CONSECRATED COMMUNITY THE SOUL OF THE CEP

CHAPTER 2: THE EDUCATIVE AND PASTORAL COMMUNITY

1. THE CONSECRATED COMMUNITY THE SOUL OF THE CEP

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The green Pinardi meadow is an indication of the infinite youthful horizon. The heart of Don Bosco envisaged the poor and abandoned youngsters as the future of humanity and the hope of the Church.

To this meadow, thronged with youngsters, Don Bosco called the greatest possible number of persons, ecclesiastics and lay people, young and adult, men and women, to stay with him.

Staying with Don Bosco meant staying with the youngsters and offering them all that we are: heart, mind and will; friendship, professional approach and presence; sympathy, service, self-donation. But from some Don Bosco asked still more than this. He asked them to stay with him always, to commit themselves full-time to the young with all their very existence and to dedicate their life by vow to following the obedient, poor and chaste Christ, in a faithful service to God and youth. They are the Salesians SDB.

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Don Bosco wanted consecrated persons at the centre of his work, persons oriented to the young and their holiness.

He wanted his religious to be a precise point of reference for his charism: with their total dedication he could give the solidity and apostolic thrust needed for the continuity and worldwide extension of the mission.

The consecrated Salesian, to respond to the great love of God, perceived as a love of predilection, becomes its bearer to the young, especially the poorer ones among them;¹ he becomes the Don Bosco of the present day who can say in all truth: "For you I study, for you I work, for you I live, for you I am ready even to give my life".²

The religious manifests "with respectful sensitivity and missionary boldness that faith in Jesus Christ enlightens the whole enterprise of education, never disparaging human values but rather confirming and elevating them".³

1.1 Prophecy in action

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It is not only what they do but what they are that qualifies religious. "They bear witness to these marvels not so much in words as by the eloquent language of a transfigured life, capable of amazing the world".⁴

The Salesian SDB, by his very life, translates the Gospel into language accessible especially to the young: through the values of consecration he raises questions and indicates possibilities of sense; through his dedication he proclaims that the secret of happiness is to lose his life so as to find it again; through his style of life he makes attractive the spirit of the beatitudes and proclaims the joy of the Resurrection; through his living in community he becomes an image of the Church, the sacrament of the Kingdom.

He lives in a way that makes it clear that youngsters and laity who share responsibility become identified not so much with him as with the vocation he lives as a member of the community, which is the bearer of the charism and Salesian spirituality and this in turn is the nucleus of the CEP.

1.2 Evangelical radicality

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Consecrated life starts from a deep experience of God,⁵ which calls for a fidelity similar to that of Christ and is reflected as a school of holiness. This attitude is translated in the CEP and amongst the young as a capacity for listening, respect and admiration.

"Within the Church consecrated persons have a specific duty. They are called to bring to bear on the world of education their radical witness to the values of the Kingdom".⁶

"The consecrated life truly constitutes a living memorial of Jesus' way of living and acting as the Incarnate Word in relation to the Father and in relation to the brethren".⁷

The profession of the Evangelical Counsels, as well as being an expression of the following of Christ, has also a pedagogical content of human growth and is a paradigm of the new humanity.

* Through obedience the religious makes himself available full-time for God's educative project and expresses a process of growth among the young and in the CEP;

he does not ascribe absolute value to his own will, but rather submits to other values perceived as of greater worth: the community, the Church, society;
he seeks always the will of God in the signs of the times and in circumstances, to indicate it to his confreres;
he is docile to the Spirit and makes known to the young and to the CEP "the secret unfolding of history";⁸
it disposes him for planning (PEPS) and for working with others.

* Chastity is the specific witness which proclaims and educates to love, in a society threatened by sexual consumerism, in which fidelity in family relationships and bonds of friendship are fragile, where love is often lived only as personal satisfaction, and where the free giving up of one's own life for others becomes ever less intelligible.

Chastity lived as an evangelical dynamism marks out a process for the growth of human and Christian values: balance, self-control, freedom, joy, maturity, and a valuable stimulus for education to the chastity proper to other states of life.⁹

* Poverty is before all else an imitation of the radical choices of Christ. For this reason the consecrated person:

tends towards the outcasts, the poor, the working classes, the young;
lives with them the same precarious existence, not taking refuge in the security of structures, of a regular stipend, of power and dominion;
bases his security solely on God's sufficiency, the true riches of the human heart;¹⁰
as animator and educator in the CEP, he applies this dynamism so that justice, solidarity and charity may triumph, that solutions may be found to the hunger and sufferings of the poor, and that activities and the organization of volunteer work may be developed.¹¹

1.3 Community of consecrated persons

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The Salesians live these great values in community, thus making visible the mystery of communion which constitutes the intimate nature of the Church and becomes leaven for the Kingdom. Because of its value as a sign and instrument the consecrated community fulfills a valuable function with respect to the CEP; it helps it to become itself an authentic experience of Church in fraternal communion and in the service of the young.

1.4 The lay component in the SDB community

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Within the religious community we find the figure of the Salesian brother, "the genial creation of the great heart of Don Bosco" (Don Rinaldi). He combines in himself the gifts of consecration with those of the lay state. To his consecrated brethren he recalls the values of the creation and of secular realities; to the laity he recalls the values of total dedication to God for the cause of the Kingdom. To all he offers a particular sensitivity for the world of work, attention to the local environment, and the demands of the professional approach associated with his educative and pastoral activity.

From the SDB community to the CEP

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Don Bosco was led by God to form a community of consecrated persons which would be a leaven for a multiplicity of services, the spiritual animation of those who wanted to dedicate themselves to education, and a guarantee of continuity in the mission to the young. But right from the outset Don Bosco had brought in lay people who had contributed to the definition of the project, enriched its educative efficacy and spread the charism.

In this way there came into being what we now call the CEP, of which the consecrated community is the animating nucleus.