Don Bosco’s correspondence with the Cooperators and friends, lay and clerical, always contains detailed and substantial spiritual suggestions aimed at proposing a way of interior life along with devotion and spiritual fervour, the practice of virtue, charity, loving and faithful fulfilment of the duties of one’s state in life.
Continue reading “Giovanni Bosco – Spiritual advice for friends, cooperators and benefactors”
All the means of salvation are to be found in the Church, where holiness and charity flourish. Don Bosco constantly invites adults and young people to cooperate with the action of grace, hope and charity, generously offering themselves through constant prayer, and by frequenting the sacraments but especially by imitating Jesus Christ in a virtuous life of charitable works.
Continue reading “Giovanni Bosco – Spiritual resources of the christian”
The years of foundation and consolidation of the Salesian Society and the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians are ones where Don Bosco’s horizons expanded in an impressive manner. The priest of Valdocco, ever more aware of having received a divine mission, feels that he has been transported into a huge field of activity, given a charism that makes him father and founder of a movement of apostles, consecrated men and women who are destined to spread over space and time. His spiritual magisterium deepens, his proposals become more radical, all-embracing.
These brief items of correspondence, written in familiar tone, contain simple advice on spiritual life. Don Bosco knew those he wrote to, their character, defects, the circumstances in which they worked. In a practical way he invited them to focus on concrete attitudes essential for nurturing their attachment to their Salesian vocation, constantly keeping their hearts leaning to God and charity.
As an introduction to the first Italian edition of the Salesian Constitutions, published in 1875, Don Bosco wrote a wide-ranging letter To the Salesians, to guide them in interpreting the rules and to infuse in them a correct idea of religious life. He later refined and extended it with the help of the master of novices, Fr Barberis, for the third Italian edition of the Constitutions (1885). It is a relevant document from a spiritual point of view. “One can think of it as a brief summary, the most complete one, of what could be called Don Bosco’s theology of religious life. Ideas flow together in it which had matured in him little by little, beginning from when he wrote the history of the Church and the Popes, then as he drew up the Constitutions and documents written to gain approval, further enriched by local and general conferences, instructions given at retreats in the late 1860s and early 1870s, and expressed in individual letters and circulars and in private advice.”
Continue reading “Giovanni Bosco – Don Bosco’s ‘theology’ of religious life”
Christian education of youth in popular works with a markedly missionary character like the Oratories on the outskirts of Turin, frequented by boys who were mostly abandoned and uneducated, required processes that were gradual and geared to each one’s possibilities. The Companion of Youth offered a complete but essential proposal adapted to everyone. Starting with this, Don Bosco used the sacrament of penance, personal chats, suggestions of optional and practical devotions and offered books to read and meditate on. He set up personalised processes which were more adapted to youngsters who were more capable of greater moral and ascetic effort. Continue reading “Giovanni Bosco – Sodalities and spiritual friendships”
The first edition of Il giovane provveduto (in English The Companion of Youth) appeared in 1847 and was Don Bosco’s greatest publishing success. The year he died it had reached its 119th edition. It was reprinted with minor adaptations until 1961. It is also the book which Don Bosco most liked and constantly recommended.
St John Bosco’s correspondence mirrors his manifold activities as a promoter of educational and welfare type work, publishing and missionary enterprises. Also documented is the broad network of relationships he had built up. His letters are those of a man of action, the tireless organiser, avid communicator, religious founder and a passionate animator of Catholic initiatives. Little space is given to spiritual aspects which he prefers to deal with in preaching, personal talks or in the context of the Sacrament of Penance.
Continue reading “Giovanni Bosco – Spiritual counsel in Don Bosco’s letters to boys and older youth”
Chi un giorno vorrà cimentarsi nella ricostruzione storica dei percorsi di attuazione del Concilio Vaticano II da parte della Famiglia Salesiana, si troverà ad analizzare una varietà di eventi e realizzazioni, coordinati dall’alto o promananti dalla base, che testimoniano l’entusiasmo, la cordiale apertura e il grande fervore operativo del postconcilio. Il rinnovamento conciliare era atteso e desiderato. I frutti più evidenti sono stati, innanzitutto, l’impegno di aggiornamento della vita religiosa e della specifica missione – sulla duplice linea del ritorno alle fonti, in fedeltà allo spirito del Vangelo e all’intenzione del Fondatore – e dell’adattamento alle mutate condizioni dei tempi, nella sensibilità alle indicazioni di rinnovamento della Chiesa e agli appelli del mondo e dei giovani (PC 2). Continue reading “Aldo Giraudo – Interrogativi e spinte della Chiesa del postconcilio sulla spiritualità salesiana”
The theme of Pure Love is essential to understanding a Salesian spirituality as lived within the Visitandine tradition. This article explores pure love through the lens of holy indifference which is essential for true spiritual freedom. It concludes with an examination of holy indifference as lived by Mary the paradigm of pure love.
Continue reading “Eunan McDonnell – Holy indifference. Freeing the heart for pure love”
While preparing pilgrimages and spiritual exercises in Annecy and the neighborhood, I discovered reliable sources among the German and Dutch Oblates of St Francis de Sales. As a consequence of keeping contact with various participants, they invited the undersigned to take part in the annual meetings of their Arbeitsgemeinschaft (“study group”) in Eichstätt, Germany.
The author makes a book review of “Saint Francis de Sales, Life and Spirit” by Joseph Boenzi.
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