EAO-GNT-2015 (16) July ENG.pdf (For download)
EAO Good Night Talk (16)
July 1, 2015
‘What did you see at Valdocco, do it in the EAO region!’
Dear friends and confreres!
During this Jubilee year I spent few days in our Motherhouse of Valdocco. Last week visit was during the Pope Francis pilgrimage to Turin (Shrine of Mary Help of Christians) and the previous one was few weeks ago during the Don Bosco 200 encounter of 90+ Salesian bishops with the Rector Major. It was a time of grace!
It’s also amazing to meet so many EAO pilgrims in the Holy Places of Don Bosco during this year. So far there were already visitors from Australia, Cambodia, China, Japan, Indonesia, Korea, Laos, Mongolia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. We could ask: What are the fruits of meeting with Don Bosco at Valdocco 200 years after his birth? Simple and deep sharing of Salesian archbishop Tim Costelloe (Perth-Australia) might be a good insight into a Salesian heart and soul during this Jubilee:
“For me, perhaps, the real value of the experience lay very much in the quiet moments, when all the pilgrims had gone home, and I was able to wander around the grounds of the Oratory or sit quietly in the Chapel of St Francis de Sales. These are the places where the stories and events we all know so well actually took place. It wasn’t hard to picture Don Bosco in the courtyards of the Oratory, outside the Basilica and just under the windows where he had his rooms. You could sit quietly in the small area behind the altar in the Church of St Francis de Sales where Don Bosco discovered the young Dominic Savio still in prayer hours after Mass had ended. You could stand in the doorway where Don Bosco handed out the bread rolls for breakfast, managing to feed all his boys even though he only had a few bread roles in his basket. You could see the little window through which someone fired at Don Bosco in an assassination attempt which luckily failed. And it wasn’t too difficult to imagine you could hear Grigio barking, or Mamma Margaret calling the boys to the evening meal, or Don Bosco with his young men around him talking to them about how important it was for the boys to know that they were loved.
I came back to Australia with a much deeper sense of what Fr. Václav meant when he said to me, shortly after it was announced that I was to become a bishop (2007), that I must do all I could to be not so much a bishop who used to be a Salesian but rather a Salesian who was also now a bishop, called to live out my Salesian vocation in this new ministry of service to the Church. My time in Turin has given new life to my understanding of what it means to be a Salesian – and hopefully it will help me to enrich my episcopal ministry with the spirit of Don Bosco, so tangible and so accessible in those places where it first came to birth.”
With sincere wishes that each of our houses will become more Valdocco-like presence. Don Bosco is telling us: What did you observe in Valdocco, do it in the Philippines, in Timor Leste, in Fiji, in Myanmar, in Korea, in Australia, in Thailand, in Mongolia..!
In Don Bosco
Fr. Václav Klement, SDB
Regional Councilor EAO 2014-2020
