THE COURAGE TO LEAD: EXPLORING THE INNER LANDSCAPE OF THE SALESIAN RECTOR
If you have moved around educational circles a bit and had the opportunity to do some reading in English, you may already know that the title I have chosen for our few days together is not entirely original, but adapted from a book that you could never find on the shelves in shops because it was already sold out: ‘The Courage to teach: exploring the inner Landscape of a teacher’s life’. This author 20 years ago was expressing ideas that I was convinced spoke to our Salesian way of life, our method, our approach. The fact that Parker J. Palmer is still writing this way and is openly applauded for his spiritual understanding of teaching and learning, tells me his ideas are enduring.
But it is the inner landscape of the Salesian, and the Salesian Rector in particular that I shall be talking about, that I invite all of us to talk about, actually, and that is something Palmer of course would know nothing about, though the fact that he does know so much about the spiritual life, despite the unaccustomed language in which he expresses this, may give me some unaccustomed things to say, from time to time.
A Salesian of 40 years standing, I have been just about everything along the way, lived in and directed not a few communities, but in the end am just a person who really doesn’t know a great deal about anything, though perhaps the one claim I make to knowing something is about the science of language. That doesn’t make me a polyglot, it just means that I’ve learnt a lot about language, have a great love for words and where they come from and what we do with them. I am a passionate linguist, which means in effect that I love language. I hope too that I am a passionate Salesian, and I trust that these two traits of passion, and care for language, will show up over the next few days, because one of the first things I would want to say about our role and function as Rectors, but also as members of community, is that we need to be passionate about who we are (Salesians) and our role (Rectors) – which means we love it, that we are close to it…passionate people don’t distance themselves from tasks or people. And from passion flows compassion or care.
THE COURAGE TO LEAD
The English word ‘courage’ comes from a root that means ‘heart’, and we know the special place that ‘heart’ has in Salesian discourse. ‘Inner landscape’ is not part of our normal spiritual language, but it is evocative. For me it’s more evocative than a term like ‘interiority’, because a landscape is descriptive, and suggests to me hills and valleys, beautiful places and not so beautiful places…but it’s all part of my, and your, inner landscape.
How can we develop and sustain in ourselves and others the heart to be passionately Salesian? And this will never really be about learning a few tricks of the trade, some human skills, although it will involve all that. It will be about going inward though, exploring more of that landscape that has become part of us as Salesians and for which we have so much responsibility now as Rectors. It seems to me that this is what we have to try to do over the next few days together.
There will be times when we tend to ‘lose heart’. I hope we can speak to that too. Recovering courage sometimes needs institutional help. The Congregation, through the EAO Region, has given us this opportunity to come together and ‘take heart’. But I think I am also being very true to the call from our Rector Major, as he invites us to holiness, to the priority of our own spiritual journey, by saying that ‘taking heart’ is really an inner process, and part of these days together has to be ‘inner work’. It is for this reason that I am going to invite you to draw up, over the next four or five days, a personal rule of life as a Rector – nothing too finished and polished. Consider it in the same way as Don Bosco considered writing down things at various times. We are going to spend a lot of time with Don Bosco’s very words, very writings…mostly material I think you won’t have read before, and you are going to be captivated by it, I know. Let some of his ideas and approaches seep into your own, and try to verbalise this for yourself.
This will not be an exercise that anyone else needs to see, least of all me. But there will be enough opportunities to share with one another, and it may help you with that sharing.
If there was ever such a thing as a reading course for rectors (there isn’t), then this week may come close to it. I’d like you to take the time to read. If you are lucky enough to get hold of a copy of the Memoirs of the Oratory, read it in its entirety this week. It is simply a delightful read., but also very important for who we are….in a way Don Bosco was writing it for you and me, not just accidentally so but deliberately. He wanted us to deal with the future by drawing from his past, to take heart, but also to enjoy the adventures of our father. One reading, not its deepest, but certainly a fun one, is to read MO as a picaresque novel with the young Don Bosco a bit like a Tom Sawyer or a Huck Finn.
I have provided other material for your reading – all directly from Don Bosco, some of it not formally published in English. Where possible I have got hold of critical editions from our English-speaking scholars. These readings are bits and pieces sometimes, but they help us see the inner landscape, the territory, in Salesian discourse, once put together properly.
Let me say something about the space that I hope we can create amongst ourselves. This is hopefully also a learning we can take away to employ as Rectors, and it is a theme I will return to from time to time. Just for a moment let me step away from traditional Salesian language about community, community assemblies, friendly chats, community days, the mission, PEPS and PICS and all that sort of thing. What are we trying to do in all this? We are trying to create a space in which something happens, like Don Bosco did with the Oratory, but before we slip back into words like evangelisation and salvation, let’s just stay with this space for a moment.
If we have had a western style education, then we know something about creating spaces for the intellect to show up, to argue its case, to make its point. If our culture is eastern, then we also know a lot about creating spaces that invite the emotions to show up, to express joy or anger in certain ways. If we are skilled in leadership or at least trained in group work we know how to create spaces that invite the will to show up, to consolidate effort and energy around a common task. And for sure you don’t have to be a rector for long to know that your community creates space for egos to show up, occasionally preen themselves and claim their turf!
But why all the effort over years in talking about improving community life? Why a 25th GC which focused precisely on this? Because we are invited to begin to learn or to improve our understanding of how to create spaces where the soul can show up, where people can reveal a little of the core of themselves, their selfhood.
It is my hope that we can do something like this amongst ourselves this week. When the soul comes forth amongst confreres, other faculties are redeemed. People begin to think with the mind descended into the heart. When the soul feels safe to show up in a meeting, the intellect is ready to climb down from its control tower and be part of a common task. In the presence of the soul, the emotions stop pulling us apart and become connective tissue, the will becomes less wilful and more willpower. And the ego is allowed to be there too but as something which helps us stand our own ground and speak truth.
It may sound trite, and too simple, but I would like to suggest that being the Salesian Rector today in our communities is about connecting, or reconnecting SOUL to ROLE. Our soul and that of each member of our community. I’ll say all of this again in our familiar Salesian language, but it doesn’t hurt to hear it phrased differently.
TO LEAD
What do I mean by the verb ‘lead’ in the expression ‘The courage to lead’? I will draw my information from French, not just any French but the French of St. Francis de Sales, since it is highly probable that during Don Bosco’s time at the Convitto Ecclesiastico in Turin, he read and studied the same texts as I will draw on here – and this would give us a clue to some of DB’s own usage.
In the preface to his Philothea, Francis de Sales twice employs the word ‘assistance’ as his choice to describe the role he then goes on to describe, in chapter 4 of the 1st part, as that of the ‘conducteur’. This ‘conducteur’ is a special kind of leader which he calls a faithful friend, guide, guardian angel. The ‘conducteur’, whose approach is that of ‘assistance’, develops a range of personal relationships with the one being guided or assisted. Francis de Sales’ verbs are revealing: showing the way, leading, advising, teaching, directing, examining, correcting, healing, consoling, preserving from evil and consolidating in goodness. We readily recognize these verbs, when brought together, as a form of active education on the one hand and of pastoral care on the other. They are constantly interwoven in his Introduction to the Devout Life to express his style of spiritual accompaniment of souls.
In that homely, almost agricultural style of exemplification often used by Francis, he explains that the task of the ‘conducteur des ames’ is indeed a labour but worthwhile labour like that of the reaper or harvester who has almost too much to do, but has the satisfaction of eventually seeing it done. He says that the fatherly heart of the guide (and nothing less than a fatherly heart is enough) takes on the burden willingly when he finds someone who wants Christian perfection. He then says, revealingly, that the Apostles and men of apostolic times called their charges not just ‘figli’, children, but ‘figliuoli’, beloved children.
I would think that DB did not just accidently happen upon certain ways of acting and speaking about the role of spiritual accompaniment – such indications as we can find in Francis de Sales are pretty good pointers, I think, to where DB took his inspiration from. And as we shall see, when he reconstructs his own spiritual experiences in MO he recognizes the determining role of those who took up the burden so willingly in his own case: his mother, who he says ‘assisted’ him with his first sacramental experiences; Don Calosso who had a ‘fatherly heart’ – and then we find similar verbs as those used by Francis in the description of Calosso’s actions towards young John: he instructed, corrected, motivated, forbade, taught, encouraged. By the time Don Cafasso and the seminarian and later the priest Bosco have entered into a close spiritual relationship, we find a more adult example of accompaniment at work – but with the same characteristics.
Later, when DB begins to reveal his own style of accompaniment, especially as we find it in the three lives of Savio, Magone and Besucco, we see how the roles of confessor, spiritual director, and director of the House have merged into one, summed up best probably in the relationship of trust and confidence that has been engendered by the ‘conducteur’ through his style of ‘assistance’ [ deliberate use of these words out of their original context!].
One final point before I leave this explanation of what it means for rectors to ‘lead’ in DB’s style. Note the essential difference between the classical spiritual director-subject relationship and that of DB’s. In the former, it is the subject, the disciple, who seeks a spiritual master and guide. But in the model developed through the preventive system, it is the Good Shepherd who goes out to seek the sheep who is lost or in need. Nor is it reducible to two individuals, shepherd and sheep. The seeking out and the accompaniment is more often in the context of the group, but in a community form that is always and everywhere adapted to the needs of the individual.
I feel sure that these were ideas first learned at the Convitto, not only through familiarity with Francis de Sales, but Alphonsus Liguori, others of the Catholic Reformation, and the physical example of Don Guala and others about whom DB wrote so glowingly – those who managed, taught at the Convitto and showed through their practical charity how to carry it out at every level of the city, ‘even the homes of the rich’, DB points out.
In essence, then, DB points the way for anyone exercising spiritual accompaniment as guiding souls to holiness achieved through ordinary Christian virtues, duties of state and the demands of each day. His genius was to be able to distill this into neat little expressions like ‘cheerfulness, study, piety’.
EXPLORING THE INNER LANDSCAPE
Assuming we have found the courage to lead, ‘exploring the inner landscape of our task’ is an invitation to do some inner work, but not alone. As important as the inner journey is, we should take it in community – and after all we are wanting to understand how to help others to take their inner journey within our communities. This week, in community, we have a chance to ‘triangulate’ our position as we read from Don Bosco and as we listen to others. I hope we all arrive at the vital intersection along the journey’s way where our truth meets the needs of the world, and especially the young, to whom we are sent.
When DB set out to write the MO he stated three aims in his introduction:
1. a way, through learning from the past, of overcoming difficulties that may arise in the future.
2. it will serve to show how God has been our guide in everything and at all times.
3. It will serve as pleasurable entertainment for my sons as they read about their Father’s adventures.
These are the stated aims. But MO also has inner landscape and it is this that we’ll try to spend time with this week. As you read at least the excerpts provided you will see the contours of this landscape emerge – DB’s real but unstated priority is to pass on to us the spiritual, educational experience that began as the Oratory and that is to serve as a programme of Salesian life and action in the future. IF you like, this is the real-life setting for the Little Treatise on the Preventive System which he wrote after the MO had been finished – just after, in fact. MO comes out of a reflective time when DB was doing intense inner work of his own…for our benefit ultimately, as he was working thru the juridical and spiritual consolidation of the Society of St. Francis de Sales.
To return for a moment to our more traditional Salesian language, when Fr. Viganò sent out his letter of convocation for GC25, and speaking of the Salesian Rector’s mission, he suggested the need for a threefold focus:
a charismatic focus: the Rector has to be able to explain, shed light on, guide, animate Salesian consecrated life, to help people live the human and Christian meaning of its duties and to understand what it means to follow Jesus Christ in Don Bosco’s footsteps. Clearly this requires some consistent and profound inner work as we become co-workers of the Spirit in the vocational growth of others.
a pastoral focus: as a guide who directs people, activities, resources towards evangelisation. There’s so much to actually do at this level, but again it requires inner qualities with outward display: enthusiasm, guidance, clarification, energy.
and a fraternal focus, that is the commitment to animating relationships, dialogue, co-responsibility.
If our animation as Rectors was mainly about administration and organisation, then we would need to focus on lots of techniques and do a lot of outer work. But we know that our task is essentially charismatic and spiritual. That equates to inner work in my book. St. Paul puts it in terms of an interesting metaphor when he says: “my children, for whom I am again in labour until Christ has been formed in you” (Gal 4:19).
This is why I put to you the invitation, right from the outset, to do some inner work of your own, and the method I am proposing, and will explain in another talk, is to draw up a personal rule of life as a Rector – something written in your own way for you but which recognizes features that are obviously central to the common task: it will talk to you about how you intend to nourish spiritual life, the life of faith, vocational motivation, missionary enthusiasm, not just of the SDB members of your community but of the wider community for which you have responsibility (the one we call EPC). It will talk to you about how you intend to define fraternal relationships in depth, how you communicate, promote a sense of unity, belonging, family. It cannot avoid talking to you about your passion for education, and the way you will be witness to and guarantee of the Salesian Pastoral Proposal. And it should talk to you too about your passion for the young themselves to whom all this is directed, about how you can help them open up to Church, experience Church, see their environment as one which spurs them to holiness and grace, especially through sacraments.
That’s a solid dose of traditional or should I rather say, contemporary Salesian language, and while we feel comfortable enough hearing that language, we may feel tempted to ‘lose heart’ over the enormity of the task.
I see my role this week, other than guiding you through some reading, some exchanges amongst ourselves and some interesting experiences, as being that of the encourager or, in other words, the one who gives people heart.
I will try to help you avoid the feeling that you are not up to the task – if you give in to that feeling you will end up wanting to escape responsibilities by immersion in more gratifying ones.
I will try to help you take a new look at the confreres and other people in your EPC, so you can have reasons for trusting them, proposing commitment to them, confronting what has to be confronted.
And I will try to help you overcome the temptation of wanting to do it all yourself. We all live in an ecology of giftedness called community. No one person, least of all the rector, is the saviour of the community and all its situations – at times it looks as if most of our meetings in the context of community are structured as if either the Rector IS the saviour or people are happy to leave him to try to be saviour. Not good.
It is worth a prayer at this point I think, as we ask the Good Lord that I may have the courage to lead you this way, and that you may have the courage to explore the inner landscape as it begins to reveal itself. AMEN.
