CARD. MARTINEZ SOMALO

3. Address of Cardinal Edoardo Martinez Somalo, Prefect of the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and the Societies of Apostolic Life

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Dear Salesians of Don Bosco, animators of the great Salesian Family, I greet you most cordially, and let me say at once that I feel very much at home among you, as in a family.

I offer my greetings too to their Eminences the Cardinals, to their Excellencies the Archbishops and Bishops, and to all those in charge of the different branches of the Salesian Family, gathered here at the beginning of your 24th General Chapter.

My words are addressed to each of you individually, hoping if for no other reason to confirm you in the tradition of Don Bosco and his successors, and inviting you to continue at the threshold of the 3rd Christian Millennium your incomparable service as "Missionaries of the young".

Allow me to begin with a quite special reference to the Rector Major who left us last June: Fr. Egidio Vigaṇ, an authentic son of Don Bosco, and for that very reason a wise and faithful servant of the Church.

To him the Church owes a debt of gratitude for the ever more progressive and closer service he gave: from his duties as a teacher in the Catholic University of Santiago-Chile, to his presence as an expert at the Second Vatican Council, to the Assemblies of the Latin-American Bishops Conferences; from posts of responsibility in the Salesian Congregation to his participation in the Synods of Bishops and his collaboration with the Departments of the Roman Curia! We thank God for so faithful and competent a service. To you goes the challenge of continuing with the same fervour and optimism his following of Don Bosco - a fervour and optimism which must accompany your work in this 24th General Chapter.

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1. Your General Chapter, an event of communion.

Your Capitular Assembly is a grace of the Holy Spirit for fostering a flourishing communion and sharing among you, whom the God of every vocation has gathered together "to live and work together", of Don Bosco's educative and pastoral charism. marked by a predilection for the young who have most need of affection and of the Gospel.

A climate of communion is necessary to be able to communicate, and in turn cordial communication is necessary to be able to bear effective witness. Harmony of mind and heart is essential for mutual enrichment through multiple Christian experiences fused into unity of intent, as fruits of the best that comes from all parts of the world, where as Salesians you are present and working.

That you come from different cultures is clear at once from your features and languages, but equally evident is your unity in spirit and intent:

• You are linked together in chapter to be strengthened in the unity of your Salesian patrimony and to share it with lay people who want to commit themselves with you in the mission of educating and evangelizing the young.
• You are in communion to increase ever more the unity of all the members of the Salesian Family around the rock which is Peter, in the challenge of the New Evangelization. And who can ever forget the love Don Bosco had for the Pope?
• You are united around the sacrament of the Eucharist, another great love of Don Bosco - the Eucharist which St. Augustine calls "the sign of unity and bond of charity" (Commentary on the Gospel of John, 26.6.13) - to bring about in the different cultures in which the Gospel is implanted, the objective Don Bosco himself had so much at heart, i.e. to raise up in society "upright citizens and good Christians".
• And you are united in harmony, so that the riches of the Salesian charism will maintain all its substance, while becoming embodied in all the positive realities present in the most widely differing cultures.

You well know, my dear Salesians, that "outsiders" who look on you with affection want you to be ever more: a light which enlightens others; a warmth which humanizes through the preventive system and makes Christians of the young and older people who gravitate around you; an attraction to others to follow Christ as did Don Bosco and with him, with the same thirst for souls, I would day: "Da mihi animas!"

This is a kind of communion which will always be in harmony with a healthy plurality, seeking every day new expressions of truth and prophecy as a service to the New Evangelization.

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2. A Chapter for launching the Salesian Congregation into the Third Millennium.

You all know how much the Holy Father has been urging the Church to prepare for the Great Jubilee of the year 2000, so that the Christ event, yesterday, today and the same for ever, may enlighten with the light of his countenance, strengthen with the truth of his word, and enliven with the hope of his paschal victory, the way of humanity through the paths of the new Millennium.

This Chapter has the task of launching your Congregation into the next century, of taking up its challenges with the same pastoral heart of Don Bosco, and of being for the young in a special manner "signs and bearers of the love of God".

May the Holy Spirit therefore, who has brought you together from all parts of the world as in a renewed ecclesial Pentecost, unite your wills, your energies, your toil, your intentions and your desires, so that the Salesian spirituality (which is pastoral charity with educative love) may be a significant and generous contribution which you offer to the task of the whole Church.

May the same Holy Spirit, the Consoler, weld you together by the breath of a renewed spiritual youthfulness; may he fill your hearts with the inexhaustible joy of Don Bosco and confirm you in that down-to-earth apostolic realism which is proper to your educative and pastoral methodology, which forges Saints.

May he give you a unity of spirit and of planning for approaching the young, wherever you may find them, to accompany them and help them to reach that maturity in Christ (cf. Eph 4,13), being made new beings in him (cf. Eph 2,15; 4,24).

Faithful to the spirit of St. John Bosco and in continuity with your history, you will contribute in this way to the salvation of the young by inserting yourselves actively and effectively into the vicissitudes of our times, as was recalled by the recent Synod on the Consecrated Life.

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3. An apostolic osmosis between Salesians and Laity.

From the standpoint of communion and the sharing of Don Bosco's mission, the lay member of the faithful will be at the centre of your capitular work. The common vocation to holiness and mission - this double dimension which then reduces to a single one with two aspects, bringing in all the members of the Church. The names given to the different members have their root in the functions which each group is called upon to carry out in fulfilment of the one vocation.

To note once again that the attainment of sanctity and the call to the mission come to the same thing, the same norms and practices, the same spiritual outlook, will help you to a deeper and more adequate understanding of the significance of "communion and sharing" and to accept the consequences.

The norms and dynamism of the vocation to holiness and to the mission pass, as we are well aware, through the interiorization of the life of the Trinity in each one of us, nourished by the regular use of the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist, by prayer, by ascesis and by a life passed in rectitude of intention for the glory of God.

The working together therefore of Salesians and Laity implies a distinction between consecrated and lay persons but in unity of spirit and Salesian mission, with each one in the identity of his own vocation, in working contexts which may at times be different, but all of them at one in the project which God entrusted to Don Bosco through Mary. Unity and distinction. communion of objectives but reached through different apostolic activities though always with the same fervour and educative method: in a word, with the same passion for Christ and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. In this way your consecrated life takes on the value of a sign and becomes for the laity an element drawing them to the mission; while their presence - as we were reminded by the recent Synod - will contribute to the giving of a more organic image to the Church and to her mission in the world.

These relationships, the 1994 Synod recalled, are founded on the ecclesiology of communion, developed by Vatican II, which recognizes nonetheless that every Christian has specific functions and ministries.

It is not my intention to separate the ones from the others, but a distinction is necessary even though we are all called to be evangelizers.

The laity have the ability, by special title, to bring out the evangelical possibilities hidden in the realities of human social life, provided they act in unity with and as part of the Church under the influence of the Holy Spirit, by means of Christ.

To you it belongs to help the laity to mature in the awareness of their Salesian mission, and to form them to the ability to discover levels and practical directions which are proper to them.

You Salesians in fact are already in possession of an educative method whose power and strength must be applied for the formation of the laity to collaboration; they will thus be helped in the work of the redemption of human activities, so as to restore in them the crystal clarity of the divine design.

From this emerges with new emphasis what Don Bosco used to say: "form upright citizens", i.e. people who are competent in the fields of lay activity, such as science, technology, culture, work, art, politics, etc.; and to "form good Christians", i.e. people who will live and act as Christians.

Dear Salesians, it is my hope and prayer that the exchange of gifts of intelligence and practical methods which will take place in this General Chapter may lead you to focus on the fundamental points for an authentic communion and sharing with the laity in the spirit and mission of Don Bosco.

I put, for your attention and my own, four points. all of them emphasized in Synodal interventions, which must never be lost sight of when there is a question of authentic communion and sharing, of interaction between a Community of consecrated life like your own and the laity.

1. Always cultivate with the laity a deep and authentic ecclesial communion: agere cum Ecclesia starts always from esse in Ecclesia and is fostered by vivere pro Ecclesia.
2. Bear witness to the call to holiness, and propose it together with groups of committed lay people. Let your sharing and your communion become the setting where the vocation to holiness is clearly proposed, manifested and encouraged in the face of any wearying passivity.
3. Be yourselves, and allow the laity to do likewise. The irradiation of your charism presupposes, in fact, that individuals and communities are firmly anchored in their own consecrated identity. Don Bosco's charism, his mission to the young, the spirituality and method of the preventive system, will be effective and flourish only to the extent in which you are convinced and transparent witnesses.

But you must also help the laity to be themselves. In the communion and sharing of the Salesian spirit and mission they are called to emphasize aspects which are specifically theirs, rooted in their lay status, in fields and environments in which they are competent. This specific nature of theirs is a source of riches for you and for the mission to youth.

4. And finally, Salesians and Laity together, look at the enormous challenges stemming from young people and their contexts. With the sensitivity of an "oratorian heart", make yourselves their friends, brothers, teachers, and promoters of initiatives, which prolong in time the solicitude of the "father and teacher of youth".

And with this I will finish. I have referred to two of the three great loves of Don Bosco: the Eucharist and the Pope. Last but not least, let me recall his other great love - for Mary Help of Christians.

May she protect you, bless you and assist you.

As the Seat of Wisdom, the wise and prudent Virgin, may she increase in each of you those virtues which must emerge in an assembly of high level like the present one. May she, the Mother most amiable, be your encouragement and support when her loving presence is needed; may she help you now and always to be faithful. courageous and joyful witnesses for all the lay people for whom you work and who collaborate with you in your educative activities.

May Mary Help of Christians, who guided Don Bosco with motherly concern and predilection, guide you also in bearing witness to the apostolic mission the Church is expecting from you.

THANK YOU!

Rome, 19 February 1996.