S TRENNA 2009

by Pascual Chávez Villanueva

A VAST MOVEMENT FOR THE YOUNG

THE SAME CHARISM

THE SAME MISSION

The young, in the first place: they are God's gift to the Salesian Family. They are not merely the beneficiaries of our activity; they are our vocation. The Lord showed Don Bosco that young people, and especially the poor ones among them, are the first and principal targets of his mission (CIC 21)

_I have already pointed out, dear readers, that the larger Salesian Family has the same charism and the same mission: working for the education and the moral and spiritual good of the “poorest and abandoned young people.” It is the heart of Don Bosco’s whole experience, his gift, his charism which have become the experience, gift and charism of all those who follow him in this in passion. His particular vocation was the result of a special call that on more than one occasion the Lord had given him through prophetic dreams and an attentive reading of the social history of Turin. The period following the ’50s was that of the first industrial revolution: children and youngsters came swarming down from the valleys to offer themselves as cheap manual labour to the manufacturing industries, to work shops, to building sites. Many of them, defenceless, without education nor fixed abode become victims of various forms of injustice, abuse, violence; they are subject to doubts, fears, privation and lose the joy of living. Some follow the path of petty crime. It was precisely his experience with the youngsters in prison that upset Don Bosco, leading him to a new way of being a priest: " Seeing large numbers of young lads … fine healthy youngsters, alert of mind, … seeing them idle there, infested with lice, lacking food for body and soul, horrified me." ¹

☻ The first thing to notice then: Don Bosco knew how to interpret the social situation and to draw the consequences from it. Thus there arose in him an immense compassion for those youngsters. Faced with the most underprivileged and exploited, he felt an urgent need to provide a place of welcome and an educational opportunity which would correspond to their needs: " On such occasions I found out how quite a few … were abandoned to their own resources "Who knows?" I thought to myself, "if these youngsters had a friend outside who would take care of them, help them, teach them religion on feast days ... Who knows but they could be steered away from ruin, or at least the number of those who return to prison could be lessened? I talked this idea over with Fr Cafasso (his spiritual director ed) With his encouragement and inspiration I began to work out in my mind how to put the idea into practice "². So the second thing to observe: the pastoral imagination which led Don Bosco, with creativity and generosity, to try to find the right response to the new challenges, which implied setting up structures which could make an alternative and a better world for those youngsters possible.

☻Don Bosco wanted to “prevent/forestall” by welcoming the boys who arrived in Turin looking for work, orphans or those abandoned by their parents. He began by offering them an education that was based on preparation for work which would help them to recover their self-esteem and self-confidence, combined with a place offering plenty of joy and friendship in which almost as something they could catch, they could adopt moral and religious values. There were so many boys and their needs were even more numerous; he devoted all his energies to them and continued his dreams, but he also began to put them into practice: having “an army of collaborators” which would be able to respond to the great educational emergency of those times of early industrialisation. The Salesian Family would be this “army” of his: clerics, priests, religious male and female, committed lay people rich and poor, married and unmarried and the older youngsters trained to become leaders among their companions. Don Bosco could never have too many collaborators: he understood how great and important this mission for the salvation of the young was from the human, social, moral, spiritual and religious points of view.

☻ Dear readers, the more I get to know the Congregation the more I become aware of how much effort the Salesian Family has made to be faithful to this mission of being close to and supportive of those most in need, coming to the aid of those young people society so often does not help: youngsters who are weak and side-lined, the dropouts, those on the streets, child soldiers, child labourers, children exploited in the “accursed” sexual tourism. Today too there is much to do! This is why I am calling on you to “become filled” with the passion of Don Bosco. “Together we can!” rather than a political slogan, this ought to be the motto of those who believe in goodness. Together we can open up for the young paths of hope and personal fulfilment in order to continue Don Bosco’s dream of seeing them happy first in this life and then in heaven. With him, I too, his successor have a dream: that of a Salesian Family renewed in the charism and full of passion for the mission. ☻