Windows on Salesian Spirituality

Don Bosco’s “Four Criteria” for Salesian Life

A Window On Salesian Spirituality




David O’Malley SDB


Don Bosco described his way of working with young people as building a home, a school, a playground and a church. In other words, he wanted young people in Salesian settings to belong, to learn, to celebrate life and to find meaning.


These four areas are a kind of window frame through which Don Bosco saw the world of the young. Maintaining a healthy balance between these four areas is part of Don Bosco's wisdom in working with the young.


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Don Bosco’s words today …


home: belonging

school: learning

church: meaning

playground: celebrating

e wanted his youth work to involve a school, a church, a playground and a home, all focused on young people. He described his first Oratory at Valdocco in Turin as precisely those four elements. The vital part of this four-fold pattern was balance. No young person was pushed to pursue one at the expense of the other and Don Bosco probably used these four areas to check the development of the young people in his care. If he saw a young person constantly in church and never in the playground he became concerned. If a young person was regularly alone and did not feel at home with the rest of the young people, he wanted to find out why. If a young person was studying and not spending time with his friends, he would talk to his teachers and try to balance things up.


Don Bosco was using this four-fold approach to young people as a way of seeing into their world. Like St. Francis de Sales, he knew that young people needed to run and make noise and burn off energy, but he also knew that they had a deep capacity for spirituality which many adults overlook. He knew that young people needed to learn but also recognized that they did this best in a safe and homely atmosphere. In Don Bosco's vision then, a child needed a school, a church, a playground and a home. Today the truth of Don Bosco's insight is as relevant as ever.


The truth of Don Bosco's insight in his four-fold oratory model might seem strange to us today, many of us are not school teachers and those of us who work with young people, know how difficult it can be to get them into church. What does Don Bosco's four-fold insight mean today, how can this pattern help us to make sense of our work for young people?


I want to suggest we change the words slightly, changing them from concrete places like church, school, playground and home to four active words that can help us see more clearly into the increasing variety of situations in which we meet young people today.


Here is my own 'translation' of Don Bosco's four words:


Home: belonging

School: learning

Church: meaning

Playground: celebrating


If we understand these four words then, as parents, youth workers, friends and teachers we can transfer Don Bosco's insight into our own Salesian work with young people.


But, "there's more!" Those same four words can help us, as people concerned for the young, to look at our own lives. Belonging, learning, meaning, and celebration could be seen as four points on a compass that can keep us on a balanced course in our lives too.


Checking our inner world against these four pointers, can help us chart the way through the storms and over the quieter flat lands of our spiritual journey.


If we put too much emphasis on one of Don Bosco's pointers, we are likely to ignore the others and lose track of that Salesian spiritual path and the balanced wisdom it follows.


  1. When I work so hard for others that I stop reflecting on my own experience with them, I risk going out of balance and doing them little good. I have stopped learning the lessons God presents to me each day.


  1. When I begin to feel so alone, that no one really understands (or even cares), then my sense of belonging is at risk and I only have my own resources to rely upon. In that situation I can lose touch with the wisdom that comes from teamwork and community. I could lose my way and young people may suffer.


  1. When activity bumps into more activity and I get so tired that I begin to ask, "why am I doing all this?" it is a sign that I have begun to lose touch with meaning in my own life. We need some kind of inner dream or vision to give shape to our lives, to drive us. In the Christian tradition this vision or sense of being drawn forward is called the Holy Spirit. Losing touch with meaning leaves us without a compass and we are likely to drift- with currents and storms and perhaps lose our very selves and our sense of meaning.


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    Belonging, learning, meaning and celebration:


    Four points of a compass than can keep us on a balanced course in our lives too.

    hen the end of the day term or project arrives, and I have no energy to     celebrate and count my blessings, then my Salesian balance has been lost. It is not a Salesian virtue to have no energy left for celebration. Celebration is recognition that something has been achieved, that it has been achieved together with others. In our togetherness God's mystery has been made visible. Inability to celebrate is perhaps a sign that I think no one else needs credit; all the work is mine. I get so concerned that others do not appreciate all the work I do. I am in danger of slipping into self-pity rather than celebrate in God's mysterious presence. This four-fold balance can help parents, teachers and youth workers on their own spiritual journey.



Source: The U.K. Salesian Bulletin 'Don Bosco Today’, Fr. David O'Malley, SDB.