Chapter 13

Educational disciplines: (2) virtue and commitment

Christian education involves collaboration: human and divine. Don Bosco was neither Pelagian nor Quietist. He is prepared to act instead of just handing things over to the supernatural. “A lot of hard work is achieved with hope”, Don Bosco taught in the concluding talk at a retreat, “The hope of a reward supports patience”, he insisted and then concluded: “Have courage then! May hope support us when our patience risks failing us”.960

1. Practising charity, mortification and politeness

We have already dealt with the virtue of obedience which shapes all other virtues at least from a pedagogical point of view.

As we have also seen, piety and hard work are fundamental virtues for him. There are also other virtues which Don Bosco nurtured and looked upon as absolutely essential for the young and the adult “good Christian and upright citizen”.

He offers a concise list in his chapter on the Imitation of Christ in Portrait of a True Christian and The Key to Heaven (Ritratto del vero cristiano and Chiave del paradiso, respectively). The Christian is invited to follow behavioural patterns of the kind we find in his model, Jesus Christ. “He should pray, since Jesus Christ prayed”; “he should be available just as Jesus Christ was available for the poor, the ignorant, children”; “he should treat his neighbour just as Jesus Christ treated his followers”, and like Jesus Christ “he should be humble, obedient, sober, self-controlled, attentive to the needs of others”. “He should be with his friends much like Jesus Christ was with St. John and St. Lazarus, namely he should love them in the Lord and for the love God”; “he should endure privation and poverty as Jesus Christ endured them, with resignation”, and “just like Jesus Christ he should bear with insults and abuse”; “he should be ready to endure the pains of the spirit”, just like Jesus Christ who was betrayed, denied and abandoned; finally, “he should be ready to patiently accept all kinds of persecutions, sickness and even death, entrusting his soul into the hands of his Heavenly Father”.961

Naturally, in the broad list of Christian virtues proposed to young people and adults, the theological virtues could not be left out. These virtues, however, do not change the strongly moral inspiration of the entire structure, based on duty and the practical exercise of acquired virtues.

Pointing out the courage of the young martyr Pancratius, Don Bosco invited young people to look with wonder at the “living faith, firm hope, and ardent charity” preceded by a virtuous childhood. It was during childhood that Pancratius was the delight of his parents and a model for his companions, obedient to his parents, performing his duties exactly dedicated to his studies”.962A “living Faith” and “ardent Charity” were the features Don Bosco had already attributed to Louis Comollo (1844).963 In his T he devotee of the Guardian Angel, Don Bosco proposed the following prayer:

I beseech you, O Lord, grant strength to my spirit with a living faith, firm hope and ardent

charity, so that disposing of what belongs to the world, I may think only about loving and

serving my God.964

960G. Barberis, Cronaca, quad. 20, retreat at Lanzo, 18 Sept. 1875, pp. 7-8.

961La chiave del paradiso..., pp. 20-23, OE VIII 20-23.

962Vita di S. Pancrazio martire..., Turin, G.B. Paravia & Co, 1856, p. 35 and 11, OE VIII 229 and 205. 963[G. Bosco], Cenni storici sulla vita del chierico Luigi Comollo..., p. 34, OE I 34.

964Il divoto dell'Angelo Custode. Turin, Paravia & Co., 1845, p. 71 OE I 157.