austraLasia #1809

RM focuses on formation and its challenges - Ba Thon Novitiate encounter

HO CHI MINH CITY: 10th April 2007 -- In a day somewhat packed with encounters - Ba Thon novitiate and prenovitiate in the morning, visit to the FMA and VDB in the afternoon, a Good Night talk to migrant workers in the evening - the Rector Major has focused very much on formation matters. He gave a conference to the formation community, then celebrated Eucharist with them, after which an academy and lunch.  The community's brass band gave him a noisy welcome!
    Currently there are 28 novices and 22 prenovices (adjusting the figures slightly from those offered yesterday, which were the numbers the two groups started out with in August 2006). These are high numbers compared with many other nations - and Vietnamese society has much to do with this, still firmly rooted, as it is in religious traditions. But Salesians in the province have also done much to attract vocations, setting up no fewer than six vocational guidance centres in the vicinity of universities and colleges. The Salesians also help students to settle in boarding communities, hostels, run by the Salesians
    It seems that a high percentage, after this regular contact with Salesians, are opting for Salesian life after graduation.
    Opportune, then, for the Rector Major to address some of the deeper issues of vocational choice, vocational fragility and vocational perseverance with these young Salesians and those intending to be. In speaking of the problems he also spoke of ways of addressing them, ways his young listeners could follow. Speaking of psychological fragility in the face of difficulties, the Rector Major suggested the image of the eel, or of salmon which swim upstream against the current, not letting the struggle wear them down. He spoke of 'vocational inconsistency', expressed when someone makes a life decision one day then gives up the next. He suggested that the way to overcome this is to practise making personal decision, deepening vocational motivation. Again he proposed an image from nature - let's learn from the bamboo which grows high, yet is nurtured by its outer rings. However the inside is empty. For human beings it is impossible to survive without a strong 'inner backbone'. He addressed, too, the situation today of moral confusion, where life is not organised around strong personal convictions and where life and faith are divorced. The bamboo image to the rescue once more! Bamboo can wave around in the wind and all is OK, but if it loses it's inner binding - then it breaks; so too with us. He recommended consecration, mission, community life as the inner bindings that hold formation together throughout our life as consecrated persons. And the Constitutions help charter the way through this life.
    Speaking in the evening to migrant workers who gathered at the Provincial House, the Rector Major reminded them that Don Bosco was himself a poor migrant worker, yet God transformed his life and made him the father of many young people. Fr Pascual invited the young workers to have a dream and to realise that dream with the help of Jesus and Mary, Help of Christians.
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