HOMILIES OF THE RECTOR MAJOR

Homily at the Mass for the opening of the GC24

Rome, 19 February 1996

This celebration leads us into our GC24 as a spiritual event. We could not, in fact, inaugurate it without a communal act of faith in the presence of the Holy Spirit. All the better if this can be done in the Eucharist, the memorial of Christ's Resurrection of which the Spirit is the gift, testimony and guarantee.

Here and now the presence of the Spirit is for us a reality. We can allow ourselves to be guided by the similarity between our assembly and the one spoken of in the Acts of the Apostles. We, like them, are gathered together in one place, coming from the farthest parts of the world. And that is a sign of the mysterious energy which has brought us together.

But we feel ourselves united also spiritually: through the brotherhood that unites us even before we know each other; through our common project; through the common purpose which disposes us to convergence of thought; through the unparalleled accord created by the feeling that we are all disciples of Christ and sons of Don Bosco. The Spirit has already established between us those deep bonds of communion which the charism generates when it is welcomed and developed.

Like the disciples in the Acts we too speak different languages, we come from different cultures, we represent a whole variety of traditions and conditions of life; yet we confess and proclaim the same truths and adopt the same style of life.

We also are at the end of a period which is showing signs of accomplishment, while we await the appearance of a new era for our religious and pastoral experience.

"When the day of Pentecost was coming to an end" - so runs the text. Other Pentecosts, or "new times of the Spirit" are following one another in the Church; they attain and realize their specific possibilities, opening up the way to further innovations. And this happens also in our own Congregation; the period we are about to live together is certainly one of these Pentecosts.

We can see in our imagination the many people outside our present environment who are waiting to hear what we shall say to them after our reflections and spiritual experience: they are our confreres and the members of the Salesian Family, the young people and members of the faithful who are awaiting announcements in line with their hopes and needs.

Our daily experience of the Spirit's presence is confirmed in the reminiscences of the faith. Every time the people of God, or a part of them, have gathered together to renew the covenant, they have received the Holy Spirit. Every time Christ's disciples come together in his name to invoke the coming of the Kingdom, the Spirit is with them.

The Spirit is manifested as a power which transforms and upsets. He moves some persons to enterprises of salvation and liberation which give dignity and new perspectives of life. We may think of Moses or other biblical personalities, of whom it is related that they were seized by the Spirit of God and acted with the overwhelming energy of fire and wind. And above all we may think of Jesus who, through the power of the Spirit, faces temptations and gives himself to the mission of evangelizing the poor, casting out demons, curing sickness and vanquishing evil.

The Spirit raises up and inspires the prophets and sages who keep alive the people's hopes, and on this account risk the complex and almost incomprehensible facts of history, and especially sustain the living awareness of man's vocation and final success against the temptations of the here and now, and the satisfaction of purely material needs.

The Spirit too is at the origin of priestly service, which fosters the deepest religious experience, liturgy, prayer, reality of the temple, and everything serving as a means for an encounter with God.

In their common activity, guides, prophets and pastors, spiritual sages and men of action, have given and continue to give to God's people and to the ecclesial community, identity, solidity and orientation.

• In the same way the Spirit continues to work in our humble Society, which is a component of humanity and of the Church. We do well to proclaim with renewed and communal faith what we have frequently read and believed as individuals: "The Holy Spirit raised up St. John Bosco". He formed in him the heart of a Father and Teacher, and in so doing gave rise to the novelty of our spirit and pastoral style, for the benefit of poor youth.

The Spirit inspired him to found the Congregation and the Salesian Family, and directed towards it numerous individuals who developed it in the course of time and today carry out its project in creative form. In the heart of these persons the Spirit continually prompts the desire for the experience of God, for holiness and for fidelity to the charism through priestly grace. He awakens them also through prophetic facts and voices, and leads them through guides he has chosen.

• But in the events and memory of faith is contained a promise of particular relevance for us. It was made by Jesus himself: The Spirit will guide you into all truth".

All truth! That is no small matter in an era in which we are tempted to be satisfied with fragments, with brief publicity breaks, with fleeting samples. The whole truth is the only equipment which allows us to get at reality with any success and read the facts of history; because this is wisdom, this is true life, and this with Jesus Christ is the source of the significance of our personal and communal existence.

To attain to it we need a ready charity which creates communion of hearts, because no one has a monopoly of truth. And it requires also the patience which leads to words which are adequate and intelligible to all and lead to a common praxis. It is the antithesis of Babel, not only as regards points of view but also in what concerns vocabulary. It is not sufficient, in fact, that our inspirations coincide. We are body as well as mind, and we need expressions which are lucid and appropriate, and deeds which are useful and meaningful. And this is what we are promised. We shall find the way to reach a shared vision, to speak a common language and to act in harmony.

Of this we have urgent need. The whole truth means for us that we understand the concrete manner of expressing our apostolic consecration at the present day: that consecration through which we want to proclaim the primacy of God on our life, and on every form of life, by means of a charity which is committed to making young people aware of their vocation, and to placing ourselves at their side to enable them to fulfill it.

At the present day the 'whole truth' implies for us a fresh and shared understanding of our mission and of the choices that must be made to render it significant in different contexts. It was the Spirit who traced the lines of Christ's mission and pointed to the works which made it understandable to men, as Jesus himself proclaimed in the Synagogue of Nazareth: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor". (Lk 4,18)

The same Spirit kept the mission on course, directed towards the Kingdom of God, against temptations to what is only temporal, to personal or corporate advantage, to a leveling down to current modes or a giving way to needs of the moment.

The 'whole truth' is for us a manner of understanding and expressing the radical following of Christ in a world which has legalized and well nigh exalted to the point of status symbols extreme representation of three idols: riches detached from solidarity, pleasure freed from responsibility, and freedom disjoined from service. We are called upon to proclaim not only ascesis and moderation but also the human and cultural value, indispensable to the person, of evangelical attitudes which lead from possession to sharing, from pleasure to commitment, and from freedom to love.

The whole truth implies for us that we understand and realize the new dimensions of communion. This in the first place within our own communities in face of the challenges made today to deep human relationships, to the family spirit, to sharing in responsibility, and to the communication of the Salesian spirit which we see as the horizon of the work of the Chapter. But it also involves the external expansion of communion too. We are living through a time of small but numerous lacerations which call for reconciliation. Our societies are torn asunder by fission and discrimination, by insuperable social differences and by ethnic oppositions. The social texture disintegrates beneath the weight of selfish interests.

Our communion is called upon to be a leaven in both culture and neighbourhood, in the mentality of the young and in educational environments.

The promise we have received is that the Holy Spirit will accompany us and guide us in our seeking. He is not going to give us the truth already wrapped and delivered. What he will do rather is show us the typical paths to reach our objective already transformed by it.

One such path is the word: facts that have happened and lessons that have followed: "He will remind you of all I have said to you". Remembering, recalling, the creation of stable points of reference to which we can return, are characteristics of the Spirit. He repeats and makes resound in the Church all Christ's words just as he pronounced them, and allows nothing to be forgotten. This why he inspired the writing of the Gospels, why he offers them to us in liturgical celebrations and gives to ministers the grace to proclaim them.

For us too it will be important to remember events of the past. We are not a generation without a history, nor a Family without a Father.

The charism does not begin with us. It has already been lived, understood and expressed. Under its inspiration has been lived out the earthly existence of many confreres, especially those outstanding in holiness. To describe this style of life Don Bosco and his successors have written a great deal, and the community from time to time has tried to express it again. To go back so as to draw from the source the originality of one's own being and one's own grace is another of the Spirit's ways.

But the recalling of literal memories of the past is neither his only nor his main concern. He is also the Spirit of new understanding. The significance of his word is inexhaustible, and continued meditation on it is a source for us of new inspirations when the Spirit brings it face to face within us with the problems which challenge us. "I have many things still to say to you but you cannot bear them now. He will take what is mine and explain it to you".

There are two elements which prevent us from grasping the truth of Jesus in its entirety: the times which are not yet complete, and our own level of vigilance and spiritual life. The first matures by itself as God works within all that exists, but the second is our responsibility. And so we are invited to look at events, to accept the invocations of humanity, and to respond to them with ready availability and faith.

Again, he is not only the Spirit of the word freshly understood, but also the Spirit of innovation and prophecy: "He will declare to you the things that are to come". We are nearing the dawn of a new century. Human circumstances are becoming charged with challenges and possibilities, especially in what concerns the person, religious experience, social life and ecclesial mission. New perspectives are appearing for the Church, e.g. a new effort at evangelization, ecumenism, inter-religious dialogue, ethical humanism and the leavening of human relationships.

The Synod on consecrated life accepted these challenges, and to meet them called for authenticity, radical approach, vigilance over the signs of the times, and participation in the vicissitudes of the world in line with the charismatic originality concerned.

Events, the memory of faith, and the promise are elements which suggest the attitudes with which we could follow the paths the Spirit will show us. They are all summed up in the prayer: "Ask for the Spirit and the Father will give him to you". Ask for the Spirit - that is what we are doing at this present moment, and that is what we shall continue to do every day in the filial assurance that his gifts will not be wanting to us.