RADIATION OF THE CHARISM

CHAPTER 2: RADIATION OF THE CHARISM

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"We heard with our own ears, O God, our fathers have told us the story of the things you did in their days, you yourself, in days long ago".¹

In the plan of salvation which God carries out through the Church, we Salesians contemplate the charism which the Spirit has brought to life and spread through Don Bosco.

Through the mediation of Mary, the Lord called him to take care of "the young who are poor, abandoned and in danger";² and he did not leave him by himself, but made him the Father of a great family and the guide of a host of youngsters. For this reason his story is our story also.

As we look at Don Bosco our ability for discernment becomes enlightened, and our desire increases to say to lay people what he himself said to the young Michael Rua: "We shall go halves in everything".

1. AT THE ORIGINS

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Don Bosco's youth and adolescence

From his boyhood Don Bosco was a great communicator and animator, able to create groups and associations and involve their members, making intelligent appeals to the energies of all of them. At Chieri, where he was esteemed by his companions as the leader of a small circle, he founded the Society of Joy, and during the holidays extended the concept to Morialdo, where he founded another society with the same name.

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The experiences at Valdocco

With equal determination, as a young diocesan priest he did something similar with the group of collaborators of the Oratory of St Francis de Sales. He fostered participation and the sharing of responsibility by ecclesiastics and laity, men and women.

They helped him to teach catechism and other classes, assist in church, lead the youngsters in prayer, prepare them for their first communion and confirmation, keep order in the playground where they played with the boys, and help the more needy to find employment with some honest patron.

Meanwhile Don Bosco took good care of their spiritual life, with personal encounters, conferences, spiritual direction and the administration of the sacraments.

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In the apostolate the primary collaborators were the boys who had lived with him for some time and shared with him service of their neighbour in the most abandoned. Those most closely attached to Don Bosco carried out this service among their peers through the various Sodalities: those of the Immaculate Conception, the Blessed Sacrament, St Aloysius and St Joseph.

Everyone followed the example of Don Bosco; he in turn pointed to St Francis de Sales, principal patron of the Oratory, as a model of apostolic dedication and loving kindness. Such examples attracted some of the youngsters even to truly heroic acts of virtue.

On 18 December 1859, he started up with some of them the Society of St Francis de Sales. This was a religious community which from its very first years showed itself open to the values of the world, taking on a secular dimension manifested in a specific manner by the presence of Salesian coadjutor brothers. These helped in particular to link the Salesian community with civil society, and especially with the world of work.

Don Bosco did not fail either to make good use of the advice of the liberal minister Urban Ratazzi, who was responsible for laws hostile to the Church, but who nonetheless showed him the politically correct way to found a new religious society whose members would preserve all their civil rights.

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In the first draft of the Constitutions Don Bosco foresaw the existence of Salesians who could belong to the Salesian Society while living in the world, without professing the three vows but striving to put into practice that part of the Regulations compatible with their age and condition. But since he was unable to succeed with this plan because of the juridical difficulties of the time, the Saint founded the Pious Union of Cooperators which he considered "of the greatest importance" as "the soul of the Congregation."³ His Regulations were approved on 24 June 1876. At the same time, at the suggestion of Carlo Gastini, Don Bosco founded the Past-pupils Association to share in the Salesian mission in civil society by the fruitful application of the education they had received.

Even earlier he had set up the Archconfraternity of the Clients of Mary Help of Christians (known now as ADMA), erected on 5 April 1870 by a Brief of Pope Pius IX.

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Feminine collaboration

Despite the attitude of reserve and detachment from the feminine world which Don Bosco shared with the clergy of his time, he developed a style of simple and delicate cordiality to women with whom he came in contact.

Their presence was essential for the life of the Oratory. There was Mamma Margaret, the first cooperator and mother of the Oratory, with whom Don Bosco shared the running of the house. Later there was the mother of Don Rua and of Michael Magone. Other women of Turin society collaborated with him. They gave Don Bosco a hand, helped him financially in domestic activities, and smoothed the way for him to reach government officials.

It became clear in this way that for the realization of a family atmosphere the presence of women was extremely useful. They were able to provide complementary interventions which enriched the educative relationship and gave a particular tone to Salesian loving kindness.

The prospects offered to Don Bosco by the Marchioness of Barolo of working for poor girls subsequently led him to do something for the girls as well. After meeting Don Pestarino and the group of young women of Mornese, led by Mary Domenica Mazzarello, Don Bosco perceived the possibility of realizing for the benefit of girls what he had had at heart for some time. He was happy to recognize the plan of God who by a singular design of grace had instilled the same experience of apostolic charity in St Mary Domenica, involving her in a unique manner in the foundation of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians.⁴

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A common patrimony

Without any doubt there grew up around Don Bosco a vast movement of persons and groups, of men, women and youngsters, of the most diverse conditions of life, who shared with him some elements which became authoritative point of reference: a spirituality modelled on that of St Francis de Sales; a well-defined mission - the salvation of youth and especially those poor and abandoned; a dynamic project of education and evangelization: the preventive system (of which Don Bosco tried also to write a version adapted to the laity); an environment, in which the original contributions of each one became fused into a common purpose: the Oratory, characterized by a climate and typical style called the family spirit, where each one felt welcome, valued and helped to give and to receive.

From the beginning, Valdocco was "a home that welcomed, a parish that evangelized, a school that prepared them for life, and a playground where friends could meet and enjoy themselves".⁵

Don Bosco went ahead, not without tensions, enlarging the frontiers of the mission for poor and abandoned youngsters with the opening of new works both in and outside Italy. Beginning in 1875 he organized missionary expeditions to Latin America, which have continued year by year.

His famous dreams provide almost a detailed panorama of the vast areas he covered with his mission: lands from Valparaiso to Beijing, by way of Africa.