might have appeared to be the end result of cunning, were it not to spring from an intensive love for the ones who were to benefit from it all, and first of all the benefactors themselves. "The only thing that I can still do and I am willingly doing for you” he writes in his last or next to the last lette “and for your loved ones, both living and deceased, is to pray for them every day so that their riches, which are thorns, may be turn into good works, namely, flowers, which the Angels can use to weave crowns for their brows for all eternity. So be it!”632

Don Bosco begged, out of love for those in need, but also for those who gave. And from time to time, love takes on the hue of affection, even human affection, sincere gratitude, friendship. This friendship is never without a touch of filial confidence, familiarity, kindness shown by the exchange of symbolic gifts, invitations sent or received, "Distinguished Honors" requested or received, prayers, greetings and personal recollections, even letters to third parties, with friendly and sincere wishes. It is within the context of exquisitely personalised feelings that one can understand how Don Bosco succeeded in establishing relationships with benefactors and ‘mammas’ who were most generous and supportive. These relationships were neither imposed nor artificial, but filial.633

2.5 “Completely consecrated” to the young

Don Bosco's activity was not just the expression of purely temperamental activism. It was a conscious, willed 'consecration'; a 'mission' with a precise objective: “The full accomplishment of the salvation of the young”. "The young’, as he put it to people “can really count on him as their Capital Resource; he is entirely consecrated to those to be educated, as he would write for all the educators in the pages of his 1877 The preventive system in the education of youth. Precisely for this reason Don Bosco's dedication to youth has a rhythm which is entirely distinct from the rhythm of his physical life: it even seems to grow with the declining or weakening of his physical life.

Right from the first years of his apostolate, we find Don Bosco sick and forced to spend some months during the summer and autumn at his native village, to restore his already weary body, mainly because of excessive work. And for the same reason, during the summer of 1846, an almost fatal disease strikes Don Bosco.

Acknowledgements of being tired, of having health problems, of suffering physically and morally, are not so rarely scattered throughout his letters and to an increasing degree: “I am so overloaded with work this Lenten season, that I can take no more.” This is what Don Bosco wrote to his friend Canon De Gaudenzi in 1853.634 To Countess Callori on July 24th, 1845, after a series of sad events, Don Bosco made this confidence: "During these days, just imagine how many expenses, how many troubles, how many responsibilities have fallen on Don Bosco's shoulders. However you should never think that I am down; I was only tired, and nothing else”.635

Don Bosco's condition became more precarious after the serious illness which struck him at the end of December 1871, at Varazze, and he would have more or less serious relapses later on. “As for the Villavernia business”, Don Bosco wrote to a Canon requesting a new foundation, “I cannot even think of it; we have no money nor have we 'ad hoc' personnel to staff it; and above all, my poor head has become tired and has no enterprising energy at all”636 "I cannot even go to Alassio now ”, Don Bosco

632 Letter to Mrs. Broquier, 27 Nov. 1887, E IV 386.

633 For example, Countess Carlotta Callori, E II 183 (called ‘mamma’ the frist time on 3 Oct. 1871), 191, 192, 225, 227,

230, 252, 259, 290, 306, 318, 487, 513, 523; Countess Girolama Uguccionim E II 84 (called ‘mamma’ for the first time

13 April 1870), 158, 188, 197, 203, 228, 243, 280, 324, 377, 488; E IV 63 (‘Our Good Mamma in JC’); Countess

Luigia di Viancino, E II 192; Marchioness Nina Durazzo Pallavicino, E II 201 (‘merciful mother of the poor’);

Countess Gabriella Corsi, E II 263, 264; E III 218, 397, 398, 512.

634 Letter 6 March 1853, Em I 193.

635 Em II 152.

636 Letter 18 March 1872, E II 200.