2.6 A man with a heart

Don Bosco's heart never stopped loving to the very end. His pedagogy is identified with all his activity; all his action is identified with his personality; and all of Don Bosco’ personality is definitively summed up in one word: heart!

It is the heart as Don Bosco himself understood it: not only as the organ of love, but as the central part of our being, both at the level of nature and the level of grace. “The heart wants;”the heart desires, comprehends, understands, listens to all that is being said; it is inflamed with love, reflects and is moving”.659And a very intense feeling of affection envelops all this. This affection is deeply rooted and always properly in check, but it is also an affection which, following the canons of his own pedagogy, is expressed, shared and therefore visible and perceptible. This feeling of affection moves in all directions but naturally and especially in the direction of youth: this affection takes on, then, the tone of an educative fatherliness. This is one of the first words found in Don Bosco’s vocabulary. And when Don Bosco wrote to the Father Borel, his first collaborator, this is what he said: ” Before leaving, we did not have much time to talk to each other. But may I ask you to act as a good father of the family, in a house which is yours and mine”.660

The community, the many communities of boys, were Don Bosco's family, Don Bosco's house, and Don Bosco's unique and great patriarchal family. This can be perceived intuitively from the thousands of expressions which emerge from his attitudes, words and writings, and particularly from his correspondence, often overflowing with nostalgic barely restrained feelings, affectionate recollections, concerns for others, willingness to be always present.

Writing once again to Fr. Borel during the first months of the Oratory, Don Bosco added: "It is OK for Fr. Trivero to help at the Oratory. But keep an eye on him, because he deals with the little children too harshly and I know that some of the children have already shown their dislike. Make sure that oil is used to season everything we eat at the Oratory”.661

The thought insistently expressed in Don Bosco’s letters is that of wanting to hear news about his own boys, their teachers and to reassure them, one by one, that he keeps them in mind. "Give me plenty of detailed news about my dear children and tell them that at every church I visited I never failed to say some prayers for them. But ask them also to pray for their poor Don Bosco”.662 "Even though I cannot be exclusively concerned for the well-being of the Oratory and our youngsters there while here in Rome, my thoughts always fly to where my treasure is, in Jesus Christ namely, to my dear children at the Oratory. Several times during the day I'm paying them a visit”.663

After his illness, and while at Varazze, Don Bosco made this announcement:" Next Thursday, God willing, I will be back in Turin. I feel a strong need to get there. I live here in body, but my heart, my thoughts and even my words are always at the Oratory in your midst. This is one of my weaknesses and I cannot overcome it.. While you communicate this news to all our dear children tell them also that I thank them all, from the bottom of my heart, for all the prayers they have said for me; tell them that I thank all those youngsters who have written to me and particularly those who have offered their lives on my behalf. I know their names and I shall never forget them”.664 "Tell our youngsters that it looks to me as though half a century has gone by since I saw them. I very much long to see them and tell them so many things”.665 "We are at the end of the year: Sadly I find myself away from my dear

659 P. Stella, Don Bosco nella storia della religiosità cattolica, vol 2, 37-38- 660 Letter, 30 Sept. 1850, Em I 114.

661 Letter to Don Borel, 31 Aug. 1846, Em I 71.

662 Letter to Don Rua, 13 Dec. 1865, Em II 189.

663 Letter to Don Rua, between Jan and Feb. 1870, E II 70-71.

664 Letter to Don Rua, 9 Feb. 1872, E II 193.

665 Letter to Don Rua, 5 March 1877, E III 155.