good of souls is the foundation of our mutual affection.1060

Another letter addressed to the superiors and pupils at Lanzo more clearly highlights the intimate link that exists between the human and the theological, between the fruit and the plant.

During my stay at Lanzo you have enchanted me with your loving kindness and

you enchanted my mind with your piety. The only thing left for me was my heart, and you

have stolen all my heart0s affection. Now, the two hundred friendly and very dear hands

which signed the letter, have taken full possession of this heart of m

else left but a lively desire to love you in the Lord, do good to you, and save all your

souls.

1061

goodness;

ine, and there is nothing

Practically then loving kindness in all its shapes and sizes and thanks to the fullness and maturity of the

human ability to love and to the rational lucidity of friendship, is supported and nourished by the

infused virtue of charity for the attainment of the last end which is the salvation of souls.

Loving kindness is continuously creative; it is inexhaustible in terms of 'beneficence, doing good - a practical translation of 'benevolence', wanting the good of others. An actual, practical fraternal charity

on behalf of the weak and the small united with God's life, it spurs us on to love, to want and actually

do what God loves and to ful ly share “the life of Christ in me”1062

God is love beyond all measure and we love our 'brothers' in the measure suggested by reason and human and divine wisdom.

5. The educational abundance of loving kindess

The different expressions connected with amorevolezza (henceforth 'loving kindness') are but signs of the super-abundance of its connotations.

"Loving kindness assumes different aspects in relation to the variety of situations of poverty and abandonment. These situations find a response in the abundant human and divine qualities found in the educator, who is called to act as a “father, brother, friend” and also benefactor, a teacher, and supporter. This is how it was with Don Bosco and this is how the preventive system works

One of the results of an interior charity and certainly contributing to loving kindness is a sense of misericordia, mercy and compassion. Behind this lies the pain and sorrow one feels seeing the harm and misfortune which young people have to endure as we meet up with them in prison or see them running wild, and heading fro trouble, in the city streets. This painful feeling becomes compassion and pity; when controlled by moral reason, mercy is a natural virtue, and when inspired by the reason that God himself has for being merciful, then mercy becomes a theological virtue, springing from charity. Mercy stands for compassion and first of all compassion for the dangers to which poor and abandoned boys are exposed, for the danger of being without God, of being from him, of being far from salvation, but also for the temporal evils that beset them: ignorance, loneliness, idleness, corruption.

Mercy sees one's neighbour from the perspective of needs which appeal for help. And a merciful person cooperates with God and represents the embodiment of God's goodness. The loving kindness which is made up of heart, words and deeds becomes, through a human and divine impulse

“Beneficence, the implementation of mercy. Mercy makes itself evident in acts of “Beneficence”, acts which were acts of loving kindness in the older Italian lexicon.1063

1060 Letter from Rome to working boys at the Oratory in Valdocco, 20January 1874. E II 339

1061 Letter of 3 January 1876, E III 5.

1062 Jn 13, 14-15 and Gal. 2:20.

1063 The term is frequently employed by Sister Celeste, the older sister of Galileo Galilei, when she is thanking her