THE MESSAGE OF THE RECTOR MAJOR
Fr. Angel Fernandez Artime
THE GREAT GIFT THAT IS
ST. FRANCIS DE SALES
“May the charity and gentleness of Francis de Sales
guide me in everything” was the resolution that Don Bosco made at the beginning
of his life as a priest and educator. It is from this reference to St. Francis
de Sales that Salesian pedagogy takes its name.
A teacher wrote, “Every day, I go around to the classrooms. Whenever I would enter a room before COVID-19, the children would get up and huddle around me. That doesn’t happen anymore. The fourth and fifth grade children want to run to me but hold back. The first graders, on the other hand, don’t even budge; they sit still, distant, and don’t react at all. This deeply worries me about their future ability to express affection.” Another adds, “We are facing a definite increase in aggression among the middle schoolers.” Parents tell their children to “stay away from the others.”
What weight of loneliness,
depression, and insecurity will today’s children carry with them, and for how
long? What is the best pedagogical intervention?
“Whoever feels loved will
love,” said Don Bosco. But kindness and goodness have never been spontaneous
virtues.
For Don Bosco, gentleness was
not a natural gift either. He claimed to have awakened from the “dream” he had
when he was nine years old with his fists aching from the blows he had given to
the young cursers.
As a teenager, he vigorously
defended his friend Louis Comollo. He himself said, “The next one who says
something wicked will have to deal with me. The tallest and most insolent ones
made a wall in front of me, while two slaps landed on Louis’s face. Blinded at
seeing this, I let myself be carried away by anger. Since I didn’t have a stick
or a chair in my hand, I grabbed one of those young men by the shoulders and,
using him as a club, I began to beat the others. Four fell to the ground, the
others turned on their heels and ran away screaming.”
Later, good Louis scolded him
for that vehement display of strength. “Enough,” he implored. “Your strength
scares me. God did not give it to you to massacre your companions. Forgive, and
return good for evil, please.” That advice echoed what the Man in the dream had
said, “Not with blows, but with gentleness and love you have to gain their
friendship.”
John thus learned not only how
to forgive, but also how important it is to gain control over oneself. He would
never forget it. He would always carry the spirit of meekness everywhere, and
no one would know how much it always cost him. For this reason, according to
the words of Jesus, “He will inherit the earth.”
“I recommend to
you above all the spirit of gentleness, for that warms the heart and conquers
souls.”
St. Francis de Sales
The panegyrics of St. Francis
de Sales that were customary in the seminary made Don Bosco reflect. According
to his Spiritual Testament, Don Bosco’s fourth resolution at the time of his
priestly ordination was “May the charity and gentleness of St. Francis de Sales
guide me in everything.”
When it came time for him to
choose a name for the nascent Oratory, Don Bosco had no doubts: “It will be
called the Oratory of St. Francis de Sales.” Sometime later, he would say to
those first young men who would share his life “We will call ourselves
Salesians.” Why? “For the part of our ministry that demanded great calm and
meekness, we placed ourselves under the protection of this Saint, so that he
would obtain for us the grace from God to be able to imitate him in his
extraordinary meekness and in winning over many souls.”
Gentleness—this virtue “rarer
than perfect chastity”—is “the flower of charity.” “It is charity put into
practice,” St. Francis de Sales taught. “I recommend above all the spirit of gentleness,
which is what warms the heart and conquers souls,” he wrote to a young abbess.
At the end of World War I, which
for four long years had, at the very least, ignored and despised the virtue of gentleness
in relations between peoples, the Rector Major Fr. Paul Albera dedicated an
entire circular letter to gentleness. “The virtue of gentleness requires you to
gain control over the liveliness of your character, to repress any act of
impatience, and to forbid your tongue to utter even a single word that is
offensive to the person with whom you are dealing,” wrote Fr. Albera. “It
demands the rejection of all forms of violence in behavior, plans, and actions.”
It seemed impossible for Fr. Albera to forget, in the framework of the gentleness
left to us, “a nod to that serene gaze, full of goodness, which is the true and
clear mirror of a sincerely gentle soul who desires only to make happy anyone
who approaches.”
Gentleness is not synonymous
with “sugar-coated” and “sappy sweet,” which are but deceitful caricatures of
it. Gentleness is not weakness at all—uncontrolled violence is weakness.
Kindness is peaceful, patient, and humble strength. Don Bosco united gentleness
and firmness in his authority.
This spirit of goodness, gentleness,
and meekness was deeply engrained in the first Salesians and belongs to our
earliest traditions. This just shows that if we neglect it—let alone lose it—we
risk significantly damaging our charismatic identity.
For many of our young people,
what they remember most often about meeting the Salesian Family in the world is
the familiarity, welcome, and affection they felt: in short, the Salesian family
spirit. In the early days, there was talk of a “fourth Salesian vow,” which included
goodness (first of all), work, and the Preventive System.
We cannot imagine a Salesian
presence in the world, of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, of the
Salesians of Don Bosco, or of the 32 groups that currently make up the Salesian
Family of Don Bosco, which does not have this characteristic of kindness as its
distinctive element or, at least, should have it, as Pope Francis sought to
remind us through his enlightening expression the “Valdocco option.”
This is our option for the
Salesian style of kindness, affection, familiarity, and presence. We have a
treasure, a gift received from Don Bosco, which it is now up to us to revive.
No comments:
Post a Comment