RETURNING TO DON BOSCO

With more than a hundred years separating us from Don

Bosco, we sometimes find ourselves out of tune with today’s
youth: we do not seem to understand them; we seem to have little
impact on their lives. We seem to have lost some of our vitality:
we are not able to attract as many youngsters to join us as we
would like.
However, the deepest reason for our return to Don Bosco
is not just the fact that in our lives we fall short of Don Bosco.
Have you noticed what happens to trees during a storm? Because
they sway from side to side, they send their roots deeper into the
soil and so are able to withstand even greater storms in the future.
The Second Vatican Council said something similar: it asked all
of us religious to go back to Christ and the Founder because only
by growing deeper in the spirit of Christ and the Founder will we
be able to face up to the new challenges emerging in the Church
and the world.
By becoming more attached to Don Bosco and our
Salesian vocation, we find strength and joy in our daily lives, we
become more courageous in following in Don Bosco’s footsteps,
and so are better able to understand and help the young people of
today.
So, in what does this return to Don Bosco consist? Above
all, in three things. loving, studying, and imitating Don Bosco.

I
Loving Don Bosco

In 1885 there was an entertainment in honour of Don

Bosco at the Oratory of Valdocco. On that occasion, a theologian
by the name of Anthony Berrone stood up and addressed Don
Bosco: “Allow me to tell you, Don Bosco, and tell you repeatedly,
that you are a thief, an incorrigible thief! You have stolen and still
go on stealing the hearts of everyone who knows you. But, let it
be understood: this theft is not committed against our wishes; on
the contrary, those who love you are proud of loving you and to
be loved by you in return”.1
It was a common sight at Valdocco for youngsters to
approach Don Bosco in a crowd and without a word turn a cheek
to him for a little tap. As soon as Don Bosco obliged, they would
run back to their play, happy and content. A cleric, Joseph
Pittaluga, once wrote to Don Bosco: “The last tap you gave me
left an indelible mark on my face, and when I think of it I blush
and seem to feel the imprint of your dear fingers on my cheek.
Send me more such taps please, Father, I eagerly await them. I
love Don Bosco more than all the world. Really I do”.3
And so, the first important step in our return to Don Bosco
is to love him. When there is love, there is closeness, admiration,
attachment, pride, fidelity, happiness, and above all, gratitude to
God for giving us a wonderful father like Don Bosco. Towards the
end of his life, the theologian Piano said to him: “We still feel the
love we felt for you then… This heart of mine will never stop
loving you. We hold that loving you is to us a symbol of loving
God”.4

II
Studying Don Bosco

One of the reasons why we do not love Don Bosco enough

is because we do not study him sufficiently. Love flows from
knowledge: I cannot love someone I do not know.
Unfortunately, we have to frankly admit that our
knowledge of Don Bosco is very limited, in spite of an abundance
of material on Don Bosco in the Congregation – the Constitutions
and the commentary, the Project of Life; the Letters of the Rectors
Major; the General Chapters; studies on Don Bosco’s life and
teachings (like the books of Fr. Stella, Desramaut, Wirth, Braido,
Aubry, Lenti, and also the Journal of Salesian Studies); and so on.
 In many Provinces, little is done with regard to Salesian
studies during the Postnovitiate and the four years of Theology!
And very few Provinces have someone trained in Salesian studies.
Furthermore, the conferences and the good nights by the
Rector - a good source of Salesian formation for the confreres -
are often given up
In a good-night he gave many years ago, Fr. Chavez said:
“In the last meeting of the Union of Superiors General, we saw
that… the Congregations brimming with energy at this moment
are those that are clear about their charism, and clear about their
reason for existence in the world and in the Church. Already Fr.
Viganò, when speaking of the dangers facing the Congregation,
used to mention among them a pastoral genericism, a spiritual
superficiality, and a lack of clarity concerning our identity as
Salesians.”
In the last few years, the Congregation has begun to fight
back. Fr. Chavez and his Council promulgated a syllabus of
Salesian studies for every stage of formation; books are being
made available (like Arthur Lenti’s “Don Bosco: History and
Spirit” in seven volumes; the Memoirs of the Oratory; Braido’s
“Prevention not Repression”; Ceria’s “Don Bosco, Union with
God”, and “Salesian sources”). and more are on the way. Today
our two interprovincial centres for ongoing formation at Quito and
Bangalore offer a fairly good course in Salesiana. The UPS has
started a two-year course for training professors of Salesian
studies.

Why, one may ask, is there so much insistence on studying

Don Bosco and his charism? Not long ago, I was taken aback on
hearing a very well-known and respected Salesian give a good-
night in which he said that: a) all religious institutes are more or
less the same, except for some small differences; and b) we
Salesians speak more of Don Bosco than of Jesus! I doubt very
much that this is true. On the contrary, I wish we Salesians would
speak more about Don Bosco! Why? Why do we Salesians attach
so much importance to Don Bosco and the Salesian charism?
The simple answer is because, first of all, Don Bosco and
our Salesian charism take us back to Jesus Christ! Art. 11 in our
Constitutions states: “The Salesian spirit finds its model and
source in the very heart of Christ”. What this means is that Don
Bosco was very sensitive to some aspects of the life of Jesus and
imitated them in a particular way; for example, Jesus’ predilection
for the young and the poor, his zeal in working for the Kingdom,
his giving of himself like the Good Shepherd, and so on. And
these aspects put together form the Salesian charism.
And so, the more we follow Don Bosco and love and live
our Salesian charism, the more we love and live the life of Jesus –
in the way Don Bosco did. Our charism is the following of Jesus
in the footsteps of Don Bosco; he is our way to follow Jesus. Don
Bosco says to us the same words that St. Paul said to the
Corinthians: “Be imitators of me as I am of Christ.” And it is a
fact of experience today that religious Institutes renew themselves
far more quickly when they return to be faithful to the charism of
its Founder, because included in it is a return to Jesus Christ.
A second reason why our charism is so important is that
our charism – like the charism of any other Institute – justifies our
existence in the Church and in any diocese. There is the general
charism of consecrated life (common to other religious) and there
is the particular charism of the Salesians of Don Bosco. And our
charism is our best contribution as Salesians to the Church and the
diocese. That is why we exist at all!
Concretely speaking, this means that not only our mission
to the young, but also our family spirit (i.e., our Salesian style of
relating among ourselves and with everyone), our concern to form
lay people apostles for society, our attachment to the Pope, our
spirit of hard work and cheerfulness, our style of exercising
authority (with the Superior as father), our style of formation, and
so on – all these typical aspects of our charism are our particular
gift to the Church. In fact, many religious send their students to
our formation houses of philosophy and theology because they
like our style of formation. Lay people feel comfortable with us
because they see us as a moderate group in the Church, close to
people and easy to get along with. The more we live our charism,
the greater is our contribution to the Church.
We sometimes like to proclaim the slogan: “With Don
Bosco and with the times”. What this implies is that we want to be
faithful to Don Bosco and also to the times in which we live. But,
if this is the case, we have to do something similar to what we do
with regard to Jesus Christ. We study the Gospels deeply in order
to capture the true spirit of Christ and live it in the situation in
which we find ourselves today: with Jesus and with our times!
In a similar way, then, we have to read and study Don
Bosco in order to capture his spirit and live it in our daily lives -
not only in formation houses, but in all our houses. Rectors need
to give conferences and goodnights on Don Bosco and Salesian
topics. Individual confreres should read Don Bosco, e.g. the
Biographical Memoirs: we are fortunate indeed because Don
Bosco is the only saint in the Church whose biography runs into
16,000 pages!

III
Imitating Don Bosco

Study leads to imitation. The more we study Don Bosco,

the more we are fascinated by several wonderful traits of his
personality.
Here was a man who was at home with the Pope and with
kings, and at the same time, with the boy in the street.
A man of prodigious activity (“Thanks be to God,” he
would say, “work for me is a relaxation”) and, at the same time,
someone who always prayed, so much so he was defined the
“union with God”.
A man who wrote 30 books and published the Catholic
Readings regularly; a tailor, a carpenter, a musician, a cobbler, the
soul of recreation, a “beggar” for his boys, a confessor, and a
founder of two religious Orders and the Association of Salesian
Cooperators.
A man who was tenacious and at the same time flexible.
He used to say, “When I meet with a difficulty, I do as I would do
were I to find a boulder in my path. I would try to move it aside,
but if I cannot, I would step over it or go around it.”
A man who was traditional (his devotions were the
Eucharist, Our Blessed Lady and the Holy Father), and yet very
modern: in 1886 he won the second prize at the National
Industrial Exhibition for his printing press.
A man who was poor, and yet a lot of money passed
through his hands – to build churches, to provide for his boys, to
give alms to the needy.
A great dreamer but so very down-to-earth.

But, more than all this, what we admire most in Don

Bosco is the blending of the human and the divine in him. Our
Constitutions call it a “splendid blending of nature and grace”.
Don Bosco was profoundly human. Just consider a
statement attributed to him: “Education is a matter of the heart.”
Some Salesian experts say that there is no proof that Don Bosco
actually said or wrote these words, but the general consensus is
that they certainly corresponded to his way of thinking and acting.
Another statement: “In every youngster, even the most callous,
there is a sensitivity to kindness; the educator must find that
particular chord in a youngster’s heart and take it from there!”
Already as a youngster, when a priest passed him by without even
glancing at him, little Johnny Bosco said: “When I become a
priest, I shall make it a point to greet everyone.”
At the same time, Don Bosco was profoundly a man of
God. It is enough to consider his many dreams; the multiplication
of hosts, loaves of bread and chestnuts; the cure of a blind girl; his
prophetic vision of Brasilia over a hundred years before, his
foretelling the death of one of his boys. “Tell me,” he once
exclaimed, “what could poor Don Bosco have done if he did not
receive special help from above at every moment?” He was truly,
as John XXIII described him, “a poem of grace and the
apostolate”,.
The impression Don Bosco gave was that of being truly a
man of the earth and of heaven, open to the realities of this world
and immersed in God. It is, in fact, the synthesis of these two
aspects in him that makes him so attractive to us. So, how do we
imitate him? Do we take his many qualities, one by one, and try to
practise them in our life? We could. But perhaps there is a better
way. When we look at Don Bosco, we realize that everything in
his life and activity flowed from one central, unifying inspiration,
viz. his motto, “Give me souls”. It was his zeal for souls that led
him to work and to pray, to be devoted to Our Lady and to be the
soul of recreation.
And how did he arrive at this motto? It came from the
confluence of the divine and the human in him.
On the vertical plane, he strongly believed in God’s saving
design for the world: he deeply loved Jesus the Redeemer.
On the horizontal plane, he was keenly aware of the
poverty and misery of the youth of Turin. He saw them in the
prison and on the streets.
The confluence of these two dimensions led to his motto,
“Give me souls,” which became both his prayer to the Lord and
his programme of life. Everything else in his life flowed from it.
Because of the “Give me souls”, Don Bosco - in his relations with
God - was humble; and on the horizontal plane, he put himself at
the service of the young, spending his life for them
“Humble servant” – these are the two words that sum up
what Don Bosco thought of himself and how he lived and acted.
We are invited to become like him humble servants, full of zeal
for souls.