Don Bosco Our Model

Our Salesian call 

When we think of our call to the Salesian life, how many of us can say: “I decided to be a Salesian after going through a deep study of the Preventive System and the Salesian Spirituality”?  How many of us can rather say: “If I am a Salesian it is because of father or brother so and so … My vocational journey started when I met him and I said to myself: “I would like to be like him!”.

Since this second alternative has been my experience I tend to think that the majority of the Salesians could say the same.

Models play an important role in the life of a person, especially at the early stages.  

 From the Constitutions

“The Salesian spirit finds its model and source in the very heart of Christ, apostle of the Father”. (C11)

“We study and imitate him (Don Bosco)”. (C21)

“Our living rule is Jesus Christ… whom we find present in Don Bosco who devoted his life to the young”. (C196)

“The first Salesians found their sure guide in Don Bosco. Living at the very heart of his community in action, they learned to model their own lives on his. We too find in him our model”. (C97)

1. Looking at the model “The Lord has given us Don Bosco as Father and Teacher”. Before being Father and Teacher of the youth, Don Bosco is OUR Father and Teacher!

As a father Don Bosco reflects in a special way the “fatherhood’ of God. All his life he displayed a father’s heart. He said to his Salesians: ”No matter in what remote part of the world you may be, never forget that here in Italy you have a father who loves you in the Lord”.

As a teacher Don Bosco reproduces some features of the Divine Master, Jesus Christ, who has been his guide from the first dream at the age of nine. Of Jesus Don Bosco incarnated certain aspects: gratitude for the gift of vocation, predilection for the little ones, zeal in preaching and saving, the gentleness and self-giving attitude of the Good shepherd. (C11)

Before being a teacher, Don Bosco is a good disciple! He reflects Jesus in his life and points to Jesus as the perfect model: “He will always be our Master, our Guide , our Model”. Don Bosco is there with all his “splendid blending of nature and grace … deeply human and deeply the man of God … with a closely-knit life project, the service of the young”.

2. Modeling myself after him When I hear people saying of somebody: “I admire him!”, my spontaneous reaction is: “And do you imitate him?”.

Don Bosco is there not to be admired only, but to be imitated!

All Don Bosco’s rich gifts of nature and grace placed him at the service of a unique mission: the salvation of the youth! He is a man with a fixed idea always in mind, which accompanied him from the age of nine to the end of his life: save the young, and especially the poorest of them.

The great imitator of Don Bosco is Don Rua, “the most faithful son of Don Bosco”. The closeness to the master for many years helped him “to enter into Don Bosco’s ideas, to give up his own views, his own opinions, to be conformed” to Don Bosco’s ways of seeing things. The expression “At Mirabello I shall try to be Don Bosco” sums up all his effort to copy the model. And the result is immediately seen. After few months it has been written that “Don Rua at Mirabello is behaving like Don Bosco in Turin. He is always surrounded by boys attracted by his friendliness...”

To Don Rua apply the very words he said of Don Bosco: “He took no step, he said no word, he took up no task that was not directed to the saving of the young. Truly the only concern of his heart was for souls”.

Don Bosco remains still the guide who can enlighten our choices today, the model against whom we can measure our fidelity. His example is an invitation to us to be resolute in our commitment, to unify all our thoughts, strength and all we are in one and the same direction, a stimulus to fidelity until death.