austraLasia
1399
A momentous day for
family, for the Salesian Family
ROME: 20th
January 2006 -- It is evening still as this is being written, and the
writer has just slipped away from translating the Rector Major as he spoke to a
crowded aula magna filled with hundreds of members of the Salesian Family
from around the world. It was tonight, in the context of talks,
interventions and group discussion on the Strenna, that the Rector Major chose
to let slip what he has kept a close-guarded secret since visiting Pope Benedict
XVI privately some days ago. In fact, as he said, much of that
conversation will remain private, but he could tell us that the Pope renewed his
insistence that 'Your mother, the mother of your family, must be glorified
soon'. The discussion had included the fact that back in July, at Le Combe
in the Italian Alps, the Rector Major had met Benedict to welcome him there for
a few days rest. The Pope there had indicated that Mamma Margaret 'is a
saint' and that not even the whole process would be required to state that
formally. The Rector Major asked that the process not be shortened as
such, but that the crucial step of setting up the theological commission might
be taken soon (apparently all the historical work has been completed).
This most recent encounter between Pope and Fr Pascual confirmed that on that
very evening the Pope would personally invite that step to be taken. All
other things being equal, we should see the process move
quickly.
The last 24 hours has produced a number of
remarkable presentations. They were translated 'on the run', and for the
moment a hard copy English version is not available. Two Salesians, Fr
Juan Jose Bartolomé, the Rector Major's personal secretary, and Fr Aldo Giraudo,
offered insights into family life from two very different perspectives.
Fr Bartolomé is a biblical scholar - his presentation of
the Holy Family of Nazareth was strikingly new. Beyond Incarnation, a
theologically well studied belief, God went in search of a family in which to
learn to be human, a much less studied aspect, according to the speaker.
As for us, so it was for Jesus, he explains: God too, chose to learn to be
human, to be educated and brought up. The speaker compared and contrasted
the two forms of 'annunciation', to Mary in dialogue and to Joseph in a dream,
two rather different ways of letting God's will be known which meant different
things for the respondents. Was much more, in fact, being asked of
Joseph? For all kinds of reasons he had far less say in what was happening
around him! Fr Bartolomé also explored the price the couple had to pay for
accepting God in their midst. There were some fascinating reflections on
the Mother-Son relationship....as Jesus grew in his humanity, his clarity about
being the Son of God, his 'distance' from his mother grew too; what did
that do to Mary?
Fr Giraudo is a 'new breed' Salesian
scholar, solidly based on the old, but fresh and unassumingly evocative in his
knowledge and presentation of Don Bosco. It is he who has so strongly
expressed the narrative strength of Don Bosco's writings, and today he drew out
from a wide range of these texts the way Don Bosco has highlighted, often
through narrative, his own core experience of family, where Mamma Margaret is so
central. The material was enlightening, historically thorough, but handled
with the same narrative warmth as its subject.
This
gathering of the Salesian Family may go down as one of the better ones.
The Rector Major said as much, and 'signed' it with his own acknowledgment that
the choice of the family as this year's Strenna has proven an 'indovinata
scelta', meaning, in context, that it has been an inspired
choice.
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