21 May 2014 --FROM FATHER ANGEL
FERNANDEZ ARTIME
My dear friends,
Warm, affectionate greetings! I’m
writing to you in the immediate preparation for the feast of
Mary Help of Christians, and I’m asking Jesus’ mother to
obtain God’s blessing on all of you, with my best wishes for
your families and the persons and situations who need more
light.
In these first months, I’ve begun to visit
some of the provinces, and I’m getting to know better the
reality of the Congregation and the whole Salesian
Family. I thank God for the good that’s carried out all
over the world in Don Bosco’s name on behalf of the young, of
the poorest, and of ordinary people. They’re evidence of
the multitude of exciting projects where God, with a few
loaves and a few fish, constantly multiplies our action and
causes the poor works of our hands to blossom.
I’m very happy to share with you my hopes
and desires. I’m available to you to continue to offer
some impetus and sustain with my presence, my humble service,
and my prayer whatever the Spirit is stirring up in our
provinces.
We’re presently in the Easter season, and
the peace of our Risen Savior gladdens our hearts. His
message of life and fulfillment brings great joy to our
countenance and makes our eyes shine, for they can contemplate
a new horizon for all of humanity. The future is God’s,
and we anticipate it every day by devoting ourselves to
throwing open the prisons of injustice, by heartening those
who are prey to discouragement, by sustaining those who walk
with difficulty, by sharing who we are with those who have
less or are alone.
This is the message of the One who
lives: new life according to God’s heart, the dignity of
his children, a promising future for the little and the
poor. As St. Irenaeus wrote so long ago, “The glory of
God is man fully alive.” This is our commitment
too: to give glory to God in our brothers and sisters
who are most in need.
Just in these days we’ve received awful
news of the persecution of Christians in many parts of the
world, of violations of human rights in critical areas of the
planet, of the mistreatment and kidnapping of minors on
account of their being female or of their religion.
Nothing is further from God’s plan! The presence of the
Risen Lord lights up the darkness; he is peace that melts away
fear. The message of Christ our Savior is one of harmony
in a new creation set free from evil and darkness.
Unfortunately, sin clutches at us, and darnel chokes the good
grain. Hence we Christians, with men and women of good
will, in the name of God and of our most vulnerable brothers,
must continue to strive to bring forth a new reality that’s
closer to God’s plan with more opportunity for everyone, in
which, in the time of “already but not yet,” more strongly
resounds the fullness of the new creation that still groans in
labor pains.
We must raise our voice and join in the
prophetic declaration that the Holy Father has raised in these
days, asking the powerful not to remain indifferent and to
join forces to bring an end to cruelty and injustice.
Nevertheless, we’re not dealing only with a
political matter for states or with strategies for the United
Nations. In our Salesian Family, marked by a deeply
paschal spirituality, we shall continue to work with all our
power that there may be ever more life, in Jesus’ name, for
the little and the least. With the heart of the Good
Shepherd, who cares for the weakest ones, we shall pursue
sound options to carry out for young people most ill-favored
and at risk, as Don Bosco taught us and wishes us to do.
The call of Francis to emphasize a “Church
that goes out” to the peripheries and poor neighborhoods where
suffering and discouragement are greater is a stimulus for our
undertaking of educating and evangelizing. We’re called
to a new way of “being pastors”: it’s the revolution of
gentleness, of bending down to those who are hurting the most,
of welcoming those who are far away, of making a way for those
who are last, of accompanying personally those whom social
realities shove aside and abandon.
My dear friends, this is our undertaking
too.
In these years we’ll continue to work, as
part of the whole Church, to make our way of life more
credible, to make our proclamation bolder. This will
happen insofar as our choices are closer to the needs of the
poorest young people. Our last general chapter has asked
the Salesians to increase the witness we give of living the
Gospel in a radical manner. The invitation can be
extended to the whole Salesian Family. To follow Jesus
is to walk on the road of poverty and closeness to the last in
society. Like the Master, we want to pass amid humanity,
healing and liberating. Those who bear Christ’s wounds
imprinted in the flesh of their own tortured existence are the
people to whom the Risen Lord addresses first of all his
message, “Peace be with you!”
As we approach the bicentennial of Don
Bosco’s birth, the best way to celebrate our Father is
faithfulness to his great intuitions. I don’t doubt in
the least that one of these, a vital commitment for him as
well as for us today, is the preferential option for
“abandoned and endangered” youths.
The message of the Risen Lord, to return to
Galilee, means for us to return to our roots, to return to
poor young people. I’m sure that “we shall meet him
there.”
Cordially yours in Don Bosco,
Fr. Angel Fernandez Artime
Rector Major
