Homily after election of Rector Major

Rome, 21 March 1996

In these days of discernment we are living through a unique event. I am not saying this only nor even principally in my own regard, but as regards all of us as a community, We have always believed that discernment is something that involves all of us with equal responsibility; that its result affects all of us with equal advantages or losses. We have all embarked on the same ship for the same voyage.

In this Eucharist our thoughts turn naturally to Don Bosco who has gently led us to this event, which embodies a future trait of his Family and his project.

The Lenten readings do not prevent us from turning our eyes to him; indeed, they offer us some interesting points in his regard.

• The first reading speaks of the covenant and the mediation of Moses. The covenant with God, the pact of mutual predilection with Yahweh, was the source of the personal dignity of every component of the people of Israel and the foundation of their social identity. On this memory and code was based the education of individuals, the building of solidarity and the strengthening of the sense of belonging. Israel was the people which placed God, his word and his law, above every benefit, agreement, offensive and defensive resources. For this reason, even though with much infidelity, Israel has been the "memoria Dei" which has come down to us as humanity's patrimony.

The fault of the people, and hence their misfortunes, did not follow so much from the fact of their festivities around a statue, as because they had forgotten the favour God had shown them by freeing them from slavery; they had entrusted themselves to earthly elements in seeking their lives and personal satisfaction. When looked at like this, idolatry is not a thing of the past; it is a risk at the present day. There are those who are of the opinion that in our own time atheism has become more widely spread.

The covenant is the situation of grace and enlightenment in which we know by intuition that God is the first, the indispensable and only one who can satisfy our thirst for life and our yearning for redemption and salvation.

We give it other names. we call it consecration, religious choice, our plan of life in God, the recognition of his presence in our existence.

It is a condition of humanity. The latter is in a state of covenant, because it cannot explain itself nor its internal operations without acknowledging that it belongs to God and is destined to return to him, in a similar fashion to a wife who cannot think of her condition apart from the relationship that unites her with her husband. But this is also that state of the individual who can find neither sense nor a point of anchor until he becomes rooted in God.

The Church makes her own and wants to express this love of God for humanity, and the need for God which humanity experiences. She perceives this very clearly; it was revealed to her in the event of Christ, through which God draws humanity to himself and unites himself closely with man in the flesh and in history.

Religious are led by grace to concentrate their own existence on relationship with God and on proclaiming that his love is real and underlies history. They live the covenant not as the story of a past event, a doctrine, a subjective sentiment, but as a personal relationship which configures their existence in time and determines their options, their commitments and their friendships.

Grave crises occur when this centre of gravity, which sustains and unifies the existence of the religious even from a psychological standpoint, loses its force; nothing else - no matter how noble - can take its place. As a result all the other components become weakened, there is no longer a bond between them, they become disjoined and crumble. The reasons which sustained the plan of life become obscure and no longer have the necessary force to orientate the individual.

For each of us the sense of the covenant and the attraction of God were not and never will be a matter of a unique and extraordinary moment, but rather a process of unification brought about through corresponding to many external mediations and provocations, and moved by dialogues which take place in our conscience and which lead us to make choices which are ever more total and definitive,

The covenant is a preference which grows and becomes clearer throughout life. For some it may have begun with a sudden blinding flash in a moment of particular spiritual intensity. But it will always need new recognition and new options. Tiredness. forgetfulness, negligence, other attractions, are always ready to pounce in the human soul.

For most people it all happens with a gradualness which can easily be confused with chance happenings: a first taste through contact with persons or settings of a religious vein which suggested a particular impression or value; then slowly comes the discovery of the source from which such values proceed; we begin to share through friendship, collaboration and confidence. the experience of those who impressed us. And finally we feel that we have been won over, in line with St. Paul's expression: "I have been conquered by Jesus Christ".

• In this process of the discovery of God and becoming attached to him, Don Bosco has been for us in particular a providential mediation; our first contact with him was a determining factor.

Our Constitutions tell us: "The Lord has given us Don Bosco as father and teacher". We can remember the details of that first contact and the graces we have subsequently received as our familiarity with him increased: how much he has enriched us with projects, feelings, ideals and rapport during the different phases of our existence: as candidates for the Salesian life, as novices, during the period of initial formation, in pastoral activities and communal responsibilities, in our thinking back as adults. His internal accompaniment has always been inspiring and encouraging. If today we were to renounce all we have received from him, very little would remain of our spiritual life.

Truly therefore he has been the gift of God for us. It is true that without him there would have been others to point us towards the Lord. But life is not made up of what might have happened, but of real events. Even our parents might have been other people but, as it is, we have within us the genes and inherited characteristics of those who brought us into the world.

And so in the expression we are speaking of, the word 'us' does not have a merely collective sense, as though it regarded the Salesian community as a whole, but a distributive sense: to each of us, personally and individually, has been given the grace of contact with Don Bosco.

Our relationship with him is one of sons and disciples. Don Bosco had, and continues to have at the present day, admirers, collaborators and friends. Christ too had hearers, adherents, followers, disciples and apostles. Each of these words indicates a different kind of relationship.

We are not only admirers, collaborators and friends of Don Bosco. The term that best defines our relationship with him is the word 'Father', but it would be a mistake to think that this is merely a term of affection related to his ability for manifesting kindness and closeness to us.

There is something here that goes beyond kindness and affection. Its meaning is that he is the initiator of that spiritual experience we call the Salesian charism. It generates us to the following of Christ for the young. We shall have many teachers, interpreters and even prophets of the charism, but only one Father - in the sense that Paul could say to the Corinthians: "For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the Gospel" (1 Cor 4,15).

• In the Gospel we have just heard read, Jesus lists the testimonies that have been concentrated on his person: John the Baptist, Moses, the Scriptures. All of them lead to two points which are definitively convincing: his works and, in the final instance, the voice of the Father for those who are able to listen to it: "The Father who has sent me has given testimony of me" .

Certainly, for us too the definitive testimony comes from the works of Christ, from the Spirit and from the Father. The Father has drawn us to himself with the call to faith; the works of Christ are manifest in our "liberation from evil" and in the desire to be conformed to him from our baptism; the Spirit makes us feel that we are God's children and in continual communion with him. But it is the pedagogy and holiness of Don Bosco which has led us to these testimonies. All holiness is a transparency of God the Father and a reflection of Christ. That of Don Bosco has something unique about it as regards the ability to reveal God to the young.

The Constitutions express this in a crescendo of expressions: in him there appears a splendid harmony of nature and grace, a harmony progressively enlightened in a strongly unified plan of life at the service of the young; a 'motif' explains the overall unity and renders it magnificent is the concern for souls, the joy at the presence and action of God in each individual, the desire to lead the young towards God who is the source of all happiness.

Is not this perhaps what struck and attracted us too? that God came closer to us, within our range, with a welcoming human countenance as he captivated the disciples through the humanity of Jesus.

We know from experience that someone gave strength to our desire for life, truth and commitment; and that from lawful and immediate pleasures, which please youngsters so much, he urged us on to horizons of sense, responsibility and transcendence.

Don Bosco has applied with us too the preventive system, making attractive what is good, leading us to see the beauty of the faith, showing us the happiness there is in serving God and our neighbour.

• What he asks today of Salesians is that they live this covenant in all its joys and demands for the benefit of the young. Its immediate and transparent testimony in word and works is the contribution we make to the evangelization of the young in a secularized world.

That the young are looking for an underlying sense to everything is evident everywhere. That the great mass of youth follows the tide, while those who feel interiorly attracted by God are looking for travelling companions, is something that we ourselves perceive every day. That what pleases young people is life, and they are digging in it to discover what adults have already found in contact with Christ, is one of our maxims. It is indeed the fundamental law of the preventive system. We must not deprive youngsters of the good news of God by limiting ourselves to the provision of safe recreation for them.

In our commitment with the laity too, the witness of our consecration will be a primary and determining factor: the Spirit attracts the lay people to the sphere of Don Bosco to bring them closer to God, through a maturing of conscience and a deeper meeting with Christ. From those who are consecrated they expect to receive something. What will it be? Organization? Professional animation?

No! What they are looking for is rather the sense of God, the religious vision of his existence, the closeness of the Lord, the memory of his mercy. We too need to start again from God. What the Lord is saying to us today in the liturgy and in our family event must kelp us and make us capable of giving it effect.

May Mary, who formed the heart of Don Bosco in apostolic consecration, mould our own hearts too so that we may be able to combine in a single project the love of God and dedication to the young.