The Church lives her mystery in every period of history, and endeavours to provide a response to the burning questions of the day, in the light of the past and with an eye to the future. She knows she is at the world’s service, because she was born from Christ, “who came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk 10,45). Pope Pius XI used to say: “The world does not exist for the Church, but rather the Church for the world”. The Church in fact must relate to the Lord who calls her, to the world to which she is sent, and to the Kingdom she promotes in the heart of the world.

It is of interest to point out some elements, internal and external, that have contributed to the direction of Vatican II’s ecclesiology. I think they are well summed up in the following theological reflection: “Over the past 25 years society and the Churches of the Christian West have seen transformations that cause serious problems for western Christianity in the spreading of the Christian message. Economic and scientific development has taken place at a dizzy rate. The classical model of society is undergoing a crisis. The rebellion of the Third World against any form of neo-colonialism has called into question the superiority of the West. The Churches cannot be deaf to the emancipation of women, to the widespread diffusion of a new kind of culture among the young, and to the enormous problems of an economic, demographic and ecological order. Within them there is an ever growing tendency towards a greater participation of all the members at the two moments when decisions are formulated and taken, and at times of effective dialogue with other Churches and religions. The Church’s commitment to what is good for man means she must defend his rights wherever they are violated. In the Latin-American continent, bishops, theologians and other men of the Church have made a preferential option for the “poor”, understood in a wider sense than that of economic poverty alone. In recent years the “poor” have begun to participate in a real way in the political and ecclesial lives of Latin-American countries. From being objects of evangelization they have become transformed into evangelizers”.¹⁰

Certainly the political, social, economic, cultural and even religious situations have changed even more over the last 15 years, that is, since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. With the ending of the cold war a new supremacy appeared and a neo-liberal economy was imposed. The situation took a new turn on 11 September 2001 when Islamic terrorism first made its dramatic appearance on the international stage, leading some people to speak of a “clash of civilizations”, but no one at present would venture to forecast how the present conflict will develop. Nevertheless the approach of the Church to the human situation is still valid: humanity is still the objective of and challenge to her activity, and ever more valid is the perspective, inaugurated by the pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, of speaking of faith not in the abstract but starting from human lived experience and historical events.

Two new aspects of today’s Church were presented by Gaudium et Spes; they reveal a new awareness of being not the mistress but the servant of the world: the attitude of dialogue and the message of optimism.

The attitude of dialogue stems from the recognition of the fundamental union between the order of creation and that of redemption. The Church fully recognizes the dignity of human nature and human rights; she defends authentic human values and cooperates with all men and women of good will in the building of a more human world. With this attitude of dialogue the Church takes part in the common search for solutions to the grave problems causing so much anxiety at the present day. In this collaboration her objective is not to make sacred civil society, and still less to ‘ecclesialise’ it, because she recognizes the autonomy of the temporal order given it by its Creator. By her action the Church makes the inestimable contribution of the light of the Gospel, with which she is able to speak of eternal values when human knowledge can go no further.

Nowadays the Church knows that dialogue is absolutely necessary for her, as an expression of her mystery of communion and of unity in diversity, as a perceptible sign of her commitment to create synergy with other religions and other Christian churches, with all men and women of good will, to collaborate in the building of a “civilization of justice, love and peace”.

This involves a rethinking of the content and style of pastoral service. Its content is the proclamation of Jesus Christ as the sign of the new humanity, to collaborate in the transformation of society with all who do good, and to denounce whatever threatens harm to the dignity of the human person. Its style is that of respect for diversity without seeming to want to impose anything on anyone, of openness and honesty with all, and of the wish to be of service without compromising principles.

The message of optimism, in turn, seeks to embody the Gospel in the sense magnificently summed up by John: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him may not be lost, but may have eternal life” (Jn 3, 16). Love of the world; love of humanity. This is in effect the message of optimism that Gaudium et Spes has proclaimed in the post-conciliar world, and to which post-conciliar theology has not remained indifferent. The Church has opted for total solidarity with humanity and its conquests, offering the ultimate meaning these have in the divine plan of the Creator.

The spreading of this message has been the principal task of the post-conciliar Church at universal level and especially at the level of the Churches of the Third World. For its implementation pastors, theologians and simple faithful have worked together; tensions that have arisen have never led to the questioning of this fundamental collaboration; on the contrary, such tensions have been the source of fresh energy.

The result of these processes of dialogue and optimism is the awakening of new ecclesial awareness among the great masses of Christians, who now feel themselves to be participants and, from certain points of view, leaders of ecclesial life in their communities. Moreover the Christian is beginning to learn to make himself a man among men, without on this account renouncing his divine vocation This obliges him to harmonize his tasks in the world with his eternal destiny. His Christian faith prompts him to place himself at the service of men and to see in the most deprived a brother needing help to free himself from oppression and live as a son of God.¹¹

Today the Preface to Gaudium et Spes, still remains both beautiful and inspiring, because it preserves all its freshness and its active force; and so I will not resist the temptation to transcribe it, not least because new generations may not know it or be less familiar with it. I will not hide from you my joy and enthusiasm for this vision of the Church, which I want to share with all the members of the Salesian Family, so that they can pass it on to our young people, that they in turn may love her and spend themselves for her.

I said at the beginning that our task is that of making others fall in love with the Church, especially the young people. This is a challenge that has become even more important at the present day, when a growing tendency can be observed in some places to live a Christianity without the Church. There are Christians who have not given up their connection with the Church, but who are not members of nor identify themselves with any community; they are like shoppers in a supermarket who stroll about choosing items here and there that appeal to them.

We know that identification with Christ always implies identification with his Body, with his Church, and with those who belong to it. This is a criterion for verifying the authenticity of Christian identity. But at the same time membership of the Church only makes sense as a means for belonging to Christ: when we say yes to her we say yes to him. Now according to what Paul wrote to the Ephesians this identification is brought about through baptism and the sacramental life, is summed up in the profession of faith, is shaped by a Christian life and is expressed in prayer.

The crucial question therefore is how to educate young people to be Church and to live with the Church. In a world becoming ever more pluralistic, relativist and secularised, the formation of believers calls for a clear and significant witness by the Christian community, so that young people may be offered an evangelical image of the Church’s identity and of her mission in the world. It also requires a journey of faith and in particular a sound catechesis that will help them to mature their conscience so as to be able to open themselves to all that is human, harmonise their options with those of Mother Church, bear witness to their own faith, and in general identify themselves with Him who identified himself with us so as to be sons of the Father and brothers among men.

We know that the witness of the community is a strong element of support and credibility; education to the faith takes place through what one is and one lives, rather than what one hears and is taught. The process of the education of young people to the Church begins with a sincere commitment of the ecclesial community to deepen its fundamental choices, that is, its passion for God which brings it together through Christ in the Spirit, fellowship between all the baptised, concern for evangelisation, the will to serve society, and priority for the poor.

By making these major options the Christian community finds ways to be converted and to resist the various temptations of the present day: the temptation to accept without evangelical discernment the criteria, values, attitudes and behaviour of a society which tends to set itself up as a seductive idol for believers; the temptation to be afraid, which often keeps us closed within the Church’s walls in an attitude of distrust and even of taking it out on society; the temptation to selfishness and passivity, to the seeking for honours and wealth, to the fear of being set aside with the marginalised.

In this effort at conversion our ecclesial identity must be ever more clearly transparent if it is to be effective and make visible and credible what we proclaim. And so in all our works (schools, vocational training centres, universities, reception centres, parishes, oratories, youth centres and ‘boys towns’) the primary objective must be evangelisation, the proclaiming of the good news of the salvation God wants to give to all through his Son Jesus.

The professional management of the works and the serious approach to the programming of our activities must never obscure the primacy we give to evangelisation. “Without a zealous yearning for the true God, theology and pastoral work would be nothing more than activities of a purely technical or administrative nature. The Church must always cast out the buyers and sellers from the temple: “Take all this away and stop turning my Father’s house into a market-place (Jn 2, 16)”.²⁶

We should never forget that structures necessary for the mission often run the risk of obscuring it, unless there is a spirit that makes it quite evident. I sometimes wonder whether the growing difficulty of identifying oneself with the Church is not a consequence of the fact that in some places the Church is not perceived as being seriously concerned about solidarity with those in need and with the suffering of the world, and as being too closed in and self-secure.

In the process of making the face of the Church more effectively significant, we must foster the signs that express it and make it manifest. Many people discover and experience the Church through its signs they find in daily life; these can forge new bonds or strengthen those already existing, but as well as relaunching movements that bring people closer to the Church they can also freeze or weaken them. And so it is important that the Christian community helps the signs of the Church to grow.

There are some particular signs that help young people in their attachment to the Church: the sign of a cordial and evangelical welcome, that shows an attitude of gratuitous openness, of unconditional listening, of the sincere wish to be of service; the sign of the human and Christian quality of welfare services, education and pastoral care; the sign of the truth of the liturgical and of the prayer life of the Christian community, expressed in a celebration that is prayerful, with participation, well-prepared and in harmony with the current problems and situations of society; the sign of pastors living an evangelical life filled with a zeal for God and an ability to welcome and express their fellow-feeling for the people, especially the young and the poor; the sign of service freely given, and a sincere concern for communion. Through these signs young people can be introduced to the experience of Church and helped to open themselves to her.

Together with the witness there is an urgent need to promote among the young a journey of faith that will lead them to a personal meeting with Christ, to the living of a sacramental life, to a more conscious insertion in the Church, to knowing and loving her, to commitment to her and living for her. One of the areas of this journey of faith of the young is concerned specifically with growth towards an intense sense of belonging to the church; Salesian youth spirituality too proposes an experience of ecclesial communion. This is the fundamental duty of the Christian community, and specifically of our educative communities; attention to the journey of faith of young people is an expression of the maternal role of the Church who takes care of her children and helps them to grow. It is something that calls for some specific options.

Making the Church known

The young must be helped to overcome a merely partial image of the Church, often seen only in its institutional aspects as though she were a social and political organization similar to others, or else identified with the hierarchy, or, on the contrary, reduced to a purely spiritual reality, individual and ideal. This requires a careful catechesis on the Church following the lines of Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes, but also an introduction to her practical life, making known her plans and concerns, her leading initiatives and significant persons and communities. The continual provision of positive and trustworthy information will certainly contribute to the development of a knowledge of the Church that is more real and effective.

Making the meaning of Church more widely known

Here it is a matter of developing in young people the sense of belonging: we belong to the Church and she belongs to us. We have been called together by Jesus to form his family and together continue his mission in history. It is not possible to be fully aware of one’s own Christian identity without the living sense of membership of the Christian community. This requires us to develop attitudes of openness, dialogue and fellow-feeling towards mankind, as the Church has done in Vatican II; the Council tried to understand the situation of humanity and collaborate with all men and women of good will in the task of building a more human world.

This is learned and found to be true in family and social life; the individual family as it lives its own life must be a school and workshop of communion. “Being Christian implies a new way of being human; it demands a conversion, the conversion specifically asked for by the Gospel, by Christ. From this standpoint the contribution of the Christian educator, of the pastor of souls, is aimed at the formation of a certain spiritual attitude which is not just knowledge but one in which to knowledge are united attitudes such as the inclination of the will, and the emotions, the sensitivity of the whole person in bringing together experience and a fixed or habitual point of reference; it is the adherence in faith to God’s loving plan of salvation in Jesus Christ”.²⁷

This explains why, in the process of education to the meaning of Church, it is important to form the social conscience of the young through the social teaching of the Church, so that they may learn to live the social and political dimension of the faith, develop their solidarity with problems that beset the lives of so many men and women living in inhuman conditions, and offer themselves as volunteers, apostles and missionaries.

Gaining experience of Church

The meaning of Church and of membership is not created in the abstract but through the experience of Christian life in different personal situations, beginning with the family – rightly called by Paul VI the domestic Church – and continuing in the parish in which normally one has the experience of communion of faith, hope and charity. In our case we experience the Church with the young in the various kinds of educative and pastoral communities, which must be a signs and schools of faith and centres of communion and participation, “so that it can become a living experience of Church” (C 47).

It is a question, therefore, of strengthening our own faith community in all its educative and pastoral aspects so as to make them the leaven of social change. To this the brief descriptions in the Acts of the Apostles bear witness: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And fear came upon every soul; and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts,
praising God and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2, 42-47). Starting from the life of the communities they adopted a culture that differed from that of the Roman empire, a social model characterized not by the eagerness to amass goods, to possess and take the first places, but by the will to share, to serve and to live in solidarity with others.

This requires also that we mark in a special way moments of church life such as baptism, catechesis, participation in the Eucharist, listening to the word, celebrating the sacrament of Reconciliation, group and community meetings, retreats and the celebration of the high points of the liturgical year, fraternal community gatherings, contact with the neighbourhood, etc. None of these things should be trivialized. Everything can and must foster the maturing of the sense of church.

Leading others to find vocation in the Church

The process of education to the faith must help people to pass from good dispositions of mind to firm convictions, from these to persuasive motivations, then to plans of life and eventually to total dedication of oneself to God and to others. This is what is meant by loving the Church and giving oneself for her. Love of the Church is shown also in the ability to let oneself be taken over by Christ to the extent of renouncing personal plans and interests and putting oneself completely at God’s disposal to take part personally in the work of building the Kingdom. Adherence to the Church is made possible by knowling what it is; it develops through a progressive sense of belonging to it; it grows through practical church experiences and matures in vocational commitment.

“Anyone who places himself at the service of the Church nowadays must be convinced, even to the very depths of his being, of the possibility of showing to mankind – even in the midst of a secularised and atheistic world – the hand of God in history and in his own life. This duty to be living witnesses to the experience of God in our world must animate and pervade the various fields and activities of pastoral work in which every ministry or service is expressed… Today, more than in times past, it is true to say that God has need of men.”²⁸

I hope we may all be able to love, follow and imitate Jesus with the zeal, conviction and fidelity of those great columns of the Church St Peter and St Paul, so that we may be able to publicly confess our faith and love as they did: “Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you” (Jn 21, 17); “I know in whom I have believed” (2 Tim 1, 12); “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God. who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2, 20). Then our faith will be expressed in practical charity and become a credible and convincing witness.

It is my earnest hope and prayer that we may all attain the same goal as St Teresa of the Child Jesus: “Yes, I have found my proper place in the Church, the place that you have given me, my God. In the heart of the Church, my mother, I shall be love and in this I shall be everything and my desire will become reality”.²⁹

I finish with a native American legend, All the Colours of the Rainbow, which to me seems to be an appeal to bring together whatever is best in each of us to create something beautiful, enlightening and entrancing, and at the same time meaningful as a rainbow can be.

The Church is the community of Jesus’ disciples, who recall and make present his love for man and the promise of the fullness of life But to be credible and effective we need to set aside our self-sufficiency and to place in common our powers and resources, and so become a young Church without spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but beautiful and resplendent.

  “Once upon a time the colours of the world started to quarrel: all claimed that they were the best, the most important, the most useful, the favourite.

GREEN said:
  "Clearly I am the most important.  I am the sign of life and of hope. I was chosen for grass, trees, leaves - without me, all animals would die. Look over the countryside and you will see that I am in the majority."

BLUE interrupted:
  "You only think about the earth, but consider the sky and the sea. It is the water that is the basis of life and drawn up by the clouds from the deep sea. The sky gives space and peace and serenity. Without my peace, you would all be nothing."

YELLOW chuckled:
  "You are all so serious. I bring laughter, gaiety, and warmth into the world. The sun is yellow, the moon is yellow, the stars are yellow. Every time you look at a sunflower, the whole world starts to smile. Without me there would be no fun."

ORANGE started next to blow her trumpet:
  "I am the colour of health and strength. I may be scarce, but I am precious for I serve the needs of human life. I carry the most important vitamins. Think of carrots, pumpkins, oranges, mangoes, and pawpaws. I don't hang around all the time, but when I fill the sky at sunrise or sunset, my beauty is so striking that no one gives another thought to any of you."

RED could stand it no longer. He shouted out:
  "I am the ruler of all of you - I am blood - life's blood! I am the colour of danger and of bravery. I am willing to fight for a cause. I bring fire into the blood. Without me, the earth would be as empty as the moon. I am the colour of passion and of love, the red rose, the poinsettia and the poppy."

PURPLE rose up to his full height.  He was very tall and spoke with great pomp:
  "I am the colour of royalty and power. Kings, chiefs, and bishops have always chosen me for I am the sign of authority and wisdom. People do not question me - they listen and obey."

INDIGO spoke, much more quietly than all the others, but with just as much determination:
  "Think of me. I am the colour of silence. You hardly notice me, but without me you all become superficial. I represent thought and reflection, twilight and deep water. You need me for balance and contrast, for prayer and inner peace."

  And so the colours went on boasting, each convinced of his or her own superiority. Their quarrelling became louder and louder. Suddenly there was a startling flash of bright lightning - thunder rolled and boomed. Rain started to pour down relentlessly the colours crouched down in fear, drawing close to one another for comfort.

  In the midst of the clamour, RAIN began to speak: "You foolish colours, fighting amongst yourselves, each trying to dominate the rest. Don't you know that you were each made for a special purpose, unique and different? Join hands with one another and come to me."

  Doing as they were told, the colours united and joined hands. The rain continued: "From now on, when it rains, each of you will stretch across the sky in a great bow of colour as a reminder that you can all live in peace. The rainbow is a sign of hope for tomorrow."

  And so, whenever a good rain washes the world, and a rainbow appears in the sky, let us remember to appreciate one another”.³⁰

To Mary, Mother of God, under whose protection we begin this new year of 2005, I entrust each of you, dear members of the Salesian Family, educators and young people of the world. As Mother of the Church may she teach us to be and to form beloved disciples and joyful proclaimers of her Son. May she help us to recognize the Church as our Mother through whom we are always born and reborn in the faith.

With affectionate gratitude in Don Bosco.

Fr Pascual Chávez V.

Rector Major