Three warnings found in Don Bosco's Guide for Christian living (Porta teco cristiano), insist on this idea:

19. God wants us all to be safe; rather it is his will that all of us become saints.

20. Whoever wants to be saved should have the idea of eternity in his mind, God in his heart and the world under his feet.

21. Everyone is obliged to perform the duties proper to the state in which he finds himself.893

In the salvation event, beyond simplified terms like "theocentrism" or " christocentrism", terms foreign to Don Bosco's way of thinking and language, what stands out and takes on absolute relevance is the

action of God who, as we have seen, shows predilection for the young;

894

it is the action of Jesus Christ our Savior, true God and true Man, our Divine Savior.

895

Meanwhile, the young person learns, on occasions such as feast days, novenas, special months,

particular events and devotions, that the Mother of our Redeemer is active in his life as a Christian,

through her intercession and mediation. Th e young person is invited to appeal to her daily by repeating

the invocation three times: “Dear Mother Mary, help me to save my soul”.896

Finally, it is not irrelevant to indicate from a particularly pedagogical point of view that young people can more easily accept and interiorise the presence of divine or sacred persons thanks to the effective intermediary work of their educators. If coadjutor brothers, clerics, and above all priests and particularly the confessor can see that God, our Savior Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary are accepted, trusted and loved, the more they will know how to present them as “fathers, brothers and friends”. It is enough for them to invest them with the qualities suggested by the preventive system: the charity St. Paul praises, charity founded on unshakable hope, made tangible by active “consecration” in a climte of human reasonableness and loving kindness.897

4.Teaching fear as a prelude to love

Education substantially has the aim of transfusing a vital synthesis of love and fear into the religious world of the young person. This synthesis is the correct relationship of the believer with his God, Creator and Lord, and at the same time, Father and Saviour. This is meant to occur through a delicate balance where “love more than fear” becomes the hinge of spirituality and pedagogy.

This is a belief and a method founded on centuries-old piety, Scripture, liturgy, and popular religiosity.

Grant, O Lord, that we may feel, at the same time, love for and fear of your Holy Name, so

that those whom you have established on the solid foundation of love may never be

deprived of your guidance.

This is the prayer which young members of the faithful heard read out in Latin at Sunday Mass during the octave of the Feast of Corpus Christi, the second Sunday after Pentecost, and which a high school student knew how to translate.

893Porta teco cristiano..., p. 7, OE XI 7.

894G. Bosco, Il giovane provveduto..., pp. 10-11, OE II 190-191.

895G. Bosco, Il cattolico istruito nella sua religione. Trattenimenti di un padre fi famiglia co' suoi figliuoli secondo i

bisogni del tempo. Turin, P. De-Agostini 1853, first series, section X, p. 43, OE IV 237; section XI, p. 47, OE IV 241;

section XII, pp 50-53, OE IV 244-247.

896G. Bosco, Il giovane provveduto..., p. 54, OE II 234; La chiave del paradiso in mano al cattolico..., p. 43, OE VIII 43. 897The virtues of the good educator Don Bosco takes back to the three basic qualiteis: reason, religion, loving kindness,

subject of chap 14.