austraLasia
1428
"Build the 'ban'
with heart"! Thai Province 2006
slogan
HUA HIN: 4th February 2006
-- A word of explanation: 'ban' or perhaps more accurately in
transliteration, 'baan' means 'home'. Fr Theparat Pitisant, Thai
provincial marking his first year in office yesterday at Province Day
celebrations in Hua Hin, well south of Bangkok, drew together in neat synthesis
a number of inspirations which would nurture the slogan in the province for
2006: Benedict XVI's new 'ode to love', but especially the ten Saints he
quoted, Don Bosco included, showing us how to love at the social level; the
saints themselves who learned in prayer how to love God; Mamma Margaret, as Don
Bosco's teacher of love; The Rector Major's most recent invitation to young
people (cf www.sdb.org SYM message) 'to love is your vocation'. Fr
Theparat brought all this together in a plea to confreres for 2006 to 'be a year
for generating life, forgiveness, building community; a year of service; a year
for loving our brothers and the young'.
The event was
attended by 30 priests, 10 brothers, 7 young Salesians in formation, 5
postulants and 60 aspirants from Ban Nazareth and Hua Hin (including 10 diocesan
minor seminarians from Surat Thani). That's about half of the province,
and included several confreres from Cambodia. It included a special moment
when the Hua Hin students and aspirants presented a moving drama of Mamma
Margaret's ten years in Valdocco, from her 'call' at the Becchi, to her moment
of irrevocable decision to stay despite the garden incident. The day also
included some tangible signs of provincial solidarity as 'better off'
communities offered material support for formation communities and the
missionary outreach in the North - about which more later. Then the older
Salesians took on the younger mob in a football match, and
lost!
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