“LET US EDUCATE WITH THE HEART OF DON BOSCO”

Rome – Salesianum, 18 January 2008

Dear brothers and sisters, members of the Salesian Family, friends taking part in the Salesian Family Spirituality Days:

I am happy to be able to share with you some reflections on Salesian education, aware that on the 31st January 1988 John Paul II wrote: “The circumstances of young people in the world today have changed so much and present diverse situations and aspects, as educators and pastors know all too well. Today too the same questions Don Bosco pondered from the beginning of his ministry remain, and he wanted to understand them and do something about them. Who are the young? What do they want? What are their leanings? What do they need?” (Juvenum Patris, 6).

 

1. DON BOSCO A SAINTLY EDUCATOR

Certainly, speaking of Salesian education brings me to talk especially of Don Bosco, who “realised his personal holiness through his educational commitment carried out with zeal and an apostolic heart, and who at the same time knew how to propose holiness as the concrete goal of his education” (JP 5).

Don Bosco achieved holiness by being a holy educator. Pius XI did not hesitate to call him “educator princeps”.

A happy combination of personal gifts and circumstances led Don Bosco to become Father, Teacher and Friend of youth as John Paul II proclaimed: his innate talent for approaching young people and winning their trust, the priestly ministry which gave him a deep understanding of the human heart and an experience of the efficacy of grace in a young person’s development, a practical gift which was able to bring about initial inspirations leading to full development.

At the root of all this however there was a vocation: for Don Bosco, service to the young was a generous response to the Lord’s call. The fusion between holiness and education with regard to commitment, asceticism, the expression of love is what constitutes his originality. He was a holy educator and an educator Saint.

From this fusion there arose a “system”, that is, a complex of intuitions and practices that can be presented in writing, told through a film, sung in poetry or presented through a musical: we are dealing, in fact, with an adventure which passionately involved those who worked with him and helped young people to dream.

Taken up by his followers, for whom education is also a vocation, it has been brought to a great variety of cultural contexts and translated into various educational proposals, depending on the situation of the young people for whom it is intended.

When we revisit Don Bosco’s personal experience or the story of some of the things he was responsible for, the question arises almost spontaneously: and today?

How many of his intuitions are still valid? How many of the solutions he put into practice can help resolve what for us are insuperable difficulties, like dialogue between generations, the possibility of communicating values, handing on a vision of reality, and the like?

I don’t even intend to stop and list the differences between Don Bosco’s time and our own. They are to be found in all areas and some are not so tiny: the condition which young people find themselves in, the family, our customs, the manner of thinking about education, social matters, religious practice itself. If it is difficult enough to understand a past experience with a view to faithful historical reconstruction, how much more difficult it is to translate that experience into practice in a radically different context.

However we also have the belief “that what happened with Don Bosco was a moment of grace, replete with virtue; it contains inspirations that parents and educators may interpret for the present; that there are weighty recommendations for development, shoots, almost, waiting to break through”.

Rather than being an onerous task education, particularly of disadvantaged youngsters, is a question of vocation. Don Bosco was charismatic, a pioneer. He went beyond legislation and praxis. He created something tied to his name, yes, urged by a clear social sense of things, but through an initiative all his own. And perhaps today’s need is no different: making one’s energies fruitfully available, encouraging and supporting vocations and service projects.

The effectiveness of education lies in its quality, beginning with the quality of the educator, the educational climate, the programme and the educational experience. The complexity of society, multiple viewpoints and messages offered, the separation of the different areas in which life takes place, have also meant tendencies and risks for education. One is the fragmentation in what is offered and in the manner in which it is received. Another risk is choice in conformity with individual preferences: subjectivism. Options have moved from the market place to life. Everyone knows about hard-to-reconcile poles: individual profit and solidarity, love and sexuality, temporal outlook and a sense of God, the flood of information and the problem of evaluating it, rights and duties, freedom and conscience. Evidently the grace of unity in the heart of the educator and his or her own holiness contribute greatly to overcoming these and other tensions present in the educational field.

2. THE SPIRITUAL/EDUCATIVE EXPERIENCE OF DON BOSCO

Educating meant, for Don Bosco, a complex of procedures based on his convictions concerning reason and faith, which guide pedagogical activity. At the centre of his vision was “pastoral charity”. This is what inclined him to love the young person, in whatever state that person was found, in order to bring him to the fullness of humanity revealed in Christ, to give him a conscience and the possibility of living as an honest citizen and child of God (Juvenum Patris, 9).

It was a criterion of Don Bosco to develop whatever the young person carried within as an urging or positive desire, putting him in contact also with a cultural heritage made up of outlooks, habits, beliefs; offering him the possibility of a deep experience of faith; inserting him into a social reality which he felt he was an active and useful part of through work, shared responsibility in the common good, involvement in peaceful co-existence.

He expressed all this in simple formulae that young people could understand and accept: good Christians and honest citizens, wisdom, health and holiness, reason and faith. In order not to fall into a grand utopian view he began from where it was possible to begin, according to the youngster’s circumstances and the possibilities of the educator. In his Oratory they played, were accepted, created rapport; they received religious instruction, learned to read and write, learned to work, were given rules for civil behaviour, reflected on the rights which regulated manual work and sought to improve them.

Today it is possible to have instruction which does not take life’s problems into consideration. This is a recurring lament of the young. There can be technical education which does not consider ethical or cultural dimensions. There can be human education which is locked into the immediate, and which does not take note of life's questions.

If life and society have become complex, a single-dimensional person, without a map and compass is destined to be lost or become dependent. The formation of the mind, conscience and heart are more than ever necessary.

But the punctum dolens of education today is communication: between generations because of the speed of change, between people for alienation of relationships, between institutions and those for whom they exist because of the different perception of their respective purposes. Communication, it is said, is confused, disturbed, exposed to ambiguity for its excessive noise, for its multiplicity of messages, for the lack of coherence between transmitter and receiver. And the result’? Lack of understanding, silence, limited and selective hearing – zapping – non-aggression pacts to achieve greater peace, let things be. So it is not easy to advise on attitudes, recommend behaviours, or hand on values.

Things here too have changed so much from Don Bosco’s times. However we have indications from him which, in their simplicity are successful if we find a way to make them work. One of these indications is: “love the youngsters”. “You achieve more, (Don Bosco’s words), with a look of affection, with a word of encouragement than with many reproaches”.

Loving them means accepting them as they are, spending time with them, showing desire and delight in sharing their tastes and topics, demonstrating trust in their ability, and also tolerating what is passing, occasional, quietly forgiving what is involuntary, the result of spontaneity or immaturity.

There is a word, not much in use today, which Salesians jealously preserve because it incarnates “Don Bosco's heart”, sums up what Don Bosco learned and advised concerning the educational relationship: loving-kindness. Its source is charity, as the Gospel presents it, for which the educator takes account of God’s plan in the life of each youngster and helps him or her to be aware of it and to bring it about with the same liberating and magnanimous love with which God conceived it.

It generates an affection which is manifested to suit the individual youngster, especially the poorest amongst them: it is a trusting approach, the first step, the first word, an esteem shown through gestures which are understandable, encourage confidence, establish inner security, suggest and sustain an effort to succeed and the desire to be involved.

Thus a relationship matures, though not without its difficulties, and we should give our attention to it when we talk of translating Don Bosco’s intuitions into our context. It is a relationship marked by friendship which grows to the point of becoming fatherliness.

It is a friendship which needs to increase through the gestures of familiarity which nurture it. In turn it brings about confidence: and confidence is everything in education, because only when the young person entrusts us with his secrets is it possible to interact, only when he or she opens the door of their heart can we communicate values, noble sentiments and high ideals.

Friendship has a very concrete way of showing itself: assistance. It is useless trying to gain the sense of Salesian assistance from the meaning the dictionary or current usage gives it.

It is a term coined within an experience and filled with original applications and meanings: It means a desire to be with the young: “Here amongst you I feel good”. And at the same time it is a physical presence where the youngsters are mixing, planning, exchanging ideas; it is a moral strength with the capacity for understanding, encouragement, re-awakening; it is also guidance and counsel according to each one’s need.

Assistance achieves the level of educational fatherliness which is much more than friendship. It is an affectionate and authoritative responsibility that offers guidance and lively teaching and demands discipline and commitment. It is love and authenticity.

It shows up especially in “knowing how to speak to the heart” in a personal manner, because it draws on matters which currently occupy the thinking of the youngsters, reveals the significance of events by touching on conscience, depth.

It does not have a lot to say, but is direct; it is not spoken with agitation, but is clear. There are two examples of this kind of speaking in Don Bosco’s education: the Good Night and the personal word he would let drop in informal moments, at recreation. These are two moments full of emotion, always concerning practical and immediate matters and offering a daily kind of wisdom with which to face up to them: in short they helped people to live and taught the art of living.

This is why Don Bosco achieved personal holiness as an educator: This is why he succeeded in educating holy boys, like Dominic Savio. This is why there is a relationship between holiness and education. This is why the fact of education is, for the educator, a spiritual experience.

 

3. DON BOSCO’S PREVENTIVE SYSTEM

Jean Duvallet once said to the Salesians: “you have your works, colleges, houses, but you also have a treasure: Don Bosco’s pedagogy. Risk all the rest but preserve this education… the Lord has entrusted you with a kind of education where respect for a youngster triumphs, respect for his greatness, weakness, dignity as a child of God. Preserve it: renew it, freshen it up, enrich it with modern discoveries, adapt it to your youngsters, who are mixed up and confused in ways that Don Bosco never saw”.

What is this original system of education? John Paul II reminded us that St. John Bosco’s educational praxis “represents, in a certain way, the condensed version of his educational wisdom and constitutes the prophetic message he left us and the entire Church”. Evangelisation and education interact, within the Preventive System, mutually and intimately. Don Bosco’s praxis is a pedagogical and pastoral art, given that he had transformed the ardent charity of his priestly ministry into a concrete project of education to educate young people in the faith. Pedagogy as an art requires talent, as that “genius of the heart” who was Don Bosco, once said himself. It is not a case of statistical or magic formulae, but a complex of circumstances which enable the person to have both a maternal and fatherly educational capacity. The first of these circumstances is to know one’s own times and how to adapt to them. Then certain features follow, some of which are:

3.1 The creativity of the artist in joining the pastoral urge with an educative intelligence, intimately bound together by the grace of unity. Here we are talking of a kind of apostolic passion needed in the current climate of secularisation (where education is frequently ideologised). In Don Bosco the methodological principle urging one to act like a true artist is the attitude of loving-kindness: building trust, familiarity and friendship by means of the demanding asceticism of “making oneself loved”. The Preventive System has much about it that is charismatic and thus a “vocational call” and it brings with it the 'mystique' of pastoral charity (The passion of the “Da mihi animas”) and the asceticism of the “making oneself loved” (“it is not enough to love the young. They must feel that they are loved”), which means not selling out, or giving way, or adopting unacceptable approaches.

3.2 In a relationship of solidarity with young people. Taking the first step, “towards the young person” is “The first and fundamental educational requirement”, carried out in a being-together which is an expression of practical and effective solidarity. The young person is an active element in educational praxis and must feel truly involved as a key actor in the task that he or she wishes to achieve. Without this person’s free collaboration nothing will be achieved. This is Don Bosco’s experience with his boys; he did not act by lording it over them in educational terms, but by sharing responsibility with them. Educational solidarity of this kind is more necessary than ever today, when the family, the school, the parish, society are not always in harmony with the young person’s formation needs.

3.3 With his gaze fixed on the New Man. The goal which determines Salesian education is to configure each youngster to the New Man (Christ). This is obviously not something which secualr education takes into account. This principle is the result of our beliefs. For a Salesian educator, Christ is the best news one can give a young person. Christ is the fullness of revelation: He reveals what God is like to us and gives him to us as Father; he shows us our deepest nature and tells us that in Christ we are sons of that God and Father. There is no greater dignity or better news to pass on. For this reason, Christ, for the Salesian, is not an alternative amongst others, but the fullness of life to be communicated. Only He is the Way the Truth and the Life. The Christ event is not simply an expression of a religious formula, but an objective historical fact in human history. Each person needs Christ and tends towards him, even if not aware of it. This leaning is intrinsic to human nature, given that man has been objectively created in the supernatural order, wherein the ‘human project’ is considered in view of the mystery of Christ. The unhealthy search for efficiency and religious relativism do not help the personality of the young.

3.4 Through a work with preventive characteristics. Prevention is the art of educating in a positive way, proposing what is good in an attractive way; it is the art of acting so that young people grow from within, with inner freedom which overcomes outward formalism; it is the art of winning over hearts so they go on cheerfully doing good, by correcting deviancy, and by preparing them for the future. We are talking about getting to the core where behaviours are based and formed.

3.5 Bringing reason and religion together in a single ray of light. The “’special educational method’of Don Bosco always presents three value axes: Reason, religion, loving-kindness. These three axes enter into a common tension rather than each going its own way. They are not simply human values (horizontalism) nor are they merely spiritual ones (spiritualism); nor are they just about amiability (sentimentalism), but all three axes together, in an atmosphere of goodness, work, cheerfulness, sincerity, ensure that the grace of unity is part of the activity which is education”. Obviously the practice of the Preventive System becomes a quite demanding spirituality for the educator. One cannot practise pastoral charity without demonstrating it, without a true passion for giving oneself totally to the salvation of souls. We are speaking here of pedagogical holiness, an attractive but deep holiness, a holiness that is identified with cheerfulness, but on the basis of service to the young, sacrifice, work temperance (‘coetera tolle’).

3.6 With a creative involvement in a youngster’s free time. GC23 said that “group experience is a fundamental element in salesian pedagogical tradition”. At Chieri the youthful John Bosco founded The Società d’Allegria (Cheerful Society, Glee Club…); Dominic Savio founded the Immaculate Conception Sodality; Michael Magone belonged to the Blessed Sacrament Sodality… through associations one arrives at an environment and reaches out to each person in the group. Naturally we always need to be ready to offer a competent personal accompaniment, especially to leaders and others who are responsible.

3.7 Towards realism in life. One of the features of Don Bosco’s education is its practical aspect, the desire to enable young people for social life and life in the Church; helping them to find their right place in the Church and society (vocational dimension). Theories are not enough to achieve this aim. We need to unite formation of minds and hearts with the acquiring of practical and relational capacity: spirit of initiative, sincere capacity for sacrifice, an inclination to work with a sense of responsibility, learning trades and services, or in other words preparation for the reality of existence in a serious and collaborative sense.

 

4. THE EDUCATIVE AND PASTORAL SERVICE OF THE SALESIANS

“Serious work and mental vigilance is required of the educator. S/he must take account of all currents influencing the young and help them to evaluate and choose… It is not enough to know; we must communicate. It is not enough to communicate; we must communicate ourselves. If we just teach a concept but not communicate ourselves we teach but not educate... We need to love what we communicate and those we are communicating with”.

More than being about our works, it is about the young people we are sent to and to whom we must give valid answers from an educational and pastoral point of view. For Don Bosco “the young were his masters” and they had to be known and saved. For this reason, for the educator, formation is the first thing demanded of his or her calling and mission, because we have to be ‘up to it’ from an educational, religious and pastoral point of view, faced with any circumstance a young person may be found in. So that the educational service we offer is one of quality we need to invest in people, resources and time to form the agents of education and formation; and we must not only form the mind and the intelligence, but also the heart, which must remain positive faced with challenges that culture and education of the young constantly pose. For this reason, as Salesian educators, we have to cherish our vocation as educators and the educational deed in all its dignity, which means helping young people develop all their dimensions, to the point of becoming persons. We really need to be up to it to confront the “problem of education” as a challenge to our professional ability and not as an excuse which blocks us, letting go our educational roles. The “quality” of daily life must be the privileged platform for formation.

For one who is an educator by vocation, the act of educating is “the privileged place for an encounter with God”. We are not dealing, then, with something that is marginal to life. Being with young people is the spiritual space and pastoral centre of the educator’s life according to Don Bosco's heart. If this centre of unity comes unstuck then the space remains open to selfish activity, activism or the kind of intuition which is an insidious temptation for educational institutions. Pastoral charity is the engine room of educational spirituality, the result of effort, dedication, reflection, study and research and constant and vigilant care; but it finds it roots in union with God (‘as if seeing the invisible”), translates into prayer and action, asceticism and mysticism. In this way it serves to sanctify not only the educator, but young people themselves.

There is more we can say. This holiness is a gift that comes from the young, it is where God loves them and has a plan (a ‘dream’) for each one of them; since Jesus wanted to share his life with them and the Holy Spirit is present in them to build up human and Christaiian communities. Educators and young people coincide on the same journey to holiness. For this reason we are to creatively accept the challenge of being, through education, missionaries of the young today. In such a way, the service that Salesian education offers is complete, whole, since it takes account of each and all dimensions of the person, seeking the total good of the young person “who is for eternity”, the honest citizen and good Christian, as expressed in the three-fold: Health, Wisdom, Holiness.

This service of education is not aimed at the “privileged”, the chosen or elect. Nor is it a service valid only for social welfare centres or youngsters in difficulty. It is a service of education offered to everyone, valid for all. It was something conceived for the masses as well as for each one in particular, for whatever setting and circumstance of education, given that the principles and techniques in force can be practised by common and current educators who possess – certainly this much – a deep Christian personality and are gifted with great pastoral charity towards their students.

Don Bosco, much more practical than others ever were, knew that the value of any method of education is to be measured by its ability to motivate those who are discouraged, to recover those who have tossed in the sponge, to offer society honest and competent professionals, youngsters he gathered from the streets and squares, exposed to all the kinds of dangers one finds in a big city. Don Bosco’s method prepared human beings for a deeply human existence through a profession which was useful both personally and for society. All this was subordinate to the “unum necessarium” of the Gospel: The Glory of God and the total good of the young person.

Don Bosco was an educator and was always such amongst his boys: in the courtyard, the refectory, the classroom, the workshops, the chapel. For this reason the Salesian proposal for education is not circumscribed by certain structures, for example the school. The educational deed is above all and especially a relationship between persons and this is just as possible in institutional educational environments as in a young person’s free time. Body and soul, individual and society, culture and physical health: All this is taken into consideration in this valid concept of education, adapted to every setting (schools, parishes, free time, social platforms and settings of marginalisation…), and every context, geographical (Salesian work is present in every continent), social (the rich and especially the poor), religious (far from practice, lukewarm, practising), any type of person (young people and adults, families, ordinary people) and any kind of educator who sincerely aspires to the objective good of young people.

We can conclude by saying that Salesian pastoral and educational service is carried out in a plurality of forms, determined in first place by the needs of those to whom it is dedicated. Sensitive to the signs of the times and attentive to the needs of the local area and of the Church, we create and renew our structures with constant creativity and flexibility, seeking everywhere to be missionaries of the young, bearers of the Gospel to today’s youth. The Salesian educator is always a son/daughter of Don Bosco declaring that he or she is ready for anything, even “tipping one’s hat the devil”, to save the souls of the young.

 

5. EDUCATE BY EVANGELISING

“Our educative art is ‘pastoral’, not only in the sense that for the educator it arises from and is explicitly nurtured daily by apostolic charity, but also in the sense that the entire educational process, its content and method, is oriented towards the Christian goal of salvation and is permeated by its light and grace”.

Obviously for Don Bosco religious instruction was the basis for any kind of education. While in itself it is reductive, perhaps the formula that best expresses Don Bosco’s thinking is: “honest citizens and good Christians”. Or in other words, the values of the Gospel and ‘our holy religion’ must inspire and guide the development of the potential of the young to the point where they become persons.

But in the context of the evolution of modern society it is not clear that education and evangelisation must go hand in hand and that, besides, they work together mutually. “Today the tendency is to present the educa­tional situation in prevalently secularist terms, and this not only in theory. It is easy to interpret the ‘professionalism of educators’ reducing them to being simple teachers. The danger of our cultural task becoming disjoined from our pastoral commitment is a very real one for us too... Educating and evangelizing are two activities which in themselves are different, and which can become separated one from the other. But the es­sential unity of the young person requires that they be not separated; nor is a simple juxtaposition suffi­cient, as though the normal course would be for them to take no account of each other. ”.

The activity of education is to be found in the area of culture and is part of earthly reality; it refers to the process of assimilation of a complex of human values in evolution, with their specific purpose and intrinsic legitimacy which should not be instrumentalised. Its purpose is to foster mankind, or act in such a way that the adolescent learns the ‘trade of being a person’.

This is a process which occurs over a long and gradual path of growth. “It is con­cerned not so much with the imposition of norms as with rendering freedom more responsible, with developing individual enterprise, with reference to his conscience, the authentic quality of his love, and his social dimensions. It is a true process of personalization to be brought to maturity in each individual.”. It is a process requiring time and brings with it a well-measured gradualness; meaning to say that education cannot be reduced to simple method. Educational activity is vitally tied to the individual’s evolution. “It has something in common with fatherhood and motherhood, as though shar­ing in the process of human generation for funda­mental values like conscience, truth, love, work, justice, solidarity, sharing, the dignity of life, the common good, the rights of the individual. And for this very reason it is concerned with the avoidance of whatever is degrading and deviant: the idolatries (of riches, power and sex), emargination, violence, selfishness, etc. Its aim is to bring about the growth of the young person from within, so that he will be­come a responsible adult and behave as an upright citizen. Education therefore means sharing with a fath­erly and maternal love in the growth of the indivi­dual concerned, while fostering collaboration with others to the same end: educational relationships presuppose, in fact, a number of different agencies working together ”.

“ Evangelization, on the other hand and in the wider meaning of the term, is directed of its na­ture to the passing on and fostering of the christian faith;  it belongs to the order of those salvation events that flow from the presence of God in his­tory; it aims at making them known, communicat­ing them, and making them come alive in the li­turgy and testimony. It cannot be simply identified with ethical norms because it is transcendent reve­lation; it stems from neither nature nor culture but from God, and Christ his anointed one”.

Having noted these differences, we can say, however, that in all circumstances we should consider the mutual relationship between human maturity and Christian growth to be basic and essential, putting the resources of nature and grace at the disposition of the growth (organic, unified and harmonic) of the young person. In his speech to GC23, John Paul II told us: “You have chosen well: the education of the young is one of the key issues of the new evangelisation”. The then Cardinal Ratzinger recalled, at the meeting of European Provincials, that it was up to the Salesians to continue to be “prophets of education”. For this reason we speak of “evangelising by educating and educating by evangelising”, convinced that education must take its inspiration from the very beginning of the Gospel and that evangelisation demands from its very beginnings to be adapted to the evolving circumstances of the child, the adolescent, the youth… our way of evangelising tends to form mature persons in every sense of the word. Our education tends to be open to God and to mankind’s eternal destiny.

To be evangelising education must take into consideration certain elements: The priority of person with respect to other ideological or institutional interests; care for the environment which should be rich in human and Christian values; the quality and evangelical consistency of the cultural offering presented in activities and programmes; seeking the common good, commitment to the most in need; the question of the meaning of life, the sense of transcendence and openness to God, educational offerings which arouse in the young a desire to grow in formation and Christian commitment in society and on behalf of others.

The Christian educator, in a Salesian style, is one who takes up the work of education seeing it as collaborating with God in the growth of the person.

 

6. EVANGELISING BY EDUCATING

“Don Bosco’s ministry can never be reduced to catechesis or liturgy alone but finds its place in all the real pedagogical/cultural circumstances of the young. … we are talking about Gospel charity made concrete ... in fostering and freeing young people who are abandoned and left to themselves”.

In the earlier section we made it clear that educating and evangelising are of themselves different activities, but that in Salesian praxis not only can they not be separated but they have to complement and mutually enrich one another. If education that does not open up the young to God and to mankind’s eternal destiny is not Salesian nor is an evangelisation which does not centre on forming mature persons in every sense, and which does not adapt itself to or respect the evolving circumstances of the youngster, adolescent, the young man or woman.

Everyone knows the situation of European culture and the difficulties the Church encounters in evangelising the new generations.

Speaking of religion or religions in Europe today is really something quite complex. Faced with the statistics of who belongs there is personal praxis and social praxis (baptisms, weddings …), deeper beliefs, all a typology of religious experience running from from the convinced and consistent believer through to the most radical atheist.

Obviously questionnaires and statistics are not the last word on the religious experience of our contemporaries, but nor can we ignore them. The traffic lights, at least in Europe, are showing red. There are many articles, essays published over these years on religion. In general they are pessimistic.

The document that carried the “order of the day” for the European Synod – October 1999 – claimed that “the cultural domain of Marxism has been substituted by a pluralism which is indifferent and basically agnostic or nihilistic. (..) The risk of a gradual and radical dechristianisation of the continent is great, to the point where we can hypothesise a kind of apostasy of the continent”.

It is obvious that both religious practice and beliefs are weakest in the young. In general, they are always the ones furthest from the faith. “We are dealing with a sector of the population which is most sensitive to cultural modes and certainly more influenced by the climate of secularisation”. Evangelisation becomes ever more difficult because of this secularisation of the environment. There is a real divorce between the new generations of young people and the Church. Religious ignorance and prejudices drunk in daily from certain communication media have fed them the image of conservative institutional Church which runs counter to modern culture, especially in the field of sexual morality; therefore religious offerings are automatically regarded as without value, relativised.

The drama is the rupture in the chain of faith transmission. Natural and traditional areas (family, school, parish) have shown themselves to be ineffective in the transmission of faith. So, religious ignorance is on the increase in the new generations.

It is evident that a “silent emigration extra-muros of the Church” continues amongst the young. “Religious beliefs are tinged with pluralism and follow orthodox beliefs less and less: and so levels of religious practice go down bit by bit: sacraments and prayer”.

Religious ignorance is almost absolute. It is not so easy to define the image young people have of God, but certainly the Christian God has lost centre-stage to a media God who divinises sporting, music and cinema personalities.

The young person senses a passion for freedom and no longer pauses before the Church door. There are so many young people who think the Church is an obstacle to their personal freedom. It is easy to note the great number of young people who distance themselves from the Church, declare that they are outside any sense of sin and have a marked tendency to greater permissiveness and moral relativism.

Faced with this situation we can ask ourselves: what kind of education are scholastic and Church institutions offering? Why has the religious question been dropped from the vital perspectives of the young?

John Paul II called the Church to a new evangelisation that has to act with new zeal, with a new method and with new expressions.

The child, adolescent, young man or woman are generous by nature and enthusiastic for causes which they see to be worthwhile. Why has Christ ceased to be meaningful for them?

The Church, if it wishes to remain faithful to its mission as the universal sacrament of salvation, must learn the languages of the men and women of each age, race and place. Obviously, amongst other things, the Church has a “serious problem of language” which prevents it from expressing the salvation Christ offers to the people of our time in an adequate manner. The basis of the problem is one of communication, inculturation of the Gospel in social and cultural circumstances; a problem of education in the faith for the new generations.

Salesian education starts out from the real situation of each person, from his or her human and religious experience, from his or her anguish and anxieties, joys and hopes, always favouring experience and witness in the transmission of faith and values. It looks to the pedagogy of Christian initiation such that Christ may be accepted more as a friend who saves and makes us children of God, than a lawmaker who loads us up with dogmas, precepts or rites. It puts in evidence positive and festive elements of every religious experience, faithful to the mandate of the Lord to Don Bosco in the dream he had when he was nine: Set to immediately then to teach them about the ugliness of sin and the beauty of virtue.

‘To evangelise by educating’ means knowing how to offer the best news of all (the person of Jesus) by adapting it to and respecting the evolving circumstances of the child, adolescent, young man or woman. Young people are in search of happiness, the joy of life and being generous are able to make sacrifices to achieve this, if we show them a convincing path and if we offer ourselves as competent companions on the journey. Young people were convinced that Don Bosco sought what was good for them, wanted them to be happy here on earth and in eternity. For this reason we accepted the path traced out by Don Bosco: friendship with Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life.

At the same time Don Bosco teaches us to be (here is the ‘grace of unity’) educators and evangelisers. As evangelisers we know and seek out the goal: bringing young people to Christ; as educators we should know how to begin from the concrete circumstances of the young person and succeed in finding the appropriate method for accompanying him or her in the process of becoming mature. If as pastors it would be shameful for us to renounce our goal, as educators it would also be shameful if we could not find the appropriate method for motivating them to set out on the journey and for accompanying them with credibility.

Conclusion

I conclude with the wish that this Strenna 2008 and, more to the point, these Spirituality Days for the Salesian Family, lead us to rediscover the educational genius of Don Bosco, our pedagogical charism, the precious heritage of the Preventive System, and that they make us aware that we are bearers of the best gift we can possibly offer the young: Salesian education. Here it is - our prophecy. Here is what the Church, society and the young await from the Salesian Family throughout the world.

Fr Pascual Chávez Villanueva
Rome – Salesianum, 18 January 2008