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DON BOSCO EDUCATOR

PASCUAL CHÁVEZ VILLANUEVA

WHEN YOU GIVE EVERYTHING, IT MEANS THAT THERE IS NOTHING KEPT FOR YOURSELF

DON BOSCO NARRATES

It was on Easter Sunday when I finally was able to tell my kids: "We have a House." In truth, it was a low shed and insufficient, but it was ours! We ended up wandering around Turin, in a state of exhausting insecurity, full of misunderstandings and mistrust. The date is too important to forget: April 12, 1846! I was thirty years old, for five of which I was a priest. I saw things in a perspective brightened by confidence in Providence. I threw myself headlong into the job: I would climb onto rickety scaffolding for buildings under construction, in order to find my boys: I walked into the workshops, into stores: to speak a word of friendship, and to have a joke with them. I was concerned about their physical health; I spoke with their employers, who were often too cruel. It was a relationship of friendship and mutual trust that I wanted to establish with everyone. Education is not something for only one day, it requires patience and lots of hope.

As you know, July is a hot month in Turin. But at Valdocco, it is suffocating. Everything was so unexpected. It was going to be a Sunday filled with plenty of activities. Suddenly, I collapsed on the ground. A gush of blood spread over the dust and grass of the lawn. Then I became unconscious. When I came to my senses, I found myself in bed: there was a lot of people around, then a doctor arrived. Having seen the seriousness of the case he forced me to take a rest. I spent a week while my physical strengths decreased more and more. I felt exhausted, in a continuous doze.

I remember seeing the doctor shake his head, helpless, and he said: "Maybe it won't last the night." The next day, almost by magic, I woke up. Then, little by little, I recovered my strength. My thought was always for my boys. Where were they? Would they have returned to Valdocco? Another week. Then it was Sunday. Leaning on a stick, I went off to the shed. I heard voices, shouts of joy, my head was reeling from exhaustion. I met a priest who gave me a hand. He told me of the many sacrifices that boys had done, because they said: "Don Bosco must not die".

I understood that they had worked a true miracle. Then the older ones took me, they forced me to sit on a high chair and carried me in triumph. Many cried with satisfaction. They gathered around me. When they went silent, I told them: "My dear ones: you have prayed and made many sacrifices so that I could recover my health. Thank you. I owe you my life. Well: I promise that I will live totally for you ". I couldn't say anything more because I too was moved. But from that day I felt devoted to causes of the young forever. The most beautiful and most convincing lesson the boys had given me!

Sitting on that high chair, surrounded by so many boys had destined my life to young people. And so I continued. But there is an answer that I gave them in an even clearer and more convincing form.

It was the end-of-the-year party on December 31, 1859: Despite the chronic poverty of Valdocco, we exchanged small gifts, as you do in the family: a holy picture, a small pencil, a rubber, a sweet, a notebook ... little things, but given from the heart. After the Evening Prayer, I gave the ‘Good-Night’ in a few words. I, too, wanted to give something to these young people. I said: “ My dear little children: you know how much I love you in the Lord, and how I am totally dedicated to make of you the very best I can. What little I know, what little experience I have acquired, what I am and as much as I have, I want to use in your service. Whatever the day and no matter what you do, is of interest to me, but especially in matters of the soul. On my part, I give all that is myself; they may be petty things, but when I give you everything, it means that there is nothing I keep for myself. "From that Sunday in late July when I had made that solemn promise to donate my entire life to young people, 13 years had passed; Valdocco was a larger family. There were already several hundred young people who had studied or had learned a trade. I wanted them to understand that I stood with them: it was the result of an irrevocable choice. I would never betray the trust which young people put in me, and later, in my Salesians. When I told them, "I keep nothing for myself", it was as if I’d said: I don't think any more of myself, I give totally to each one of you; I do not belong to myself anymore, I belong only to you, I am yours forever, I no longer have anything of myself. Look! I have unwrapped my secret. With the lads I have always been guided by these decisions, by these choices. I am never turning back. The young people; I have never betrayed them!

Of letters, I've written thousands. But if I had to pick one that was from the heart, I would choose the one I wrote to my Salesians, and their professors and the students of Lanzo Torinese.

Here are some excerpts: Let me tell you, and let no one be offended: you are all thieves; I say this and I repeat, you have stolen everything from me. When I was in Lanzo, you enchanted me with your care and loving- kindness, I have linked your mental ability with your pity. I was still this poor heart, from which you had stolen all the love. Now your letter signed by 200 nearest and dearest friends took possession of my whole heart, where nothing more remains but a keen desire to love you in the Lord, to make the best of you, to save the soul of everyone.

This was my way of speaking and writing for young people: with my heart in my hand, without unnecessary frills, with sincere words and saying things that I really believed in. As a good farmer I had learned to keep my word. And my word was this: “I promised God that until my last breath I would be there for my poor young people”.

I know that my second successor, Fr Paul Albera wrote a beautiful letter in which he says one thing that’s true: "Don Bosco taught us to love, to attract, to capture and to transform". An enriching sequence of verbs, all four important, each one recalling the other. "My little Paul" had understood the lesson: love attracts, the attraction becomes a conquest, and this ends up transforming.

My programme, simple and straightforward, is expressed in a phrase that is a serious and radical commitment: “For these young men I would sacrifice anything, I’d even give my blood willingly to save them”. It wasn't just spoken words; it was the programme of my life!

January 1888. Even on my deathbed, in that whirlwind in which they are memories, feelings, worries, fears and hopes I still had the power to pass on to a dear Salesian, Fr Bonetti, my last message which summarises almost all my life: "Tell the young people that I await them all in Paradise". It was my will, the last wish which I expressed in the groan of the agony. I loved the young people right up to the end! And I wanted them with me, forever, even in Paradise.