Our 28th "Special" General Chapter

By Fr. Angel F. Artime
Rector Major

With the date of 4th April, the Successor of Don Bosco sent his 2020 Easter Letter to "my dear confreres, Salesians of Don Bosco, to my dear Salesian Family, to the laity committed to the Salesian Mission and to the youth leaders, educators and catechists".

The main content of the letter focuses on the Valdocco experience and message of General Chapter 28 and our Salesian response to the Covid19 pandemic situation. The letter is divided into 7 sections

1. Coming to the Cradle of the Salesian Charism (GC28 after 62 years at Valdocco) 2. A world, including ourselves, struck by Coronavirus (Covid19) 3. A pandemic with serious consequences, including economics ones, in my of our houses 4. In a General Chapter in which young people have played a leading role 5. With a very significant presence of Pope Francis 6. A failed General Chapter...? 7. The spirit of General Chapter 28: 'The 'Valdocco Option', the spirit of Valdocco

The concluding part of the letter offers a strong motivation to all of us - Salesians, Salesian Family members, Lay mission partners and young people:

"It was the Holy Father, Pope Francis, who in his profound, beautiful and agenda-setting message to the General Chapter proposed that we make what he called the “Valdocco option” the sure point of reference for comparing ourselves with our source and origin, and to ask the Lord to grant us, as Don Bosco asked, to make the Da mihi animas, coetera tolle a reality. This is why Fr Pascual Chávez’s words can help us look at what Valdocco has been and will be in the present and the future, such that this very “special” General Chapter may well be valued in Salesian history precisely as the Chapter in which “we returned to Valdocco to start out again from Valdocco.”

“After 60 years a General Chapter has once again taken place at Valdocco, and this is already very significant because it is the cradle of our charism and mission, our charismatic origins are found there and hence our originality in the Church and in the world!

Valdocco brings us back to the ‘Pinardi shed’, at Easter 1846 after Don Bosco’s “Good Friday”, when he suffered indescribably at not humanly seeing a future for his boys. We were born that Easter beneath a lowly shed, our first home.

Valdocco brings us back to Mamma Margaret who, in order to accompany her son, left the Becchi and all it meant for her, and moved with him to that poor place, and for 10 years until her death on 25 November 1856, worked with a mother’s tireless love to make the Oratory a true ‘home’ for boys without a family.

Valdocco brings us back to Dominic Savio who, after arriving in 1854, in just two years under Don Bosco’s wise guidance reached the highest degree of holiness through his purity of life, intense experience of God, apostolic charity, fulfilment of his duties, founding the ‘Immaculate Conception Sodality’ that two years later would become the seed from which the Salesian Congregation would be born.

Valdocco brings us back to the great friends and collaborators of Don Bosco, Saint Joseph Cafasso, Marchioness Barolo, Saint Leonard Murialdo, Saint Aloysius Guanella … and to the first Salesians, those who made his threefold dream a reality: seeing the wolves become lambs and the lambs become shepherd and the shepherds missionaries!

Valdocco means the Pinardi church, the Oratory’s first church, and means the Church of Saint Francis de Sales, the one that we can consider the church of Salesian holiness, knowing who prayed there: Don Bosco, Mamma Margaret, Dominic Savio, Don Rua, Bishop Cagliero, Don Rinaldi, the saints named above. It was there, behind the altar, that Dominic Savio was seen in ecstasy.

Valdocco means the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians, The Mother's House, from where her glory went out, the monument of Don Bosco's gratitude to her who had done everything among us, from the dream at nine years of age when she was given to him as ‘mother and teacher’ until today. “We believe that Mary is present among us and continues her mission as Mother of the Church and Help of Christians.”

Valdocco means the life of the Congregation spread today across 134 countries of the world, and of the whole Salesian Family in its 33 branches officially belonging to it. In the Basilica are found the caskets of Don Bosco, Dominic Savio, Mother Mazzarello, Don Rua, Don Rinaldi, and all Don Bosco’s Successors.

Valdocco represents the point of departure for all the missionary expeditions, from the first one in 1875 to the 150th last year, that have made it possible for the Salesian charism to go out to the whole world with thousands of Salesians who, with total generosity to the point of martyrdom, have borne and faithfully planted the charism of Don Bosco, as demonstrated by the vocational fruitfulness, growth in presences, holiness of confreres, young people and members of the Salesian Family.

I ask our Mother the Help of Christians, in front of whose altar and in whose house in Valdocco we have prayed so much, that grace and the gift of fidelity may continue to come to us from the Lord, so that what Sacred Scripture says may become a reality in us: “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me – put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you” (Phil 4:9). May Don Bosco continue to take care, in God, of his Congregation and his Salesian Family. Amen."

(Fr. Angel F. Artime, Rector Major)

• Full text of the RM's Letter for Easter 2020 for download

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