INSTITUTE OF THE DAUGHTERS OF MARY HELP OF CHRISTIANS

Founded by St. John Bosco

and St. Mary Domenica Mazzarello

No. 955

Together with the Young

Dearest Sisters,

I joyfully come to you to continue our monthly sharing. It is an appointment very dear to me and I am sure that you are praying to the Holy Spirit for me! I thank you and I rely a lot on your prayers because I really feel I need them. In this circular, I am proposing a reflection on the second choice individuated by GC XXIII: “Together with the Young”, which is closely tied to the first and third choices (Cf. Circular 950 & 952). This concludes the introduction to the triad formulated by the Chapter Assembly and assumed as the direction for animation and government in the General Council Planning. It also orients the Provinces and the local communities on the journey of assimilating GC XXIII.

However, I first want to thank each Province and community for generously receiving the call of Pope Francis in preparation for the Holy Year of Mercy to open the doors to a refugee family or to young people who find themselves in this situation in various parts of the world. I have received concrete news in this regard about solutions already accomplished or others that are still being studied. I am sure that in your heart, you have the certainty that “the poor cannot wait”. At times, it is a question of life or death. To make a poor person wait is the same as telling Jesus Himself to wait. He Himself is still telling us today, “In truth I tell you, whatever you did to even one of these little ones, you did to me” (Mt. 25: 40).

I want to share with you some recurrences that must not pass in silence because they are very meaningful for all of us. On September 15, 2015, we marked the Bicentenary of the decree with which Pius VII, freed from the Napoleonic prison, instituted the feast of Mary under the title ‘Help of Christians’. As Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, we feel fully involved in this remembrance and committed to pray to our Mother with greater intensity for the Christians persecuted in so many parts of the world for witnessing to their faith in Jesus. During this Marian month, we are invited to pray the Rosary in community with the children, young people, and families asking the Lord through Mary’s intercession, to open the roads to peace, especially in nations most involved in wars and various forms of violence. We ask Mary Help of Christians, the powerful Virgin, to stop the ‘piece-meal third world war”, according to the words of Pope Francis.

We celebrate another event this year. The centenary of the birth of St. Teresa of Avila given to us by Don Bosco as our Patron together with St. Francis de Sales. The experience of God’s love is central in Teresa of Avila. This giant of holiness teaches us that daily life, with its poverty and its limitations, is the space in which to meet God and become radiant signs of His love.

The choices of GC XXIII reinforce this orientation. The Holy Spirit is tireless in guiding us, day after day, toward the path of holiness. He opens our eyes to new and unheard of horizons to discover and embrace with courage and joy, not alone, but together with the young.

Listening to the challenges together

Together has been the choice of the Institute since its beginnings and has given a characteristic face to the Salesian charism. This is how we were born. At Valdocco and Mornese, they always acted as a community and in synergy to provide development and vitality for the educational endeavour. Salesian history documents in a marvellous way the freshness of life lived in a family spirit and the full understanding between SDB, FMA, young people, and adults, all directed toward one objective: proclaim Jesus by means of education. He is the great Educator and we, who love the young of our times, proclaim the Good News of the Gospel looking at Him and learning the path of encounter with Him. Thus, together we want to listen to history, listen to the young, and every person who decides to invest competence and offer life witness in the field of education and of the proclamation of the Good News of the Gospel in a Salesian way.

In the numerous encounters that Providence has afforded me to live with the young and lay people, I have been able to grasp with joy and hope, how these people of various ages, cultures, and religions are mediations of God’s calls to all of us. They help us read a reality that is in rapid evolution; they present us with real needs that at times may escape us or that perhaps we read with inadequate criteria. These needs are also calls for us, indicators of the journeys to undertake as Church, the People of God on the way. In sharing made up of listening and dialogue, we bring our specific contribution as persons consecrated in the Salesian charism. The experience of limitations and poverty open us to search, help us to broaden our vision, and enrich each other reciprocally. “You are asked to know how to listen with availability and understanding to all who come to you for moral or human support; to know how to interpret the situations in which you work so as to be able to enculturate the Gospel message” (Pope Francis, Audience to GC XXIII Participants).

We find our foundation in Jesus who had apostles and disciples following Him, men and women of various ages, backgrounds, and social classes (Cf. Luke 8: 1-3). It was a diversified presence that brought richness to the whole itinerant group and witnessed to the joy and the fatigue of sharing the beauty of Jesus’ message. He came to bring it to everyone without distinction or discrimination, thus eliminating cultural and religious fences that often stop the flow of the good brought by the Gospel. This evangelical experience expresses a truth that Pope Francis often recalls. The Lord asks us to be a ‘missionary community…an outgoing community’, therefore not solitary workers, but a people journeying, above all, with the young, as GC XXIII asks of us. Alone we risk remaining imprisoned by fear of the new, of risks, of the unforeseen, of which cultures of all times are bearers.

The togetherness of which we are speaking has its roots in the rich Magisterium of Vatican Council II that proposed the spirituality of communion to a Church conceived as the People of God on a journey. It is a vision taken up by the post-council Popes who re-proposed the theological meaning of the Apostolic Constitution ‘Lumen Gentium’ where the People of God are the principle protagonists of salvation history, together with its Pastors, in today’s social context.

In the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis returns, stressing with greater emphasis, the experience of a Church journeying together.

I recall with emotion the words pronounced by the Holy Father from the Loggia of St. Peter on the day of his election on March 13, 2013. This is how he expressed himself, “and today we begin this journey…of fraternity, of love, and of trust among ourselves”. Then, with prophetic gestures that are uniquely his own, and before giving the blessing to the whole world, he bows and asks the people present in the plaza to bless him.

During this time, the Ordinary Synod of Bishops is taking place in Rome on the theme: “Vocation and the mission of the family in the Church and in the contemporary world”. In the introduction on October 5, 2015, Pope Francis emphasized that “The Synod is an ecclesial expression, that is, the Church journeying together to read reality with the eyes of faith and the heart of God”. During GC XXIII, we lived an experience of this kind, journeying together among ourselves, but also with the whole Church, with the young, and with the laity who share our mission, learning together to read reality with the eyes of faith and the heart of God. We are invited to continue this experience in our daily life.

Dear Sisters, in our living and acting in community, do we feel we are the ‘people of God’ called to be prophets of new times, listening to new generations, especially the poorest youth, the privileged ones of Jesus? Or perhaps unknowingly, do we hold on to forms of self-referencing that are by now anachronistic and far from the charismatic style lived by our Founders?

Open to a change of mentality

The commitment of fidelity to our Founders, re-launched by the Bicentennial celebrations of Don Bosco’s birth and the reception of the renewed Constitutions, demand a change of perspective that allows us to learn and unlearn, thus giving the charism today’s colours. The charism is dynamic, and by its very nature, adapts to times, to places, to various needs, and grows in those who live it. We must broaden our horizons to listen to what the Holy Spirit is telling us today. Change demands more than listening. It must deeply penetrate our humanity and that of others, reading life with hope (Cf. Acts GC XXIII, no. 33). I invite you to be attentive each day to the changes that occur in our life because the Lord’s grace continually acts and transforms.

A first change is a positive outlook on what is working well in our communities. Today, people are tired of stopping at the analyses of situations, most often critical and negative, even if this is indispensable to be aware of our reality. Nonetheless, we need to infuse courage, to move to positive gestures, to see or intuit the new that is budding forth.

I invite you to create in our communities a ‘hope corner’ where it is still possible to recognize the beauty present in a life of giving; the spiritual wealth that radiates from bright faces. We know that everything is not positive in our communities, but we are certain that grace does not abandon us. What if we begin to conclude each day by highlighting the work of grace in our heart and, even before asking forgiveness from God, we tell Him ‘thank you’?

Discernment is the attitude to cultivate as an FMA, but also as an educating community as indicated in our Constitutions (Cf. C 68), and the Scrutate letter of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (2014).

The educational challenges are so demanding that we cannot face them alone. We must create broad range alliances with other Institutions, beginning with the family and including all people of good will. We must humbly listen and search to find new roads together (Cf. Acts GC XXIII, no. 34). The laity and the young have a lot to tell us. We found this out during the General Chapter in the days dedicated to them.

I pause now on what the laity told us and then on the suggestions offered by the young people. The laity chose the right perspective of ‘us’ to speak of the needs that they see for the Salesian mission today. In a few words, they told us how to stand together before reality; they showed that they truly feel they are the people of God that Pope Francis continually refers to.

Very well, this ‘us’ – FMA and laity – need to renew our outlook on the world to see it with God’s own eyes; to commit ourselves to cultivate our own spiritual life; to experience the thirst for God in order to recognize it in the young. The laity reveals the need to know the young and the world in which they live to be able to evangelize them. However, in order to do this, we must ‘be there and be happy to be there without being in a hurry” (GC XXIII Acts, no. 12). It means taking care of the quality of relationships, configuring our places as homes in which we really love each other deeply, and with simplicity and joy. Our closeness to the young is translated into patient and loving accompaniment proper to those who trust each other; it means assuming an ‘oratorian heart’ as the criterion of renewal for our presence and our communities (Cf GC XXIII Acts, no.61).

The ‘oratorian heart’ beats in every FMA, even those who for motives of health or age cannot be in direct contact with the young, but continue to be inhabited by the passion of the da mihi animas cetera tolle. I express my deep gratitude to these sisters because their daily offering always generates life and hope in a surprising way.

FMA and laity together can promote a new culture: the culture of life, of peace, of solidarity, of attention to the poor, the marginalized, the wounded, and the immigrant. In an intercultural world, perennially interconnected, globalized, and interdependent, education is the key. We must do it together, with urgency and courage, entering into the world of communication to know the languages of the young, to understand the young, to accompany them, and to involve them. A change of mentality calls for fraternal, involving communities, with persons who live coordination for communion at every level.

With the young

The strength to change as FMA community will come even from this ‘being together’ of the educating community, which we believe in and want to build ‘with the young’.

I want to give the word to the young people in order to listen to them and what they have to tell us. I do this by reviewing the suggestions they offered us at CGXXIII. They are authentic pearls for reflection. In a way, we have felt they were our teachers and we have kept them in mind as we drafted the Acts of GC XXIII. The provocation for a change of mentality was offered to us in a simple and direct way. It results in a sapiential reading of reality that, more than ever, touched us and led us to the following choices.

They asked us to witness to the joy of our vocation, to listen to them with sincerity and depth. They asked to participate in our life, in our prayers. They have also suggested that we invite them without fear.

In our Rule of Life (Cf. R 73, which recalls C 66/68/76) we read: “the young should assume co-responsibility in their own integral education and participate with us in the work of evangelization”. To live ‘with and for the young’, as even the Rector Major recommends in his ordinary Magisterium, is a call to revitalize the charism. Being missionary disciples demands this journey as a charismatic Family, as a Church networked within the area. It asks for awareness that we do not walk alone but with Jesus, the ultimate and definitive word, who becomes our companion on the journey. The disciples of Emmaus were incapable of looking to the future with hope. The encounter with the Pilgrim, who walked with them, opened them to listening, to understanding, to conversion, to witness, and to joyful proclamation.