THE MESSAGE OF THE VICAR
Fr. Stefano Martoglio, SDB
THE ROSE PATH
“How lucky Don Bosco is! His path is forever strewn
with roses! He hasn’t a worry in the world. No troubles at all!” But they
couldn’t see the thorns that were piercing my poor legs.” Nevertheless, I kept
going. Every life is interwoven with thorns and roses as in Don Bosco’s famous “Dream
of the Roses and Thorns.”[1]
Hope is the force that keeps us going despite the thorns.
An abundance of roses
in the yard of a home outside Denver, 2013
Dear readers, friends
of the Salesian Family, and benefactors who help with Don Bosco’s work in all
situations and contexts, I’m sending you a thought via the various Salesian media. I’ve chosen
to reflect a little longer, as we did last month, on the topic of hope. I do so
not only for the sake of continuity, but mainly because it’s a topic that begs
to be addressed because we all need it so much. It’s an acceptance of God’s
gentleness in our lives. But when we speak about hope, let’s remember, first of
all, that it’s a component of profound humanity and a clear criterion for
interpreting life in every religion.
Korean philosopher
Byung-Chul Han points out that hope has a lot to do with transcendence and
faith, love and eternal life. He underlines in his writings that while we are working,
producing, and consuming, there’s no form of openness to the transcendent and
no hope when living in this way.
We live in a time
deprived of the dimension of celebration, even though we’re surrounded by
things that dazzle us. A time without celebration is a time without hope. The society
of consumption and performance that we live in is in danger of making us
incapable of happiness, of rejoicing over the reality of our lives (even the
most difficult situation always shows glimmers of light!).
Hope makes us
believers in the future because the place where we experience hope most
intensely is in the Transcendent. Czech writer and politician Vaclav Havel,
president of Czechoslovakia in the era of “The Velvet Revolution,” which many
of us remember, defines “hope” as a state of mind, a dimension of the soul.
Hope is an orientation
of the heart that transcends the world of experience in the here and now; it’s
a mooring somewhere else beyond the horizon. The roots of hope lie somewhere
within the Transcendent. That’s why having hope and being satisfied because
things are going well aren’t one and the same thing.
When we speak about
the future, we understand it in relation to what will happen tomorrow, next
month, or two years from now. The future is what we can plan, predict, control,
and make optimal. Hope is the construction of a future that connects us to that future that never ends – to the Transcendent,
to the Divine dimension. Cultivating hope is good for our hearts because it
puts energy into our efforts to construct our way to Heaven.
The word most uttered by Don Bosco
Fr. Albert Caviglia
wrote, “Leafing through the pages that record Don Bosco’s words and speeches,
one finds that “Paradise” was the word he used to employ in every circumstance
as the most compelling argument for every activity for good and for every forbearance
in adversity.”
“A piece of Heaven
fixes everything!” Don Bosco repeated in the midst of difficulties. Even in
modern schools of management, they teach that a positive vision of the future
turns into a life force.
When he was old and
bent over and would walk across the courtyard in strides as long as an ant’s,
those who were passing by would greet him without much thought, “Where are we
going, Don Bosco?” The saint would reply, with a smile, “To Paradise.”
How much Don Bosco
insisted on this: Paradise! He raised his young people to keep the vision of
Paradise in their hearts and before their eyes. We can be Christians, even
convinced Christians, but not believe in Paradise.
Don Bosco teaches us
to unite our here present with the hereafter. And he does so through the virtue
of hope.
Let’s carry this in
our hearts and open our hearts to the charity and the humanity that incarnate
our deep beliefs.
When you receive this
brief message in November, live this hope together with our saints and with
your beloved deceased, like of group of mountain climbers tethered together by
a rope that has its origins in our everyday lives and is anchored, at its end,
in the Infinite.
Like Don Bosco, let’s live
as though we see the invisible, nourished by the hope that is the Provident
Presence of God. Only those who are very grounded, practical, and solid, as Don
Bosco was, are able to live by fixing their gaze on the invisible.
[1] “The Dream of the Roses and Thorns.” The Biographical Memoirs of St. John Bosco,
III, 25-28. Online. https://donboscosalesianportal.org/wp-content/uploads/BM_03_en.pdf
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| The anchor of hope figures prominently in the SDB coat of arms |
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