austraLasia
#1431
What we have seen
and heard in Don Bosco is what we are called to continue
THANJAVUR: 5th February 2006 --
"servants, mystics and prophets", a phrase taken from the Rector Major's closing
words for the centenary, is a phrase that has become emblematic of this leader's
insistent message, a message delivered with passion and the missionary thrust of
the 'da mihi animas'. Like father, like son was his message today, as he
turned from the drawing up and dreaming of Delhi's opening a year ago to the
actual beginnings at the Becchi, traced via Thanjavur to today's Salesian
India.
In something of a rare departure for Fr Chávez, a
scripture scholar, there was but a single phrase from Scripture today, and that
was paraphrased from Phil 4:9: What you have heard and seen in me is what you
must do. But it was a phrase that contained it all, as he focused directly
on the 'me' around which the phrase pivots, the identity behind the 'splendid
mission, history and charism of Don Bosco in this splendid country'. Today
the Rector Major, while pointing to the mystic and prophetic quality of Don
Bosco, decided to be especially a servant of the facts that would help his
listeners understand, interpret and faithfully imitate him for India
today.
First the Risorgimento and the drama of a
people distanced from the faith, of youth abandoned in their ideals and
aspirations by politicians, people of money and, perhaps even by people of the
Church.....are there parallels in India today?
Don Bosco
discovered new ways of fighting evil, resisting negative forces by condemning
the ambiguity and danger in them, realising how youth might react...shades of
Paris and France in recent times. He garnered possibilities for empowering
and developing young people, using what he found in society's very ambiguity:
the paternalistic social structure of the ancien regime, the liberal
political arrangements open to decentralised charity and philanthropy, the
availability of resources for charitable works. What was ambiguous by
nature he made positive by choice in irrepressible
creativity
Don Bosco was successful thanks to his
outstanding gift as a communicator, and his superior zeal and faith - superior
to all his limitations of cultural and theological baggage, and lack of
finance! It was his passion for God and for the young which won the
day.
His was not just condemnation but prophetic and
mystic challenge to those who would close their heart to the painful reality of
their (young) neighbour.
The reconstructed historical
context above in which Don Bosco lived needs interpretation. The Rector
Major offered the following:
- DB's
intellectual and emotional perception of the problem of 'poor and abandoned
youth' as a universal, theological and socially significant
problem.
- his intuition that society had
become sensitive to the need for and possibilities of educating young people,
along with his knowledge of public and informed opinion.
- his launching of a much-needed intervention a massive scale
involving Catholic and civilian life touching the very existence of the Church
and the social order itself.
- his ability to
communicate it to large groups of co-workers, benefactors and
admirers.
And yet he was not a politician, nor
sociologist, nor trade unionist but a priest-educator who transformed his strong
beliefs into social realities, practical gestures, made 'real life' an
incarnated dimension of ideals and values, kept his freedom and his Salesians'
freedom but informed it with fierce autonomy.
Only dynamic
fidelity to all this can be our path to the future of Salesian
India.
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