{"id":7347,"date":"2023-09-01T19:06:31","date_gmt":"2023-09-02T02:06:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/?p=7347"},"modified":"2023-09-01T19:06:31","modified_gmt":"2023-09-02T02:06:31","slug":"children-in-a-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/2023\/09\/01\/children-in-a-family\/","title":{"rendered":"Children in a Family: Message of the Rector Major"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fr. Angel Fernandez Artime, SDB<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m writing these lines, dear friends of Don Bosco and of his precious charism, as I read the draft of the Salesian Bulletin<\/em> for September. My greeting is the last thing inserted: I\u2019m the last to write \u2013 just as Don Bosco used to do \u2013 so as to be in step with the content of the forthcoming issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This month, as we begin a new academic year in our schools and youth centers, I\u2019m pleased to see that the articles have a great missionary flavor (about the Philippines and Papua New Guinea) and, at the same time, the simplicity of a \u201cSalesian mission\u201d in our house in Saluzzo, with its \u201clocal flavor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading this Bulletin<\/em> makes me appreciate something that is very much ours, very Salesian, and which I\u2019m sure is very pleasing to many of you: I\u2019m referring to the great value of closeness, friendship, and simple joy in everyday life, and the value of sharing, speaking, and communicating. This is the great gift of having friends, of knowing that you are not alone, and of feeling loved by so many good people in our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While thinking about all this, I was reminded of a sincere and very honest testimony of a young woman who wrote to Fr. Luigi Maria Epicoco, which he published in his book The Light in the Distance<\/em> (\u201cLa luce in fondo: attraversare i passaggi difficili della vita\u201d). It\u2019s a testimony that I\u2019d like you to know about because I consider it to be the antithesis of what we try to create every day in every Salesian house. This young woman realizes, in a certain sense, that there is no success or fulfillment if the most human of encounters or beautiful human relationships are lacking. The beginning of this school year brings us back to all this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This young woman writes about herself: \u201cDear Father, I\u2019m writing to you because I\u2019d like you to help me understand whether the longing I\u2019ve been experiencing in recent months tells me that I\u2019m strange or that something important to me has changed. Maybe it will help you if I tell you a little about myself. I decided to leave home when I was just eighteen. It was a way to escape from an environment that seemed so oppressive to me, one that was suffocating my dreams. I went to Milan to look for work. My family was unable to give me financial support for my studies. I was angry with them for this, too. All my friends were looking forward to choosing a major. I had no choice to make because I had no monetary support. I looked for a job to make a living; for years, I dreamed of being able to study. I succeeded and, at the cost of great sacrifices, earned my degree. On my graduation day, I didn\u2019t want my family to attend. I thought that farmers who had attained only an eighth grade education wouldn\u2019t understand anything about my studies. I told my mother only that everything had gone well. Her tears momentarily awakened in me a sense of guilt that I\u2019d never felt before. But it was of little account. I became who I am by myself; I was never able to count on anyone nor did I want to do so. Even where work was concerned, I made my own career because I chose to \u2018join forces\u2019 with myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have been this way for years. And I don\u2019t understand why only now, in the heart of the lockdown of this pandemic, a longing for my family has erupted inside me. I dream of telling them everything I\u2019ve never told them. I dream of hugging my father. At night, I wake up and wonder whether it\u2019s possible to emancipate oneself from such significant relationships. I\u2019ve never even allowed the stories I\u2019ve had over the years to cross the threshold to true intimacy. But now everything seems so different to me. Now that I\u2019m barred even from deciding for myself to step out of my house, or from going to meet with someone whom I consider important to me, the awareness of the great lie that I\u2019ve been living all this time has awakened in me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho are we without relationships? Maybe just unhappy people looking for affirmation. Now I understand that, in reality, I did everything I did because I was hoping that someone would tell me who I really was. But I cut off the only ones who could have helped me answer that question by shutting down relationships. Now their lives are at risk, hundreds of miles away from me. If I should die, I\u2019d like it to be among them and not among my successes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Joy Shared<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I appreciate the honesty and courage of this young woman who made me think a lot about our reality today. It made me reflect on the lifestyle that so many families pursue \u2013 one in which the important thing is to achieve success, make a good salary, and fill our days with things to do so that everything turns a profit, etc. But we pay a very high price in order to live \u2013 not outside our houses but, more and more \u2013 outside ourselves. There\u2019s a danger of living without being centered, i.e., of \u201cmissing the mark.\u201d Believe me, dear friends, you can\u2019t imagine how noticeable this is in the boys and girls of our houses, our playgrounds, and our youth centers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don Bosco\u2019s second successor, Fr. Paul Albera, recalled: \u201cDon Bosco educated by loving, attracting, conquering, and transforming. He enveloped us all \u2013 and almost entirely \u2013 in an atmosphere of contentment and happiness, from which pain, sadness, and melancholy were banished…. He listened to the boys with the greatest attention as if the things they were saying were all very important.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first joy in life is to be happy along with others: \u201cA shared joy is a double joy.\u201d The \u201cpassword\u201d for an educator is, \u201cI feel at home with you.\u201d His or hers is a presence that has the intensity of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of Don Bosco\u2019s biographers, Fr. Eugene Ceria, recounts that after a visit to Valdocco, a high-ranking member of the clergy declared: \u201cYou have a great treasure in your house which no one else in Turin or in any other religious community has. You have a room which anyone who is filled with affliction enters and then comes out radiant with joy.\u201d He was referring to Don Bosco\u2019s room. Another biographer, Fr. John Baptist Lemoyne, noted in pencil, \u201cAnd a thousand of us have experienced this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day Don Bosco said: \u201cThe young among us now seem to be like so many children in a family, all little proprietors of the house; they make the interests of the Congregation their own. They say \u2018our\u2019 church, \u2018our\u2019 school, and call \u2018our\u2019 concerns whatever concerns the Salesians.\u201dSo this is why this new academic and pastoral year is an occasion to take care of ourselves in what is most essential and most important \u2013 for our <\/em>family.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fr. Angel Fernandez Artime, SDB I\u2019m writing these lines, dear friends of Don Bosco and of his precious charism, as I read the draft of the Salesian Bulletin for September. My greeting is the last thing inserted: I\u2019m the last to write \u2013 just as Don Bosco used to do \u2013 so as to be in step with the content of the forthcoming issue. This … Continuar leyendo Children in a Family: Message of the Rector Major<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":10336596,"featured_media":7101,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20310044],"tags":[35890],"class_list":["post-7347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-province-news","tag-featured"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/salesianbulletin.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/screen-shot-2023-07-14-at-5.24.43-pm-1.png?fit=1214%2C1276&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p59ePG-1Uv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10336596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7347"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7370,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7347\/revisions\/7370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}