austraLasia #2996
Getting to know...... history or hagiography?
ROME: 22
January 2012 --
22 January would normally be the memorial of Blessed Laura
Vicuņa, but
as it is also the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, it will be
passed over
in most places. Were you aware that just some months back,
photos were
unearthed that were potentially real photos of the young girl
in
question, and after a serious investigation and research by
competent historiographers and the help of the Police
department, finally declared
as such. Compare the 'real' Laura with the
hagiographical depiction!
Which
brings us back to the major theme introduced by this year's
Strenna,
and foremost in the minds of the Salesian Family as it
concludes, in
Rome, the 30th Salesian Family Spirituality Days: Coming to
know,
getting to know, Don Bosco's life-story, so that we can make the young our life's mission. The Rector
Major has been
insistent that this is both an act of head and heart, but at
the centre
of it lie the Memoirs of
the Oratory,
Don Bosco's own summation of things as he saw them around 1875
- except
that it's much more than a 'summation', they are a heart-tugging
appeal to
his 'dear sons', and 'memories of the future' as Braido so
neatly put
it.
As people move into the novena for the
great Feast on 31 January (you recall the resources offered in
an
earlier austraLasia), there are two more resources that you
may find
useful not just for the novena period but throughout the year.
The
first set of resources is the collection of major talks given
over
these days in Rome. One or two of them are of
extraordinary interest
to us. The presentation of the MO as a handbook of pedagogy
and
spirituality is one of these - by Fr Aldo Giraudo. The
other you might
want to consider is Fr Bruno Ferrero's 'wander' through many
of the
formerly well-known anecdotes about Don Bosco. I say
'formerly',
because the Biographical Memoirs are often considered as more
along the
hagiographical lines than the real ones these days. What Bruno
does is
to recover one very distinct and real fact that is of great
value today
- that not all truth is propositional, that narrative
truth is
valuable and that we can glimpse Don Bosco through this means.
Anyway,
this set of resources and several others besides, is
available directly at this link in SDL.
The other resource you may find useful is the January
2012 Don Bosco Study Guide that comes from DB Hall
Berkeley. This
link will take you to that but
will also produce the material from the previous link, since
I've taken
it from the 'date' tab this time, and it all belongs to
January 2012.