual friendship in his Memoirs of the Oratory.

Don Bosco’s judgement on the religious experience of his young friend and any similarities and differences¹²⁰ become an indirect indication of his spiritual life in those years and, at the same time, of the concrete model of Christian life proposed first to seminarians and later also to young people in oratories and colleges.¹²¹

It would be an exaggeration, says Fr Stella, to say that Don Bosco owed the strength of his inner life to Comollo, but certainly the communion of life between the two was a safeguard and a means of enrichment for John.

The “not extraordinary, but accomplished virtues” (p. 27) that Don Bosco admired in his friend already contain the seed of the affirmation that it is precisely in these virtues that the holiness of young people consists. Louis Comollo was one of the examples to which Don Bosco loved to appeal and the Sketch on him was one of the spiritual reading texts of the Oratory.¹²²

“I could only wonder at my companion's charity,” Don Bosco said in the Memoirs of the Oratory, when recalling the years they had spent together in the college in Chieri – “I put myself entirely into his hands and let him guide me where and how he wished. By agreement with our friend Garigliano, we went together for confession, communion, meditation, spiritual reading, visits to the Blessed Sacrament..’¹²³

I will come back to the pages of this brief biography in the following chapter. I will spend some brief moments here on two passages that allow us to understand Don Bosco’s “feelings” and some of the habits of the young seminarians in Chieri.

The first passage gives us some indications regarding the “rhythms” of Comollo’s personal prayer. Don Bosco also spends time describing some of his raptures:

He had a timetable for prayer, spiritual reading, visit to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and he observed it scrupulously. Circumstances had it that for a few months I went to the Cathedral precisely at the time that Louis went there to spend time with Jesus. So I would be happy to describe what he was like there. He would take up a place near the altar if he could, kneel down, join his hands, bow his head slightly, cast his eyes down and would stay absolutely still; he would be insensitive to any voice or sound. It would often happen that when I had finished my duties,¹²⁴ I wanted to invite him to come home with me. So I would nod my head or, coming a bit closer, would cough, to get him to move; he would always stay the same until I actually came up and touched him. Then, as if woken up from sleep, he would move and although a little unwillingly, would accept my invitation.”¹²⁵

The second passage expresses more clearly Don Bosco’s conviction that certain “movements”, certain consolations, certain manifestations felt during prayer, were not to be considered useless oddities:

... when it was time for him to approach the altar I saw him taken up with the most lofty and devout thoughts. With full composure, walking slowly and deliberately with his eyes cast down, and at times trembling with emotion, he would approach the Holy of Holies. When he had returned quickly to his place he seemed beside himself, deeply moved and fully taken up in devotion. He prayed, but his prayer was interrupted by sobs, groans and tears; he could not quieten his rapture of affectionate piety until Mass was over and the morning hymn began. He was often warned to curb his external show of emotion since it might offend others: “I feel so full of affection and so happy of heart”, he told me, “that if I can’t express it I feel I will suffocate”... From this anyone can see clearly that Comollo was well advanced on the way of perfection. Those movements of love of God, of gentleness, of contentment in spiritual matters are the result of his keen faith, his burning charity which was deeply rooted in his heart...¹²⁶

Don Bosco wrote this when he was about twenty-nine years of age.

His reserved temperament prompts him to advise his companion to avoid acts of external devotion and what they may suggest in others’ eyes. The fact remains that his way of describing these particular “phenomena” of the spiritual life reveals his consideration and esteem and the belief that they are the effect of the keen faith and burning charity that were rooted in his friend’s heart.

4. 5.4 Holy Orders

During the 1839–1840 school year which followed Comollo’s death, Don Bosco received the tonsure with the four minor orders and, after preparing during the summer, was admitted early to the final year of theological studies. He could therefore officially apply for admission to the subdiaconate.

This step is something he saw as important and therefore Don Bosco felts inadequate: “Though I wanted to complete my studies,” he would say in the Memoirs of the Oratory, “I quaked at the thought of binding myself for life.”¹²⁷

Once again Fr Cafasso encouraged him to go ahead and trust “in his advice”. After a retreat lasting ten days, according to his account, he made a general confession and received the order of subdiaconate on 19 September 1840.

“Henceforward,” Don Bosco says, recalling the words that Fr Giovanni Borel had told him at the end of a retreat,¹²⁸ “I took the greatest care to practice Doctor Borrelli’s advice: a vocation is preserved and perfected by recollection and frequent communion.”¹²⁹

It is not easy to determine the exact semantic value of the term ritiratezza in Don Bosco’s understanding of it. About a year before he began writing the Memoirs of the Oratory, he wrote to a woman “Give a lot of thought to your choice of state and do good... Prayer, frequent Communion, aloofness from the world/being recollected are the foundations.”¹³⁰

The expression also appears in the resolutions he made on the occasion of his clerical clothing: “I will love and practice a retiring life.”¹³¹

The term reminds us of the numerous renunciations made by Don Bosco concerning “profane”¹³² games and amusements, but it seems to me to refer above all to an inner life, to a fruitful solitude that must be cultivated in the secrecy of one’s own room and that encourages recollection and prayer.

For example, when preaching to priests Cafasso said:

The divine Redeemer, Head and Master of all priests, whenever he could enjoy a few moments to take a break from his continuous labours, as we read in the Gospel, withdrew and prayed. Withdrawal and prayer, these are the two wings that have to lift the priest high enough to make him like a God on earth. Withdrawal and prayer are two inseparable qualities: one deriving from the other; I speak of a pious and virtuous withdrawal and not something natural and whimsical. The man who withdraws naturally is a lover of prayer; the man who prays necessarily withdraws from the noise of the world and seeks peace and solitude. Withdrawal and prayer are two virtues that are enough, because they carry with them and suppose what is required to form a worthy and holy priest. For those who experience withdrawal and pray, it is impossible not to have a heart detached from this world and filled with the spirit of the Lord.¹³³

Ordained a deacon in March 1841, John Bosco began the retreat on 26 May of that year in preparation for his priestly ordination, which took place on 5 June of that same year in the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Turin.

The resolutions made on that occasion are not found in the Memoirs of the Oratory but in an autograph notebook whose contents are known to the Salesians as the Spiritual Testament of Don Bosco, but whose real title, also handwritten, is Memoirs from 1841 to 1884-5-6 by Fr John Bosco to his Salesian sons.¹³⁴

It is another important autobiographical writing by Don Bosco, whose editing began in 1884 and ended on 24 December 1887,¹³⁵ just over a month before the end of Don Bosco’s earthly life, the day on which the notebook passed into the hands of his secretary at the time, Fr Carlo Viglietti.

At the beginning of this booklet, mainly devoted to a series of provisions, advice and recommendations for the period following his death,¹³⁶ Don Bosco returns to the period of his ordination to the priesthood and the resolutions he made on that occasion. His writing begins with these words:

I began the Retreat at the House of the Mission on 26 May, Feast of St Philip Neri, 1841.

Priestly ordination was conferred by Luigi Fransoni our archbishop, in his church on 5 June that year.¹³⁷

The first Mass was celebrated at St Francis of Assisi assisted by my well known benefactor and director Fr Joseph Cafasso¹³⁸ from Castelnuovo d’Asti on 6 June Trinity Sunday.

The conclusion I drew at the end of the retreat in preparation for my first Mass was: The priest does not go either to heaven or hell alone. If he does well he goes to heaven with the souls he has saved through his good example; if he does badly, gives scandal he goes to perdition with the souls damned through his scandal.

Resolutions:

1. Never go for walks unless seriously necessary: visit the sick etc.

2. Use time well.

3. Suffer, act and accept humiliations in everything and always if it is a case of saving souls.

3. The charity and kindness of St Francis de Sales will guide me in everything.

5. I will always be happy with the food that is put in front of me unless it is harmful to my health.

6. I will water down my wine and drink it only as a remedy: meaning only when and as much as is needed for my health.

7. Work is a powerful weapon against the soul’s enemies, therefore I will not give my body more than five hours of sleep every night. During the day, especially after lunch, I will not take a rest. I will make some exception if ill.

8. Every day I will give some time to meditation and spiritual reading. During the day I will make a brief visit or at least a prayer to the Blessed Sacrament. I will give at least a quarter of an hour to preparation and another quarter of an hour of thanksgiving to Holy Mass.

9. I will not engage in conversations with women outside of confession or some other spiritual need.

These memoirs were written in 1841.¹³⁹

Once again, the proposal to do meditation every day returns; to this is added the choice to dedicate an adequate time for preparation, and thanksgiving after Mass. In this regard, some time later he wrote in the same notebook: “Since when I arrive in the sacristy I am usually asked to speak or listen to confessions, before leaving the room I will make sure that a brief preparation for Holy Mass is made.”¹⁴⁰

This concern accompanied Don Bosco throughout his life, if it is true that the Spiritual Testament, in one of its last pages, reports this request for forgiveness from Don Bosco: “I must, however, apologise if anyone observed that I often made too brief a preparation or too brief a thanksgiving at Holy Mass. I was in a way forced to do so by the crowd of people who surrounded me in the sacristy and took away the possibility of praying both before and after Holy Mass.”¹⁴¹

Don Bosco writes again in the Memories of the Oratory:

My ordination day was the vigil of the feast of the Blessed Trinity. I said my first Mass in the church of St Francis of Assisi, where Fr Caffasso was dean of the conferences. Though a priest had not said his first Mass in my home place for many a day, and my neighbours were anxiously waiting for me to say mine there, I preferred to say it without fuss in Turin. That day was the most wonderful day of my life. At the Memento in that unforgettable Mass I remembered devoutly all my teachers, my benefactors spiritual and temporal, and especially the ever-lamented Fr Calosso, whom I have always remembered as my greatest benefactor.¹⁴²

Through his memories of the past Don Bosco, as an adult, reveals to us his awareness of the importance of surrounding God’s precious gifts with silence and recollection.

The summer following the priestly ordination was still a time of discernment for Don Bosco.

He was offered several “jobs” or pastoral activities. He tells us:

Before I made a final choice, I sought out Fr Caffasso in Turin to ask his advice. For several years now he had been my guide in matters both spiritual and temporal. That holy priest listened to everything, the good money offers, the pressures from relatives and friends, my own goodwill to work. Without a moment's hesitation, this is what he said: “You need to study moral theology and homiletics. For the present, forget all these offers and come to the Convitto.” I willingly followed his wise advice; on 3 November 1841, I enrolled at the Convitto.¹⁴³

In November 1841, therefore, Don Bosco entered the Convitto Ecclesiastico in Turin where he remained for about three years.

The Convitto had come into being in 1817 at the inspiration of Pio Brunone Lanteri¹⁴⁴ and at the initiative of Fr Luigi Guala in the premises of the former convent, annexed to the church of St Francis; the official decree of approval from Archbishop¹⁴⁵¹⁴⁶ Chiaverotti still bears the date of 23 February 1821.

The stated purpose of the Convitto was to gather young priests, recently ordained, for a preparation closer to the priestly ministry, in particular in view of preaching and the ministry of confessions.

The situation of the young Piedmontese clergy of those years is well described by the Regolamento del convitto ecclesiastico.¹⁴⁷

At the end of their theology studies, many of them find themselves without any means of support other than those provided by public conferences; they are therefore forced to earn their living in occupations unrelated to the ecclesiastical ministry, others to retire to their birthplace where they usually lack appropriate education and emulation, others are forced to enter expensive boarding arrangements where they are often disturbed in their studies and are in danger of losing their ecclesiastical spirit; others, finally, discouraged by the difficulties encountered in the length of time that must be devoted to such studies, abandon them altogether, and the result is necessarily:

1. A scarcity of confessors who are skilled in dealing with all kinds of people, and hence greater difficulty for the faithful in approaching the Holy Sacraments.

2. Loss of ecclesiastical spirit, whereby many of the plants cultivated with great effort and expense, which during the five years of theology gave hope of excellent results, became sterile due to lack of final cultivation.

The damage caused by these things, and how much they are to be lamented in circumstances where there is such a need for good workers, cannot be sufficiently explained.

It was therefore decided to remedy this grave evil in part by establishing a boarding establishment in the premises of St Francis, intended to accommodate clergy, where they could devote themselves to these studies and become skilled in the exercise of the holy ministry.¹⁴⁸

The opening of the Convitto was an event with far-reaching consequences for the Piedmontese church;¹⁴⁹ with the Convitto, in fact, a new “spiritual school” of priests was born in Turin with a clear identity that distinguished them from those formed at the Royal University of Theology. The mitigated rigour in moral matters and Gallicanism in ecclesiology were counterbalanced by a clear choice for probabilism and an unreserved defence of papal authority.

This plan for his priestly life was in line with that of the Amicizie Sacerdotali (Priestly Friendship Society) founded by Nicolaus von Dissbach, of whom Lanteri had been a disciple and friend.¹⁵⁰

1. 6.1 The Convitto Ecclesiastico’s formation project

Let me now summarise the main characteristics of the Convitto’s “formation project”.

1. In the moral theology field, the main effort was to form young priests in the teaching of St Alphonsus,¹⁵¹ overcoming rigorous and Jansenist pastoral positions, encouraging frequent reception of the sacraments, but without falling into minimalism or laxity.¹⁵² The Convitto’s timetable included two conferences on moral theology a day and a practical confessional exercise.¹⁵³

2. In the ecclesiological field, the Convitto’s thinking followed the Ultramontane line that had characterised the birth of the Amicizie. The authority and prestige of the pope were defended against the “enemies of primacy” and misleading doctrines.

3. In the ascetic field, an austere and “retired” life was proposed. “Silence shall be observed at all times,” the first of the Convitto’s rules said, “except during recreation time, when voices shall not be raised too high, and care shall be taken not to make noise in the corridors, on the stairs, when entering or leaving rooms, and especially in the study, where silence shall be observed with the utmost rigour.”¹⁵⁴ Detachment from the “world”, avoidance of crowded places, prohibition from attending shows or going to public places: these elements were considered essential in order not to lose the “ecclesiastical spirit”.
   Great importance was given not only to moral theology, but also to preaching and liturgy. “The time for study,” states regulation no. 13, “shall be divided partly into practical moral theology and partly into the composition of sacred eloquence and liturgy in the manner that will be assigned.”¹⁵⁵

4. Another fundamental characteristic was a strong apostolic “projection”; first Guala and then Cafasso, who became rector of the Convitto in 1849, guided young priests in significant apostolic experiences on behalf of young people, the poor, prisoners and those condemned to death.¹⁵⁶

5. From this apostolic perspective, the Ignatian spiritual exercises occupy a prominent place, of which Diessbach, Lanteri, Guala and Cafasso were convinced promoters.¹⁵⁷

6. Other characteristics of the Convitto’s spirituality were a solid Marian piety,¹⁵⁸ devotion to the Sacred Heart and to Christ in the Eucharist.

7. Another guiding principle, also linked to the apostolic project of the Diessbach Amicizie, was the importance given to the apostolate of the good press, to the dissemination of publications that refuted doctrinal errors and spread Catholic doctrine.

8. The Saintly Protectors of the Convitto were St Francis de Sales, whose teachings and spirituality had a major influence on the lives of the Amicizie,¹⁵⁹ and St Charles Borromeo, the true “refounder” of seminaries during the Catholic Reformation.

What follows is how the Convitto’s spirituality was outlined by Tullio Goffi:

The Convitto’s spirituality is based on the doctrine of St Francis de Sales and St Alphonsus Liguori. It does not form people for holiness as in a monastic community; it does not educate them to a mystical experience; it does not invite them to abandon everyone and everything in order to perceive themselves as belonging only to God and in God. It simply makes young priests aware that they are living in a spiritually troubled world; it shows them that, from the Christian point of view, there is much to be done; it equips priests for unceasing action on behalf of souls to be saved, offering them the comfort of apostolic charity and acceptance. The Convitto seeks to convince priests that what they must propose and demand of the faithful (orthodox doctrine, a spirit of prayer and mortification, ethical and canonical observance) necessarily requires them to bear witness to it in their own lives. Doctrine on priests or lay people, although it does encourage virtuous asceticism within a faithful practice of piety.¹⁶⁰

2. 6.2 Practices of piety at the Convitto