and Desire to
Be a Priest
(ANS - Vatican City - November 15) - “It makes me
feel very good to think of Ceferino’s
desire to be a priest to serve his people. That is how it must be. The priest
always identifies with his people in such a way that his time, his life, and
his person are for his brothers.” With these words, in a letter to Bishop Esteban
Maria Laxague, SDB, of Viedma, Argentina, Pope Francis recalled Blessed Ceferino
Namuncurá, son of the Mapuche people, who embraced faith in Jesus Christ and
the Salesian Family, and died of tuberculosis in Rome in 1905, at only 19 years
of age.
In the letter, sent on the tenth anniversary of
Ceferino’s beatification (November 11, 2007), also marked the 131st anniversary
of his birth (August 26, 1886). The Pontiff described the ceremony of
beatification: “I was impressed by that crowd of people coming from different
areas, and those faces filled with joy for the beatification of one of their
own, one who had never forgotten his roots, his people, his culture.” [As
archbishop of Buenos Aires at the time, Cardinal Bergoglio had been influential
in the arrangements for the rite to be celebrated in Chimpay rather than the capital,
and he had attended it.]
In addition to praising Ceferino Namuncura’s
desire to be a priest at the service of his people, in his letter the Pope
emphasizes that “youths know how to answer with generosity when Christ is
presented to them through a witness of authentic and truthful life, such as
Ceferino’s.” He adds a wish “that many young people today find in Jesus the
love of their lives and the impetus to give of themselves to others.”
Blessed Ceferino Namuncurá represents the most
convincing proof of the fidelity with which the first missionaries sent by Don
Bosco could repeat what Don Bosco had done in the Oratory of Valdocco: form
young saints. The formation received was part of an educational process based
on the Preventive System. But what launched his formation toward the highest
peaks was to learn about the life of Dominic Savio, whom Ceferino ardently
imitated, and his First Communion, by which he made a covenant of absolute
fidelity with Jesus, his great friend.
Source: Vatican Radio
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