Dalat, Vietnam, 29 October 2020 -- The Feast of Blessed Michael Rua [20 October, 2020) was traditionally celebrated in the Post-novitiate community of Vietnam: the traditional “Academy” on the eve of the Feast Day and the Morning Mass.
As happens annually, the parents of the first-year postnovices were invited to attend. For many of them, this was the first time to come and stay two days in the community [which is located in a famous tourist city] to see how their sons are formed into consecrated individuals in the footsteps of Don Bosco.
Particularly, during the Mass, they witnessed the small ritual in which 8 of the third-year postnovices presented their application for ad gentes missions and the other two for intra gentes. This ritual marked the first formal step to be later assessed by the superiors of the province and the Superiors in Rome to confirm their missionary vocation within the one unique Salesian vocation. Probably they have heard this call for a number of years. Yet the gradual accompaniment of the superiors in the prenovitiate, novitiate made it clearer when they enrolled in the “missionary group” in their first year of post-novitiate and they have been followed up more closely by the Rector with conferences, personal talks and weekly Mass to pray for their intention, and evidently with a lot of personal prayers and internal discernment.
We pray that the parents of the first year postnovices will support their sons’ response to God’s call for ad gentes missions in two years time.
The Rector Major has sent an email to highlight the needs for missionaries in the world at large and the appreciation of the generosity of these young confreres. This encouraging message enforces once more the effort of the formators of this community which was named once by Fr. Chavez as “the community to form missionaries”
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