austraLasia
1430
Tiruchy, India:
Salesians should preserve their own vocations
first
TIRUCHY: 5th February 2006
-- On 4th February the Rector Major moved from Chennai to the South
Tamil Nadu region and, precisely, to the city of Tiruchy, centre of the Salesian
Province that was established in 1999. It is in this province that we find
Thanjavur, which is the beginning of Salesian work in this nation 100 years ago,
and the high point of the visit which takes place today.
But back to Tiruchy where the Rector Major yesterday addressed the perpetually
professed Salesians of the province. Building on the notion he presented
in Chennai, that we are not mere social workers but apostles, he focused his
comments on the importance Salesians must give to who they are as consecrated
persons. He made the point that if any Salesian was in crisis he was offering to
be their spiritual director! What he then said would undoubtedly be the
content of that direction. It can be presented as five
challenges:
1. Know Don Bosco - if you (in India)
are assuming greater responsibility in the Congregation you will need to know
and love him as the first Salesians knew and loved him.
2. Be far-sighted and available. With a 100 million tribal people to
be reached......there is no room for narrow vision.
3. Be flexible. The Congregation's structures can be limiting. Our
mission requires us to be out there with people, as when the Salesians landed in
Patagonia.
4. Continue to increase. If youth
ministry is alive, we increase.
5. Share the vision
of the Indian government to conquer poverty, illiteracy and injustice, but not
as apostles, not as social revolutionaries.
Thanjavur today, was the
closing act of the centenary, just as one hundred years ago it was India's
Salesian 'Becchi' and the beginnings. But this deserves separate
treatment. Later today,
then.
___________________________
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