1GC27- SDB General Chapter

Rome, Direzione Generale Opere Don Bosco

(Sunday, 2 March 2014)

Introduction to the Penitential Rite

Dear Confreres

Today we are celebrating the Liturgy for the 8th Sunday of Ordinary Time.

The readings are inviting us to meditate on the extraordinary love God has for us: God never abandons us, God never forgets his People, and thus the strong appeal addressed to us to first seek the kingdom of God and serve the Lord exclusively: the primacy of God!

Even the greatest human expressions of affection, such as a mother's and father's love for their children, are merely weak analogies of this overwhelming experience: God never forgets us, loves us as only God can love, as individuals, and as a community, a Congregation, as Church.

Assured of this love let us now place ourselves in God's presence, our merciful Father's presence, and ask him forgiveness for our sins, especially our sins against charity, so that inwardly purified, we may worthily celebrate this holy Eucharist and receive the body of Christ.

Homily

Dear confreres,

Some, though not all descriptions that important people of literature and history have given of Don Bosco are well-known. At one time they were collected in a book which ran under the title of “Don Bosco in the World”; this initiative has now been taken up once more in the yearly “Salesians” magazine.

The Rector Major, Fr Pascual Chávez, recently quoted one of these descriptions and it struck me somewhat forcibly. I am referring to the 2008 Strenna, speaking of an exhortation addressed to the Salesians by Fr Duvallet, prison chaplain and collaborator of Abbé Pierre's: “You have works, colleges, oratories and homes for young people, but you only have one real treasure: Don Bosco's pedagogy! All the rest you can put at risk: they are merely means to an end; but preserve his pedagogy ... Change everything, even lose your houses if needs be, that doesn't matter! But preserve Don Bosco's pedagogy, and build up in thousands of hearts the way of loving and saving young people you have inherited from Don Bosco!”¹

This is a radical idea we need to think about. Don Bosco too was radical, like our Lord Jesus was per se, and as he wanted his disciples to be, that is, anyone who wanted to follow him with radical love, a love not shared as is the case between couples, but undivided as is the case in the choice for celibacy.

In Don Bosco's final message to Salesians (Constitutions, p. 257-258) where he says:

I recommend that you do not lament my death. This is a debt we all must pay... Instead of lamenting make firm and effective resolutions to remain steady in your vocation until death. Remain vigilant and see that neither the love of the world, nor affection of parents, nor the desire for a more comfortable life will lead you to the great error of profaning your sacred vows and thus betraying the religious profession by which we are consecrated to the Lord. Let no one take back what we have given to the Lord”.

And in the Spiritual testament Don Bosco left us (Mem. Biogr. XVII, 271-273), speaking of the future of the Salesian Congregation, he has this famous line: “When it happens that a Salesian yields up his life whilst working for souls, you can say that our Congregation has registered a great triumph and that on it will descend in abundance the blessings of heaven”.

There are other things Don Bosco says in the Spiritual testament that I would like to repeat, because I see that over the years in subsequent editions of the Constitutions they have disappeared and been replaced by ellipses.

Let me give you some examples. After so often saying that “our concern will directed to the savages, the poorest of children, those most at risk in society” and that “this is for us the real wealth that no one will envy nor take away from us”, Don Bosco goes on to specify how this concern should be accomplished in practice:

1. “Do not found houses unless you have the necessary personnel to administer them;

2. “Once a foreign mission has begun, lt it continue with energy and sacrifice. Our efforts should always be to establish schools and seek some vocations for the ecclesiastical state, or some Sisters from amongst the girls”.

3. “Let us not keep any property other than the dwelling places we need.

When we lack the financial means for some religious enterprise it should be suspended, but let the works already begun be continued as soon as our finances, sacrifices permit”.

In my life as a Salesian religious, bishop and cardinal I have always had to deal with books. Allow me then to continue listing ways by which Don Bosco aimed to carry out his Salesian mission. I invite you to read the Circular on spreading good books written by Don Bosco and sent to all Salesians in 1885.² Let me read a couple of significant passages:

Spreading good books- Don Bosco says - "was amongst the main tasks Divine Providence entrusted to me, and you know how much effort I spent on it, not withstanding my thousand and one other occupations...

In less than 30 years, the total number of publications and books we have spread among ordinary people amounts to about twenty million...

This spreading of wholesome literature is one of the principal ends of our Congregation. Article. 7, § 1, of our Regulations says of the Salesians: “They shall devote themselves to spreading good books among the people, using all the means which Christian charity inspires...

Amongst the books to be spread I propose that we stick to those that have a reputation for being good, moral and religious, and we should give preference to those produced by our own presses. The reason is the material benefit that results, becomes charity both in the choice of publications and in their quality".

Dear confreres, these expressions of our Founder are not only interesting from an historical point of view, but they are also wise and important for our life, our Congregation and its future.

The Bicentenary of Don Bosco's birth which we are preparing for should be a return to the complete Don Bosco, his substantial and structural choices, meaning his primary objectives and the structures he had to support them, without confusing these supporting structures with the objectives, but also without pretending we can maintain these objectives without the appropriate and significant structures relating to Don Bosco's vocation, charism, intuition: the primacy of God, the charism of the Founder which precede and include that of the educator.

Obviously we don't have to copy the exact structures Don Bosco set up. But - I ask myself - does it cost us so much to say that vocations and formation houses are what we are most serious about, since they guarantee the survival of the Congregation and the good works it does? Why don't we put some articles and photos in the Salesian Bulletin and in our magazines, on our formation houses (aspirantates, novitiates, studentates of philosophy and theology...) and include their postal address, phone number etc.?

Let's go back, my dear confreres, to reading Don Bosco, getting to know his life and works and how much he achieved: so - the Don Bosco of his writings and, much more broadly still, what he was, what he experienced, what he achieved, a complete Don Bosco , his greatness, as the Lord gave him to us and for which we want to thank Him in this Eucharistic celebration.

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