All that we have mentioned above goes back to a deeper and ambivalent reality with a theological and psychological sense to it. According to Don Bosco virtue, religion, the realm of grace are also sources of happiness. In the Companion of Youth, following a widespread ascetic type of literature for the young, both in his own time and earlier, Don Bosco emphasised one extremely problematic aspect of human nature and of the nature of a young person. We cannot tell whether Don Bosco means to refer to a healthy nature or a nature wounded by sin, because at this juncture Don Bosco does not seem to notice such a distinction.734 Anyway, according to Don Bosco, the human being and more clearly so
the young man seems to be born to rejoice; of his very nature a human being, a young man longs for
joy, entertainment, pleasure. This tendency seems to enter into conflict with happiness and its sources.
As a matter of fact, so Don Bosco continues, “If I tell one of my children to receive the Sacraments frequently,to pray each day, the answer I get is: I have something else to do, I have work to do, or I have to have fun”.735
There is another characteristic feature instead, which Don Bosco notes and sees mostly from a positive angle: youngsters need to move about, have life, free rein for their physical, intellectual, emotional and moral energies. There is a fundamental precept connected with this feature. It was inspired by St. Philip Neri but employed by Don Bosco in language and educational praxis that makes it a construct of exceptional value: “Let them have ample freedom to jump, to run, to shout as they wish”. 736 There are other innate qualities found in the young and they are entirely positive. Don Bosco sees them and enjoys describing them as they are found inMichael Magone, the typical young lad, not only from a pedagogical point of view but especially from the perspective of a basic psychological structure, prior to any serious moral damage: his liveliness, spontaneity, inborn tendency to like what is good, unconsciously oriented towards true happiness.
Naturally lively yet pious, good and devout, he thought a lot of the smallest practices of
piety. He practiced them cheerfully, freely and easily, without scruples: on account of his
piety, study and congenialnature he was loved and respected by all; on account of his
liveliness and good manners he was the idol of recreation time.737
Even after the premonition that he was soon the going to die, Michael Magone's “cheerfulness and joviality were not changed in theleast”.738
There is another feature added to the ones mentioned above: youth has an inner vitality which is expressed by a remarkable impressionability and receptivity, both emotionally and perceptively. Don Bosco deals explicitly with this feature, when he expresses his views on the educative and moral aspects of the theatre.
“We maintain that youngsters hold on to impressions of things vividly presented, in their heart, and neither reason nor contrary facts can convince them to easily forget them”.739
Impressionability may have some negative aspects but it is taken mainly from its positive side, as Don Bosco himself remarks when he talks about the happy crisis faced by Josephine, the chief character in a play called The conversion of a Waldesian lady. “Youth, so long as it is not the slave to vice, lingers only momentarily on other things, but the precepts of religion and especially eternal principles produce
734P. Stella, Don Bosco nella storia della religiosità cattolica. Vol II p. 188
735G. Bosco, Il giovane provveduto... p. 33 OE II 213.
736Il sistema preventivo (1877), p. 54 OE XXVIII 432. This outline responds to a true “pedagogy of joy and festivity”; cf
chap. 16.
737G. Bosco, Cenno biografico sul giovanetto Magone Michele allievo dell'Oratorio di S. Francesco di Sales. Turin. G.B.
Paravia & CO. 1861, p. 66 OE XIII 220.
738G. Bosco Cenno biografico sul giovanetto Magone.... p. 68, OE XIII 222.
739Regolamento per le case... part I Chap XVI Del teatrino, p. 50 OE XXIX 146.