Prevention: is it a likely choice?

When I was asked to give a title to my address I spontaneously thought of “Prevention: a likely future”. Then on reflection I preferred to put it as a question: “Prevention: is it a likely choice?”.
The Rector Major's Strenna and Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical on Hope seem to reinforce this version.
To speak today of the choices which make the future more credible is not easy because of the speed of the passing moments which seem to end up identifying the future with the present which are now experiencing.

It seemed to me important to ‘revisit’ some terms in constant use.
I went to the internet out of curiosity to see if it would suggest something to me: I searched on these words: to prevent – prevenient – prevention
And I found:
to prevent = linked with health (tumours), fires, violenc and, climate disasters, internet…
prevenient = in reference to buildings (“someone who starts building”) – God's grace (precedes us)
prevention = generally tied to a ‘style of education or the art of positive education’.

For the term ‘education/educating’ I preferred to go to Don Bosco, to the richness of our Salesian tradition and the personal experience that each of us understands.

I thought again of many young people I meet in various parts of the world, of teachers I have met at international gatherings of the United Nations, members of the Salesian Family doing great things in very simple ways in many countries and I found a key central idea:
for preventing tunours, disasters multiplying around the world we need to be prevenient, meaning building up from the beginning, in the young people we meet, faith in their own possibilities for good and helping them to believe that it is possible to build a wonderful future for everyone. And we need to do it in ways that say that there is a heart that loves and a positive outlook on reality.
The Rector Major's Strenna stresses the beauty of making ourselves collaborators with God in helping the seed of life to grow in fertile ground. Particularly meaningful I believe are the expressions in reference to “This 'today' of Jesus [which]continues on in our educational mission”, recalling us to the essential nature of our mission “ sent to the young to proclaim newness of life to them, as offered us in Christ, to promote it and develop it by means of an education that frees the young and the poor from things which prevent them from seeking the truth, being open to hope, living with meaning and joy, building their own freedom.”
All this is possible when we believe in education as Don Bosco did. When we take our chances on the positive possibilities that every young person has within, educational activity becomes a spiritual experience and the rights of minors are fostered and promoted.
This is possible when we become promoters of hope.
When I speak in public makng the little daily gestures of solidarity I come across, reading the testimonies of common folk working for peace, development, for human rights of the weak, I notice that people's faces suddenly become attentive and they light up because these are themes that touch us deeply, they answer to a deep longing for a better world.
Today we are experiencing situations that make us feel so impotent or on the other hand give rise to a creativity we never had before.
We have heard so much about the scandal of hunger, poverty in such dimensions that it makes us dizzy, problems of security, aggression, frailty of the processes of democratisation that seem to make it a far off concept emptied of any reference to real situations that touch us closely where we too have something to say and do.
The situation at present concerns us all: it is a challenge that consists in promoting and strengthening everything positive in the world and overcome things that harm, degrade and kill humankind.
We encounter and accompany young people of all categories, with resources typical of our age, with anxieties and insecurities which are the fruit of conditioning of current realities: so what does it mean for us to ‘take our chances on their positive resources’?

Does the result of our educative activity help them to mature in spiritual experience?
What can it mean for us to promote and educate for human rights in the littlest and weakest?

Perhaps we recover the value of prevention if we think of the loss of meaning of terms in common use today.
We educate to the measure in which we understand what it means to say ‘knowing how to intervene’, knowing how to create situations that allow the other to grow according to the potential God has given him or her.
Every day on public transport I come into contact with people going to work. I listen to their conversations always revolving around financial concerns and the difficulty of living each day in a society where personal and communal security is under threat. And every time I reflect on the effect these conversations could have on the young: hope for the future? The joy of growth in relationship with others? What is our attitude and what do we do in situations that constantly put security in focus?

What should the Salesian Family promote with regard to giving attention to the poorest of young people?
Are there new signs responding to relatively new questions that history is posing? Do we know how to have an effect on institutions so they will respect the weakest?
Do we have something to say about peace, about human rights?

As far as I can see the answer is yes.
Each of us today can be a promoter of new things on the move which we were not formerly aware of, giving testimony to them so they can be signs and expressions of God's love today.
I am thinking of women I met in India, in Ecuador who can proudly show you what they have been capable of in creating micro-businesses, the solidarity they have created amongst themselves and the possibility of seeing themselves as promoters of development there where they live.
I am thinking of children who thanks to distance support are able to live life with greater dignity and hope for a better future. And in connection with these I think of all the people who have discovered a far-off country through the face of a child, creating bridges of solidarity which reach well beyond their sacrifices.
And I think of the thousands of young people we reach through proposals for volunteer work or those who know how to face life with hope, helping other young people to dream of a better future.
I think back to the initiatives we launch and continue with enthusiasm: the project known as “The Common Good and the Young: a heritage to protect” has seen young people from different continents meeting to think about the heritage they have received through planet Earth and the existence of other people
And not least of all I think of the courage of the Institute in wanting an Office and Centre for human rights in Geneva at a time when the human being is ever more confined to being a statistic, an Office that would want to be a sign of hope by making known how things are going in defending, promoting the rights of children, young people, women. .(as part of the Council for human rights, in the coordination of Catholic NGOs…)

We speak a lot about ‘the threat of the lack of love’ today: I find that the claim is valid if we refer generally to cultural and media discourse, but it changes a lot if in reference to real persons. Each of us has something to tell about the need and capacity for love in the people we meet, about the need for ‘life' which is the cry of the young.
And then we understand better how much we are challenged to be signs and expressions of His Love.

Reflecting on how much we are doing means putting the preventive system into action today…prevention according to the Salesian style becomes an attitude not in things to do but an attitude of life, in the way of seeing things (never catastrophic), a way of real living recognising that God walks in this world with love and by means of us, to generate life. Our inner being suffers with others, rejoices with others and gives us the joy of living, being happy to be who we are and doing what we do

Each of us has the experience that when we love others we try to get there before they find themselves in difficult circumstances…we build up the certainty in others that whatever happens there is someone who believes in us and this creates hope for a better future.

I am thinking spontaneously of a letter written by Luigi, a young man 23 years old serving with VIDES. (situation describable aloud)”…The first time I set foot inVIDES I was just a lost kid , looking for the right path and often finding it closed from the start. I could never have believed thatVIDES would have been the launching pad bringing me to where I am now: thanks toVIDES I have understood my professional direction which I am now attempting to bring to maturity….”

This I take to be the symbol of so many young people who express the same thing : that they have found meaning in their lives, have felt responsible for life also in relation to others.

This is the great chance we take: knowing how to re-awaken in youngsters, whatever their situation, whatever their experience, the resources for good which each of them carries within, in order to make them fruitful.

It is urgent today, thinking of one of the main rights of the young: to grow like seed tossed into good soil, destined to give abundant fruit to bring about God's kingdom.