MANILA --
Holy (Maundy) Thursday seems an excellent opportunity to
present this
very fine series of booklets, authored by Fr Eli Cruz,
Provincial of
FIN, but with plenty of thanks, too, to Frs Noel (Bong) Osial
and Nesty
Impelido, Bro Jerome Quinto, and mission partners John Paul
Sorilla,
Early Macabales, Maria Geraldine (Ghe) Miranda.
Salesian hagiography has long been begging for something along
these
lines, something that fearlessly presents Salesian figures of
holiness
in a way that today's younger generation can immediately feel
attracted
to. Fr Eli hints at this need in his preface to the first in
the series
(All for Love) when
he says:
"This is a retelling of the stories of Salesian Saints; a
restudy of
the situations that surrounded them...a refocusing of their
spirituality for the young adults of our times". At the
same
time, Fr Eli does not abandon nor disdain the rich heritage
already
contained in Salesian hagiography, again something he makes
very clear
from the outset when he cites the efforts and a poem by Fr
Pasquale
Liberatore, a long-time and himself holy Salesian Procurator
for the
Causes of Sainthood. It is a poem which Fr Liebratore
dedicated to his
novice master, Fr Alfred Cogliandro.
It is a tricky task, holding postmodern fragmentation and the
eternal
attractiveness of holiness together, and perhaps even more
technically
challenging to present this eternal attractiveness in an
equally
attractive postmodern layout! Eli and his team manage to do
it! Each
volume, just short of hundred pages, despite the linear nature
of text
and bound pages, has been given a hypertextual feel, partly if
not
largely through the use of web-like icons for 'navigating'
one's way
through the text, but also for the infobox-like summaries, and
the
additional material that form the 'restudy of the situations
that
surround" the saints chosen, the tweet-like comments that
accompany the
presentation. Now don't get me wrong: there is nothing
superficial or
even brief about these presentations. They are in-depth.
That's why one
is likely to find just two, at most three individuals (or
group, or
representative of a group) dealt with per volume. The
postmodern and
contextualising touch allows us to find Albert Marvelli yoked
together
with Helen Hirsch, Federico Fellini, Benito Mussolini, Dominic
Savio
and Pius XI, all somewhere represented between 'The Godless
Years',
'The Godly Story', 'The Soul's Diary', 'The Compelling
Lessons'. Each
saint's life story concludes with a Scriptural reflection and
a prayer.
The first booklet deals with the early stage of young
adulthood, and
the shift from identity to intimacy. But it is also addressed
to those
who minister to youth, to teach them how to reach out to them,
shepherd
them. The second booklet focuses attention on the search and
struggle
of young adults to find their place in this world. The third
raises the
question: why be a moral person? And Eli's answer runs along
these
lines, as he carefully chooses his characters for the booklet:
"The
world is unfair and unrestrained. It is dangerous and screwed
up. What
do moral visionaries like the Five from Potznan and
Alexandrina of
Balasar get? They get either a bullet or a burden and well,
yes, a
beatification....we are born for greater things, and
therefore, we must
choose the bigger things".
I have a feeling this series will 'work' wherever. It is not
culturally
bound (a terrible temptation of some hagiography), but culturally sensitive so, well
done, Fr
Eli Cruz and team! And let me say that these work even with
'older'
adults!
