16. Family spirit
Don Bosco wanted everyone to feel at home in his establishments. The Salesian house becomes a family when affection is mutual and when all, both confreres and young people, feel welcome and responsible for the common good.
In an atmosphere of mutual trust and dally forgiveness, the need and joy of sharing everything is experienced, and relationships are governed not so much by recourse to rules as by faith and the promptings of the heart.
This is a witness that enkindles in the young the desire to get to know and to follow the Salesian vocation.
It has been the desire of Don Bosco to make his establishments a home and a family. That is to say, a place where everyone feels both welcomed and accepted, with his strength and weaknesses. Who is able and responsible to bring this vision and desire into the reality? The answer is, all. To make a community into a home, it involves all of us. No one should expect a family to exist in a vacuum. Everyone must help to make the community a home, or family.
