DON BOSCO THE EDUCATOR

PASCUAL CHÁVEZ VILLANUEVA

DON BOSCO SPEAKS

11.

“BEGIN RIGHT AWAY TO TEACH THEM THE UGLINESS OF SIN AND THE BEAUTY OF VIRTUE”

Nowadays, it is not easy to speak about Jesus Christ and make him visible to the young, but it is not impossible. Young people are distracted by many things and they seem almost unapproachable when it comes to religious topics. But this is only a superficial impression. In my time, like today, the problem was not so much speaking about Jesus, but the manner and tone, the hook to catch them. It may seem strange, but some of my contacts with young people did not take place in the sacristy, nor in the shadow of the Church. Quite the opposite! Many meetings began in the squares of Turin, or in one of the many alleyways of the historic city centre.

At the beginning of my priestly ministry, Fr Cafasso, a priest friend whom I had chosen as my spiritual director, had given me a golden piece of advice: “Go out into the city and look around you.” I had to meet the young people in the places where they gathered. If I had waited to meet them in Church, I would have lost a lot of time and a thousand opportunities. I had to reach them on their territory, in the open. It was worthy trying.

A black cassock

At first sight they were rough, uninterested, sometimes violent, quick to start a fight and draw a knife. Looking around (as Fr Cafasso had told me) I met a lot of young people. It seemed to me that they were going in search of any form of entertainment because, deep down, they did not know how to be happy. They sneered, but they did not laugh. After a curse or a rude word, or some deed of bravura, there were brief outbursts of ribald laughter and shouting, but then suddenly an unreal silence suddenly befell them, a kind of emptiness. At the beginning I had to overlook certain words and attitudes. Then, after a while, I was able to start a conversation. They were curious but the presence of a black cassock did not seem to upset them. Often we ended up in a tavern, with a bottle of wine or two. Good people thought I was lacking in clerical decorum, but for me it was a marvellous opportunity that I would not have missed for the world. I was interested in their life, I enquired about their families, I got to know if they were working. Then I would throw in a question about their Christian life, and I would finish up inviting them to come to the oratory, even if only just to have a look. Most times it worked. The following Sunday I would find all or almost all of them there, some waiting in line for a bit of bread and a slice of salami, others just to say hello. Some even came to make their confession. I knew I was going against the tide and causing a certain unease among my fellow priests. But I wanted those young people, not because as many people said, they were the future of society, and not from a kind of watered-down paternalism because I felt sorry for them and they deserved something better. I wanted them because I wanted to love them, and listen to them and give them attention and respect.

Living among them, I became more and more convinced that the young people wanted answers, and they wanted a serious discussion with the adult world. They did not want people who would point the finger at them as a sign of disapproval, or worse still, of condemnation. They were looking for adults capable of confronting them and challenging them, but above all, capable of understanding them and loving them. For this reason, they needed adults in their day-to-day lives, not just for a moment now and again. They needed adults who had time, plenty of time, with no hurry and no formality. With these young people, I learned to be their friend, in the same way that I had learned “to be a priest” while I was at the Pastoral Institute. For me, working with and for these young people was the fulfilment of a dream that I had cherished passionately for the whole of my life. I realized that the only nostalgia possible in that situation was a longing for the future, in other words, one of hope. To attain this ideal I used to say: ”We need to know the times we live in and adapt to them.” This was not from any sense of fatalism, nor for lack of objectives, but because I wanted them to see life as a journey to freedom that has to be acquired day by day. They had to accept and face their lot, and the challenges of life. I used to remind my boys often, “Wisdom is the art of knowing how to control your own will.”

It was God’s will

To the best and most generous of them I used also say: “Do not waste time. Do good. Do as much good as you can and you will never regret it.” And I would challenge them: “If a poor priest with next to nothing, or less than nothing, could bring things to the stage where we are now, despite opposition on all sides, how much good does the Lord expect from 300 strong, healthy, well educated young men with plenty of good will and all the powerful means we have at our disposal now?” This last phrase needs to be explained. I remember very well when I said it. It was at the beginning of 1876, during the annual meeting of the Rectors. I had listened to these collaborators of mine, the Salesians that previously I had accepted as boys at Valdocco. And they had thrilled me with stories of the wonderful things they were doing in various towns and cities, in Italy, France and Argentina. It had all begun thirty years earlier in that small Pinardi shed. My heart was full of emotion as I relived that experience I had had, together with my mother: “What was there here when we started? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Here and in the area all around there were fields of corn and cabbage, a few kitchen gardens and nothing else. In the middle there was a small hovel which served as a tavern, miserable looking on the outside and even worse inside. And not only that, it was also a brothel. I used to go after the wildest and worst behaved of the young men who came there, but they did not want to hear about order or discipline and they ridiculed the things of religion, about which they knew absolutely nothing. They used to swear, using the holy name of God, and there was nothing I could do ... I was a poor priest, alone, abandoned by all, indeed worse than that, because l was persecuted and treated with contempt. I had a vague thought of doing some good here, in this place, and doing some good to these poor boys. This thought was what directed my every step and my every act. I wanted to do good, a lot of good, and I wanted to do it here. At the time, it seemed like the impossible dream of a poor priest, but God made that dream come true. God fulfilled the desire of that poor priest. I don’t know how these things were done, but this I know, that it was God’s will.” It was this hope, built on trust and prudence, which sustained me during those delicate and difficult beginnings.

The young people I knew, these young people I met and made part of my life, had their own dream. Whoever got to them first, would win them over. I became ever more convinced that if I had not been able to do something for them at that precise time, somebody else would have got hold of them later, and they would have had their youth stolen. After spending my life for them, I can say that it is wrong to make generalizations accusing them of making no effort, as if they had no heart. We educators cannot make statements like that, because we know they are not true. Young people, nowadays as in the past, get lazy when they have no ideals. They have no love for sacrifice because the sacrifice is presented to them without love. Now, who better than a priest, or an educator who has faith, to offer young people an ideal worthy of them? Everything that is good, just, noble or beautiful in other ideologies is to be found also in our Christian faith. That is why I was able to follow the example of St Francis de Sales and I had the joy of offering young people a form of humanism that looks to the Infinite. They were rescued from the ugliness of sin only when we were able to show them the beauty of virtue.