2022 Strenna
“Do all thru love, nothing thru constraint” (St. Francis de Sales)
On July 23, the Salesian Rector Major, Fr. Angel Fernandez
Artime, announced and introduced the strenna (or spiritual theme) for
2022. This is a program for the entire
Salesian Family of 32 groups large and small.
He’ll flesh out the program in much greater detail at the end of
December. Since 2022 is the quadricentennial
year of the death of St. Francis de Sales, patron and namesake of the Salesian
Family, Fr. Fernandez focuses the strenna around him.
Dear Brothers, Sisters, and Friends,
Just six months ago we gave the Daughters of Mary Help of
Christians – as has been our tradition since Don Bosco’s time – and the whole
Salesian Family, the strenna for the new year. Six months later, therefore, I
have been asked to anticipate what could be the guiding theme for the new year
2022, as the different rhythms of the hemispheres where the Salesian presences
are located demand. I do so gladly in the hope that it may be of some help.
Quite clearly, in 2022, the year in which we will celebrate the 400th
anniversary of his death, the theme can only be that of the spirituality of St.
Francis de Sales, the wellspring of Don Bosco’s Salesian spirit,
from which our father and founder drank and contemplated at all times,
especially when it came to defining his style of education and evangelization (to
put it in the kind of language we use) of the fledgling Salesian Congregation:
“We will call ourselves Salesians.”
We know that Don Bosco was deeply impressed by the extraordinary
figure of this saint. He was an authentic inspiration to him, especially
because he was a true pastor, a master of charity, and a tireless worker for
the salvation of souls.
As a young seminarian, John Bosco took the following resolution
before his priestly ordination: “May the charity and gentleness of St. Francis
de Sales guide me at all times.” And in the Memoirs of the Oratory Don
Bosco said: “[The Oratory] began calling itself by the name of St. Francis de
Sales … because we had put our own ministry, which called for great calm and
meekness, under the protection of this saint in the hope that he might obtain
for us from God the grace of being able to imitate him in his extraordinary
kindness and in winning souls.”
Of course, this year’s strenna will also be a wonderful
opportunity to recognize and find ourselves in the spirituality of St. Francis
de Sales and to appreciate even more the magnificent characteristics of Don
Bosco’s Salesian spirit, as also the precious values of Salesian
youth spirituality. We will undoubtedly see ourselves reflected in them and
feel called today to be “more Salesian” in our Salesian Family, that is to say,
more filled with the spirit of St. Francis de Sales, a spirit that permeates
our Salesianity as the family of Don Bosco.
Belonging completely to God, living to the full our presence
in the world
This is probably the most “evolutionary” proposal of St. Francis
de Sales. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI expressed it with his usual profundity and
beauty when he said that the great invitation that St. Francis de Sales
addresses to Christians is to “to belong completely to God, living to the full
[our] presence in the world and the tasks proper to [our] state. ‘My intention
is to teach those who are living in towns, in the conjugal state, at court….’ (Preface to
the Introduction to the Devout Life). The document by which Pope
Pius IX, more than two centuries later, proclaimed him a doctor of the Church
would insist on this broadening of the call to perfection, to holiness. It
says: ‘[True piety] shone its light everywhere and gained entrance to the
thrones of kings, the tents of generals, the courts of judges, customs houses,
workshops, and even the huts of herdsmen....’ (Brief Dives in
misericordia, November 16, 1877). Thus came into being the appeal to lay
people and the care for the consecration of temporal things and for the
sanctification of daily life on which the Second Vatican Council and the
spirituality of our time were to insist. The ideal of a reconciled humanity was
expressed in the harmony between prayer and action in the world, between the
search for perfection and the secular condition, with the help of God’s grace
that permeates the human being and, without destroying him, purifies him,
raising him to divine heights.”
We certainly find the source of this spirituality in so many of
our Lord’s gestures and words in the Gospel and in the simplicity of Don Bosco’s
proposal to his boys, in the language and ecclesial context of the 19th
century.
So how can we not be attentive so that it may also be a source
of inspiration and a pastoral and spiritual proposal for our day?
The centrality of the heart
During his formation in Paris, what triggered Francis’s
conversion was an in-depth reading of the Song of Songs under the
guidance of a Benedictine priest.
For him it was a light that colored his whole perception of both
God and human life, both his individual journey and his relationships with any
other person.
The symbol he chose for the Visitation also shows how the heart
is the most telling sign of his human and spiritual heritage: a heart pierced
by two arrows: love of God and love of neighbor, which would also
be matched by the two treatises that condense all his thinking and teaching.
The first – Treatise on the Love of God – is the fruit
of his patient work in the formation of the first group of Visitandines (Visitation Sisters): these
are the conferences written and published in book form. It was also the basis
of the formation of Mary Margaret Alacoque who, 51 years after the death of
Francis, received the revelations which opened the way to devotion to the
Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Church.
Only the table of contents remains of the other treatise, the
one on love of neighbor, due to Francis’s premature death on December 28, 1622,
at the age of 55.
The humanism of Francis – his desire and ability to enter
dialogue with everyone, the great value he placed on friendship – was so
important for personal accompaniment in the way Don Bosco would interpret it:
everything is built on the solid foundations of the heart, just as Francis
lived it.
Between Providence and loving-kindness
Two reflections of his way of feeling God’s heart and opening
his heart to his brothers and sisters, intimately related to each another, are
his sense of Providence and his way of approaching and interacting with each
person, in other words his proverbial gentleness or loving-kindness.
Trust in Providence has roots that come from Francis’s
formation in Paris and Padua: his “holy indifference.” I trust God’s heart
unreservedly, and this disposes me to embrace whatever the sequence of events
and circumstances presents to me day by day. I have “nothing to ask and nothing
to refuse” with respect to what I know is in God’s hands in every situation.
Paul was thinking similarly when he wrote to the Romans: “We know that all
things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according
to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed
to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large
family” (Rom 8:28-29).
Gentleness of heart when dealing with one’s neighbor,
even when that neighbor is unfriendly or anything but pleasant as a character,
is a reflection of the same trust before it is a simple trait, this time trust
in the human heart, always open to God’s action and always destined for the
fullness of life. Gentleness and loving-kindness are missionary approaches,
aimed at facilitating as much as possible in every circumstance and situation
this encounter between grace and freedom in the hearts of those in front of me.
It is not, then, just a question of good manners.
If we think of the way in which Don Bosco reinterpreted this
loving-kindness in his educational system, we understand how profound are the
motivations on which it is nourished, just as it was for St. Francis de Sales.
Practical training in the mission in the Chablais, and Don Bosco’s Da
mihi animas
The tough experience of evangelization in the Chablais between
1593 (his discourse as provost) and 1596 (Christmas Masses at Thonon) is
where the mission set the concrete tone for his whole life. It was
extremely difficult (“here all of them have insults on their lips and stones in
their hands”), but it was a crisis that brought growth and transformed the
missionary in the first place, even before it did so for his beneficiaries.
It is also very interesting to read those years as a Eucharistic
pedagogy. The visible Eucharist, celebrated with a large crowd, carried in
procession, after years of emptiness (Christmas 1596), became the point of
arrival after going through a long desert, where he was the one who lived from
the Eucharist and became its presence in a hidden way among the people who were
previously hostile and whom he approached and made friends with, one by one.
Bearing in mind that our Salesian presences are for the most
part among non-Catholics, this Eucharistic spirituality becomes prophetic: from
within the missionary it reaches out with great patience and perseverance to
those to whom he is sent, without renouncing explicit proclamation but knowing
how to wait for God’s long time, and not waiting for the faithful to fill the
church but mixing with the flock wherever and however it may be.
And with the Eucharist, and on the same wavelength, is the
centrality of the cross and confidence in Mary.
All this speaks to us of the educational and evangelizing
passion of Don Bosco who, in the presence of the Lord in the Eucharist and the
strong presence of Mary in the life of the Oratory, in the midst of his boys,
found the daily strength to realize the Da mihi animas, cetera tolle.
But how do we communicate?
Francis de Sales is the patron saint of journalists. His charism
as a communicator is worth grasping, where there is a splendid agreement
between love and interest in reflection, culture, humanism in its most
beautiful expressions on the one hand, to be promoted, encouraged, harmonized
by creating and fostering dialogue between those who are abler and richer in
these fields and, on the other, Francis de Sales as the master of communication
for everyone, a great disseminator given the means and circumstances in which
he lived. It is enough to think of the enormous number of letters in which a significant
part of his apostolate as bishop and saint was condensed.
In this too we have a disciple in Don Bosco who follows his
master’s zeal, with the new means at his disposal (the popular press “for the masses”):
318 published works of Don Bosco in 40 years – on average about one every two
months. And at the same time it is a message for us of the utmost relevance and
a real challenge in today’s world where communication is at the center of
reality.
Francis de Sales in Don Bosco’s way of accompanying young
people: charisms flourish and bear fruit in each other
There is a true “communion of saints” within the educational and
spiritual art of Don Bosco, which did not come from nothing, but was nourished
by deep roots, the work of the Spirit in the history of the Church that
preceded him. It is neither an addition nor a repetition: it is rather a new
flourishing and bearing of fruit that feeds on the work of the Spirit that
vivified the Church with Francis of Assisi and Ignatius, with Dominic and
Teresa of Avila.
A fine proposal for the Church today, and certainly for the
Salesian Family of Don Bosco, is rightly that of growing in the art of
accompanying the journey of faith, especially of so many boys, girls, and young
adults of the world who do not know God, and who at the same time hunger and
thirst for him often without knowing it. It is very "Salesian" to
feel and truly believe that each person needs “a friend of the soul” in whom to
find advice, help, guidance, and friendship.
I conclude this succinct outline, around which the strenna for
2022 for the whole Salesian Family of Don Bosco around the world will be
developed, with the invitation that Pope Benedict XVI addresses to us at the
end of his address, asking us to follow in a “spirit of freedom” the exemplary
witness of St. Francis de Sales, a true example of the Christian humanism that
makes us feel that only in God do we find the satisfaction of the desire and
nostalgia we feel for Him: “Dear brothers and sisters, in an age such as ours
that seeks freedom, even with violence and unrest, the timeliness of this great
teacher of spirituality and peace who gave his followers the “spirit of freedom,”
the true spirit, St. Francis de Sales is an exemplary witness of Christian
humanism; with his familiar style, with words which at times have a poetic
touch, he reminds us that human beings have planted in their innermost depths
the longing for God and that in him alone can they find true joy and the most
complete fulfilment.”
