THE MESSAGE OF THE VICAR
Fr. Stefano Martoglio, SDB
WE ARE DON BOSCO TODAY
“You’ll finish the work I’m
beginning; I’m making the sketch, you’ll add the colors.” (Don Bosco)
Our lives are filled with many things, and this
Jubilee Year proposes to us many important events; but I want to focus on a
different, particular one because, even if it would seem outside one’s realm, it
still concerns all of us.
Don Bosco, our Founder, was aware that things wouldn’t end with him but
that his life was only the beginning of a long journey to be traveled. One
day in 1875, when he was 60 years old, Don Bosco said
to Fr. Julius Barberis, one of his closest collaborators: “You’ll finish the
work I’m beginning; I’m making the sketch, you’ll add the colors.... I’ll
make a rough copy of the Congregation, and I’ll leave to those who come after
me the task of making it beautiful.”
With this happy and prophetic expression, Don Bosco
outlined the path that we’re all called to take. Its highest form is what we
are carrying out at this time in Valdocco: the general chapter of the Salesians
of Don Bosco.
The prophecy of the caramels
Today’s world isn’t like Don Bosco’s, but there is a common characteristic: it’s a time
of profound change. Total, balanced, and responsible humanization of his
boys in both their material and spiritual components was Don Bosco’s true
goal. He was concerned with filling the “inner space” of the boys, making “well-formed
minds,” “virtuous citizens.” In today’s world, this is more relevant than
ever. Our world needs Don Bosco today.
Before all else, everyone must pose to himself/herself
one simple question: “Do I want an ordinary life, or do I want to change the
world?” Can we still speak of goals and ideals today? Whenever a river stops flowing, it turns into a swamp – even
so with people.
Don Bosco never stopped moving forward. Today he
does so with our feet.
His conviction about young people was this: “This
most precious segment of human society, upon whom all hopes of a ... happy
future are founded, isn’t itself of a bad disposition…. If at times these
youngsters are already infected with evil, it’s more often through
thoughtlessness than through deliberate malice. These youngsters truly need a
helping hand to take care of them and to lead them away from evil to the
practice of virtue....”[1]
In 1882, in a conference to the Salesian Cooperators
in Genoa: “Removing, instructing, and educating young people in danger is good
for the whole of civil society. If young people are well educated, we will
have a better generation over time.” It’s as if to say: only education can
change the world.
Don Bosco had an almost frightening capacity for
vision. He never says “until now” but always “from now on.”
Guy Avanzini, an eminent university professor, always
repeated: “The pedagogy of the 21st century will be Salesian, or it will not
be.”
One evening in 1851, Don Bosco flung a handful of
caramels from a window on the second floor. Naturally, this resulted in great
joy. One of the boys seeing him there, smiling at the window, yelled up to him:
“Don Bosco, how wonderful it would be if you could see the whole world studded
with oratories!” Don Bosco fixed his serene gaze toward the horizon and
responded, “Who knows, the day may come when the sons of the oratory are truly
scattered throughout the world.”
Looking Far Beyond
But what is a general chapter? Why fill these
pages with a theme that is specific to the Salesian Congregation?
The Constitutions
of the Salesians of Don Bosco, which orders their way of life, in
article 146, define a general chapter as “the principal sign of the
Congregation’s unity in diversity. It is the fraternal meeting in which
Salesians carry out a communal reflection to keep themselves faithful to the
Gospel and to their Founder’s charism, and sensitive to the needs of time and
place.
“Through the general chapter the entire Society,
opening itself to the guidance of the Spirit of the Lord, seeks to discern God’s
will at a specific moment in history for the purpose of rendering the Church
better service.”
The general chapter is, therefore, not a private
matter of consecrated Salesians, but a very important assembly that concerns us
all, touching the whole Salesian Family and those who have Don Bosco within
them, because the people, the mission, the charism of Don Bosco, the Church,
and each one of us, of you, are at the center.
Fidelity to God and to Don Bosco along with the ability to see the signs of the
times and of different places are also at the center. This fidelity is a
continuous movement, renewal, and the ability to look far ahead while keeping one’s
feet firmly planted on the ground.
For this reason, about 250 Salesian confreres from
all over the world have gathered to pray, think, dialog with each other, and
look far beyond – in fidelity to Don Bosco.
Then, after
having constructed their vision, they’ll elect the new Rector Major, the
successor of Don Bosco, and his general council.
This chapter isn’t something extraneous to your
life, dear friend reading this, but is part of your life and your “affection”
for Don Bosco. Why tell you this? So that you’ll accompany it with
your prayer – prayer to the Holy Spirit that he may help all the capitulars know
what is God’s Will so that we may give better service to the Church.
I think that GC29 – no, I’m sure – will be all
this: an experience of God that will help us “clean up” some parts of the
sketch that Don Bosco left us, as all the general chapters in the history of
the Congregation have done before, always in fidelity to his plan.
I’m certain that even today we can continue to be
enlightened so as to be faithful to the Lord Jesus and our original charism
with the faces, music, and colors of today.
We’re not alone in this mission; we know and feel
that Mary, our Mother and Help of Christians, the Help of the Church and model
of fidelity, will sustain all our steps.
[1] Giovanni Battista
Lemoyne, The Biographical Memoirs of St.
John Bosco, vol. II (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Salesiana,
1966), 35-36.
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