'To the young', from Don Bosco's The Companion of Youth

The Companion of Youth is one of St John Bosco's best known works. First published in 1847,¹ when the Oratory, finally settled at Valdocco in the Pinardi house, began to develop its character as a full-time educational and pastoral work, it ran to more than a hundred editions during the saint's lifetime and continued to be reprinted and translated until halfway through the twentieth century. It is not just a simple handbook of prayers and devout practices. It aims at offering young people “a cheerful and happy way of living as a Christian”, a proposal for spiritual life and youthful holiness. In short, we find in it all the characteristic content of the model in place at the Oratory for growing up, a system which was successfully practised and remained substantially unchanged over successive decades “because the religious experience it proposed was linked with the entire system and life style which, according to Don Bosco, young people were immersed in every day at the Oratory and in similar educational settings”.² We reproduce here some of the instructions that furnish the essential outline of this spirituality. It is characterised by total and joyful giving of self to the Lord, moved by affection for him, in the ordinariness of the everyday.

There are two main snares by which the devil usually tempts young people away from the practice of virtue. The first is to convince them that the service of the Lord consists in living a life of melancholy, devoid of all pleasure and enjoyment. This is not the case, my dear friends. I would like to teach you a kind of Christian life that will make you happy and contented. I want to show you what true enjoyment and pleasure is, so that you may follow the advice of the holy prophet David: Serve the Lord with gladness: servite Domino in laetitia.³ This, then, is the purpose of the present book: to teach you how to serve God and to be always happy.

The second snare is the hope of a long life, with the expectation of conversion in old age or when death threatens. Be careful, my dear boys, because many have been deceived in this manner. What assurance have we got that we shall ever reach old age? We cannot expect death to await our convenience at old age, since life and death are in God’s hands, and he apportions them as he sees fit. If God, however, grants you a long life, listen to the serious warning that he has uttered: A young man according to his way—even when he is old, he will not depart from it. Adolescens iuxta viam suam etiam cum senuerit non recedet ab ea.⁴ In other words, if we lead a good life when we are young, we shall be good when we are old, and our death will be happy, the beginning of eternal bliss. On the other hand, if vice takes hold of us in youth, it will gradually grow in the course of the different stages of our life until death, which will be the terrible herald of a most unhappy eternity. That this misfortune may not befall you, I have drawn up a scheme of life, brief and easy enough, which will enable you to be a joy to your parents, and a glory to your country, making you good citizens upon earth, and one day blessed inhabitants of Heaven. …

My friends, I love you with all my heart, and your being young is reason enough for me to love you very much. You will certainly find books written by persons much more virtuous and much more learned than myself; but, I assure you, you would be hard put to find anyone who loves you more than I do in Jesus Christ, or who care more about your true happiness than I do. May God be always with you, and grant that by the practice of these few suggestions you may save your souls, and thereby increase His glory. That is the sole purpose of the writer of these pages.

Live happily and may the Lord be with you.

Affectionately yours in Jesus Christ

Fr John Bosco