Celebration in honour of Don Bosco,

Homily for the closing of the East Asia-Oceania Team Visit 2005 Hua Hin, Thailand

I am happy to be celebrating this Mass in honour of Don Bosco, at the end of the East Asia-Oceania Team Visit.

This evening we would like to give thanks in a special way for the gift of Don Bosco that it provides us with. A gift which concerns who he was historically, because this has been the source of so many wonderful initiatives such as the Salesian Congregation, the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, the Salesian Cooperators, and no less wonderful, the Association of Mary Help of Christians. A gift, however, that will continue on in the measure with which Don Bosco is accepted as father and model of the spiritual life and our apostolic project.

The Word of God is quite illuminating concerning this aspect, because it helps us see what Don Bosco’s greatness was and how we can imitate it.

We all know that John, born in Castelnuovo d’Asti in 1815 [note – Italian version says 1915], was educated to the faith and to a coherent practice of the Gospel message by his mother. At just 9 years of age he had understood that he needed to dedicate himself to the education of the young. While still a lad, he began to deal with those his own age alternating games, prayer and religious instruction. Once he became a priest, as a programme for his life he chose: “Da mihi animas, cetera tolle”, and began his apostolate amongst the poorest of the young by founding the Oratory and putting it under the protection of Saint Francis de Sales.

Through his educational style and pastoral praxis, based as it was on reason, religion and loving-kindness (the Preventive System), he brought young adolescents and older youth to moments of reflection, to an encounter between themselves and Christ and each other, to education to faith, to celebrate the sacraments and to an apostolic commitment and commitment in their working life. The fifteen year-old Saint Dominic Savio became one of the most beautiful fruits of his education.

The source of his tireless activity and the effectiveness of it was a constant “union with God” and boundless trust in Mary Help of Christians whom he saw as his inspiration and support in all his work. And as an inheritance he left his sons a simple spirituality but one solidly based on Christian virtues.

He expressed this in a mystical way through the motto: “Da mihi animas…

He summed it up ascetically in the trinomial: Work, temperance, prayer

And educationally in the Preventive System: Loving-kindness, Reason, Religion

In popular fashion in the trinomial: Love for the Eucharist, devotion to Mary our Mother, and fidelity to the Pope.

He also had three words for the youngsters: Health, Wisdom, Holiness.

But from where and from whom did John Bosco learn this school of spirituality and holiness?

There is no doubt that Mamma Margaret was his first great teacher, but it was the wise and maternal guidance of the Virgin Mary that guided him and accompanied him throughout his life. Both, at different levels, intervened in his life to make him open to the Gospel message and to make him a good disciple of Jesus, a worker without paragon for the Kingdom and on behalf of the young, especially those who were poorest and in difficulty.

The first reading, in fact, offers us one of Don Bosco’s great spiritual and educational intuitions, that is, that the love of God and love for God is the source of joy, such that he was able to tell his boys at the Oratory: “Here we make holiness consist in always being cheerful”.

Mamma Margaret’s words for educating John in fear of the Lord, which Don Bosco then took up, “God sees you”, is perfectly in harmony with what the first chapter of Ecclesiasticus has to say: “The fear of the Lord is glory and pride, and happiness and a crown of joyfulness. The fear of the Lord will gladden the heart, giving contentedness, joy and long life.” This wisdom was most important in John Bosco’s life, also in his first ‘apostolic’ encounters with those of his own age, where he mixed in games and prayer. Perhaps we ourselves should learn not to think of God as a threat to our happiness, but as the source of happiness and of life. Perhaps we should learn from Don Bosco to have a smiling face and a calm gaze, one which is optimistic, forward-looking and which has us realise that we are believers in a crucified God, yes, but a Risen one too who has filled our human existence with joy and hope. Perhaps we should help young people to have an experience of how happy one can be while at the same time serving God.

The reason for this truth, meaning that “the law of the Lord is perfect, refreshes the soul, gives joy to the heart and light to the eyes”, as the responsorial psalm says, can be found in the fact that, deep down, the law is at man’s service, to make him ever more human and not to put him down.

This is possible when we discover that laws, orders, aim to put values into circulation and are, then, the expression of love. Saint Paul refers to this in the first letter to the Corinthians, in the text we have just heard. The most precious gifts, those of nature and of grace, will serve no purpose without love. The primacy of love comes precisely from the fact that it makes us grow to maturity, to the point of perfection, that it makes us ‘divine’, because it has us act like God (God is Love. Charity is patient, kind, never jealous, does not take advantage, is not conceited, does not lack respect, does not seek its own interests, does not give way to anger, is not resentful, takes no pleasure in others’ sins, but rejoices in the truth. It covers all things, believes all things, hopes all things, puts up with every manner of things). And just because it has this immense power to transform people from within, it also has the energy to overcome death. Therefore, says Paul, even if now “three things remain: faith, hope, and charity, the greatest of them all is charity”, the only one to remain forever.

Living in friendship with God means to say, then, living in communion with Him, remaining united through observance of his commandment of love.

Living in happiness means to say releasing all the best energies in our heart, from which proceeds everything that is good.

Living thus is ultimately being salt for the earth, the light of the world, the city on the hilltop, that is, being workers for the good, as Jesus wanted his disciples to be.

This excerpt from Matthew’s Gospel seems to have been Don Bosco’s programme; he was aware of the responsibility that Christians have ‘before men’.

The salt of the earth, the hope of the world are those who preserve human and religious values, which prevent the world from going bad, and which keep a reserve of humanity.

We are the salt of the earth when we live the spirit of the Beatitudes, when we make the Sermon on the Mount our identikit, and place ourselves in the circumstance of being an alternative society of people who, faced with a society that favours success, passing things, temporary things, money, pleasure, power, revenge, conflict, war – choose peace, pardon, mercy, gratuitousness, the spirit of sacrifice, beginning from the smallest circle of our family or community and then widening it out to the broader social dimension.

Jesus however warned us that it is possible for the salt to lose its flavour, for his disciples to be inauthentic. He did not hesitate to warn them of its disastrous consequences: “It serves for nothing other than to be thrown out and trod underfoot by men”. Either we are disciples with a clear Gospel identity, and therefore significant and useful for the world, or we are to be thrown out, despised and unfortunate, ruined – we are nothing.

We are the light of the world, as He is the light, if we live the Gospel Beatitudes; we are the city on the hilltop if we accept the public responsibility we have and do not seek to make faith or discipleship are private matter without a social dimension, without public involvement; we are the lamp on the lampstand if we live according to the Gospel and shine our light on all, believers and unbelievers, disciples or not disciples, near and far; in short, a light for the entire world.

Christianity, faith, the Gospel, ADMA have a social value and a public responsibility for the simple reason that all vocation is mission, because one’s identity is verified by one’s life, because being does not exist if it is not manifested, so these values then cannot be understood and lived “in private only”.

This is the meaning of Jesus’ exhortation with which he concludes, and while it concerns the metaphor of light in particular, obviously it refers just as much to the salt and the city. “So, let your light shine before men”. It could seem to be a contradiction, for anyone who knows the Sermon on the Mount well, where it says: “Do not parade your good deeds before men. When you give alms, do not have it trumpeted before you; and when you pray, close the door to your room; when you fast, do not put on a gloomy look” (cf. Mt 6,1.3.6.16).

The contradiction between the two exhortations is apparent. Jesus wanted us to do good for its own sake, without seeking gratification, satisfaction, compensation. Neverthless, the good done should not just sound within. We have a responsibility to do good out of love and not in order to be seen. Here we are dealing with three progressive moments: being light for others by living the Gospel an being true disciples; expressing our faith through practical charity, by carrying out the works of the Gospel; being a reason for giving glory to God when these works are noticed by others.

Jesus wanted his disciples to make the Sermon on the Mount a programme for life: meekness, poverty, gratuity, mercy, pardon, abbandonment to God, faith, doing to others what we would have done to ourselves – here are the Gospel works that we ought make shine forth, those which make us become ‘salt’ and ‘light’, those which create that alternative society which prevents humanity from becoming completely corrupted.

Don Bosco sought nothing else on behalf of his boys by means of his good works, the purpose of which was that of making them “honest citizens and good Christians”. Education, encounter with Christ, being part of the life of the Church and discovering each one’s own vocation – here is the journey of faith proposed by Don Bosco.

Don Pascual Chávez V.

Hua Hin, Team Visit East Asia – Oceania

2005, March 11