A momentous day for family, for the Salesian Family
ROME: 20th January 2006 -- It is evening still as
this is being written, and the writer has just slipped away from
translating the Rector Major as he spoke to a crowded aula magna
filled with hundreds of members of the Salesian Family from around the
world. It was tonight, in the context of talks, interventions and
group discussion on the Strenna, that the Rector Major chose to let
slip what he has kept a close-guarded secret since visiting Pope
Benedict XVI privately some days ago. In fact, as he said, much
of that conversation will remain private, but he could tell us that the
Pope renewed his insistence that 'Your mother, the mother of your
family, must be glorified soon'. The discussion had included the
fact that back in July, at Le Combe in the Italian Alps, the Rector
Major had met Benedict to welcome him there for a few days rest.
The Pope there had indicated that Mamma Margaret 'is a saint' and that
not even the whole process would be required to state that
formally. The Rector Major asked that the process not be
shortened as such, but that the crucial step of setting up the
theological commission might be taken soon (apparently all the
historical work has been completed). This most recent encounter
between Pope and Fr Pascual confirmed that on that very evening the
Pope would personally invite that step to be taken. All other
things being equal, we should see the process move quickly.
The last 24 hours has produced a number of
remarkable presentations. They were translated 'on the run', and
for the moment a hard copy English version is not available. Two
Salesians, Fr Juan Jose Bartolomé, the Rector Major's personal
secretary, and Fr Aldo Giraudo, offered insights into family life from
two very different perspectives.
Fr Bartolomé is a biblical scholar - his
presentation of the Holy Family of Nazareth was strikingly new.
Beyond Incarnation, a theologically well studied belief, God went in
search of a family in which to learn to be human, a much less studied
aspect, according to the speaker. As for us, so it was for Jesus,
he explains: God too, chose to learn to be human, to be educated and
brought up. The speaker compared and contrasted the two forms of
'annunciation', to Mary in dialogue and to Joseph in a dream, two
rather different ways of letting God's will be known which meant
different things for the respondents. Was much more, in fact,
being asked of Joseph? For all kinds of reasons he had far less
say in what was happening around him! Fr Bartolomé also explored
the price the couple had to pay for accepting God in their midst.
There were some fascinating reflections on the Mother-Son
relationship....as Jesus grew in his humanity, his clarity about being
the Son of God, his 'distance' from his mother grew too; what did
that do to Mary?
Fr Giraudo is a 'new breed' Salesian scholar,
solidly based on the old, but fresh and unassumingly evocative in his
knowledge and presentation of Don Bosco. It is he who has so
strongly expressed the narrative strength of Don Bosco's writings, and
today he drew out from a wide range of these texts the way Don Bosco
has highlighted, often through narrative, his own core experience of
family, where Mamma Margaret is so central. The material was
enlightening, historically thorough, but handled with the same
narrative warmth as its subject.
This gathering of the Salesian Family may go down as
one of the better ones. The Rector Major said as much, and
'signed' it with his own acknowledgment that the choice of the family
as this year's Strenna has proven an 'indovinata scelta', meaning, in
context, that it has been an inspired choice.
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