Within this basic choice there are three possible different options: to be a priest in the world, to be a priest in religious life, to be a priest for the foreign missions.

Everyone may choose what his heart desires and what is more suited to his physical and moral strength, but he should get the advice of a person who is pious, learned and prudent.

However all these choices must come from only one point and lead back to it, the centre, namely, God.866

We need to say that while Don Bosco often spoke with young people who were facing the choice of the

ecclesiastical or religious state, he did not give over much importance to someone who chose the

secular state instead. “Once a young man knows he is not called to the ecclesiastical or religious state, then it does not matter whether he chooses to be a blacksmith or a carpenter, a shoemaker or a tailor, an employee or a businessman”.867

In particular, he showed that he favoured areligious vocation for young men who he thought might encounter dangers if they remained in the world.868As years went on, Don Bosco would begin to talk

about lay religious vocations to working boys as well. “Religious vocations are not only for young gentlemen, academic students that is”.869

11. Common vocation: charity and apostolic

The vocation which after all, is common to everyone, whether ecclesiastic or lay, is but one: the vocation to practice charity, the vocation to love. Everyone, according to his or her possibilities and responsibilities, is bound to be there in charity and as an apostolate, expressed in various ways: giving alms, by being engaged in teaching catechism or in education, joining forces with others who are actively engaged.870

This is a chieved and produces better results for the glory of God vis unita fortior -when people join groups and associations of militant Christians and thus open themselves - if God so calls them - to the most daring apostolic and missionary possibilities.871

What Don Bosco, with daring intuition, suggested to a young man who would later on be proclaimed a

Saint, is good for everybody:

The very first thing suggested to him in order to become Saint was that of doing his best to

win over souls for God. Therefore ther e is no holier thing in the world than that of

cooperating for the good of souls for whose salvation Jesus Christ shared the very last drop

of his precious blood.

872

12. A life style seasoned with hope and joy

Finally, a young man moulded by the preventive system is made capable of practising in the future the traditional virtues of charity and temperance, obedience, honesty and modesty, and finding reasons to rejoice even here below in steadfast hope of gaining eternal happiness. The following remark found in the Companion of Youth is reserved for young people still at school and on the threshold of adulthood:

866Letter 17 June 1879, E III 476.

867G. Barberis,Cronaca, quad. 19, p.2.

868Cf. for example his talk on the evening of 10 May 1875, G. Barberis, Cronichetta, quad. 1, pp 2-3.

869G. Barberis (E. Dompè), Cronaca, quad. 15, evening talk on 21 April 1877, p. 7. The talk was completely given to to

different dangers faced by someone who chooses a lay ecclesiastical vocation and he who opts for religious life. 870Conference to Cooperators at Borgo S. Martino, 1 July 1880, BS 4 (1880) no 8, August, p, 9.

871Cf. P. Braido, laicità e laici..., pp. 30-31.

872G. Bosco, Vita del giovanetto Savio Domenico..., p. 53 OE XI 203.