Sacred Heart.

1888 (Tuesday, January 31, at 4:45 a.m. Don Bosco dies.

2. Reconstructing Don Bosco's preventive system: sources

To reconstruct Don Bosco's educational praxis and theory it seems we should employ some basic methodological criteria which in turn should take the following into account:

1. The complexity of Don Bosco's activity and his vision of the young;

2. The constant interaction between action, writings and life experiences, both personal and institutional;

3. The constantly altering historical context.

All of these should be kept in mind as well as the complex reality of the historical context, oscillating between rigid patterns and efforts to adapt.

2.1. Don Bosco, Christian Apostle of the young

Don Bosco is not only an educator in the strict and formal sense of the term. His educative activity443, properly so called, is part of a wider gamut of interests related to youth and ordinary people at all levels.

Practically speaking, the peculiarities of Don Bosco's educational activity should be seen in the context of a threefold concern interconnected yet formally distinct:

- The welfare and charitable activity directed to providing basic needs such as food, clothing,

shelter and work.

- The pastoral ministry carried out for the salvation of souls, for living and dying in God's

grace, with all the specific interventions required by that.

- The spiritual animation of the educational and religious communities he founded, in order to

help support the various undertakings on behalf of the young.

This complex activity finds adequate expression in complementary statements which clearly evidence their double dimension: Action and Religious Consecration.

For twenty years I have been carrying out my priestly ministry to prisons, hospitals, all

along the streets and city squares in Turin; I gave shelter to abandoned boys, to direct them

to good morals, work, according to their talents and abilities without asking for or actually

receiving any sort of compensation for it. I actually used my own means to build a house

and provide a livelihood for poor boys. I would do the same thing today.444

This is the objective of our Society: our personal sanctification, and, through the practice of charity, the salvation of souls. To achieve this, we have to be extremely careful, in assigning to leadership positions on behalf of others only those who are outstanding in virtue and in the knowledge of what they try to teach others. It is better to be without a teacher than to have one who is incapable of teaching.445

At least two considerations can be drawn from the above for any reconstruction of the preventive

443 “Educative” strictly speaking is what impacts positively on the development and formation of human faculties, so as to

make each person capable of habitual free decisions, generous life commitment both as an individual and in society,

morally and religiously.

444 Letter to the minister for Internal Affairs, Carlo Farini, 12 June 1860, Em I 407.

445 First of a series of marginal notes in Latin to the recently approved Constitutions 1874. MB X 994-996.