| If
you have trouble reading this email, view the text version here. |
 |
 |
#2996
22 January 2012
The difference between hagiography and real life!
|
|
Help
Twitter
hashtag #db2015 go viral! Don Bosco Birthday Bicentenary
|
|
Getting to know...... history or hagiography?
ROME --
22 January would normally be the memorial of Blessed Laura Vicuña, but
as it is also the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, it will be passed over
in most places. Were you aware that just some months back, photos were
unearthed that were potentially real photos of the young girl in
question, and after a serious investigation and research by competent
historians and the help of the Chilean Police department, finally
declared as such. Compare the 'real' Laura with the
hagiographical depiction!
Which brings us
back to the major theme intoduced by this year's Strenna, and foremost
in the minds of the Salesian Family as it concludes, in Rome, the 30th
Salesian Family Spirituality Days: Coming to know, getting to know, Don
Bosco's life-story. The Rector Major has been insistent that this
is both an act of head and heart, but at the centre of it lie the Memoirs of the Oratory,
Don Bosco's own summation of things as he saw them around 1875 - except
that it's much more than a 'summation', it is a heart-tugging appeal to
his 'dear sons', and 'memories of the future' as Braido so neatly put
it.
As people move into the novena for the
great Feast on 31 January (you recall the resources offered in an
earlier austraLasia), there are two more resources that you may find
useful not just for the novena period but throughout the year.
The
first set of resources is the collection of major talks given over
these days in Rome. One or two of them are of extraordinary
interest to us. The presentation of the MO as a handbook of pedagogy
and spirituality is one of these - by Fr Aldo Giraudo. The other
you might want to consider is Fr Bruno Ferrero's 'wander' through many
of the formerly well-known anecdotes about Don Bosco. I say 'formerly',
because the Biographical Memoirs
are often considered as more along the hagiographical lines than the
real ones these days. What Bruno does is to recover one very distinct
and real fact that is of value today - that not all truth is
propositional! That narrative truth is valuable and that we can
glimpse Don Bosco through this means.
Anyway, this set of resources and several others besides, is available directly at this link in SDL.
The other resource you may find useful is the January 2012 Don Bosco Study Guide that comes from DB Hall Berkeley. This link will take you to that but
will also produce the material from the previous link, since I've taken
it from the 'date' tab this time, and it all belongs to January 2012.
|
|
|
|
AustraLasia
is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific.
It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries
please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com . RSS feeds - just go to
Bosconet, click on austraLasia 2011 in the sidebar. Avail yourself of
the Salesian Digital Library at at http://sdl.sdb.org
|
|
