Hajja Salesjana April-June 2021

21 H AJJA S ALESJANA himself standing before a young and delicate lad, with an air of meekness and serenity and a lively and inquisitive gaze. Paolo Albera at the Oratory In 1858, the "perfume of sanctity" with which 15-year-old Dominic Savio had permeated the Oratory still filled the air. He had died just the year before. Then, too, there was another boy there at that time who was gaining such a reputation: Michael "Mickey" Magone. He was quicksilver; Don Bosco's affection helped him become an angel. Paolino Albera and Mickey Magone ended up next to each other in their places in the dormitory and became fast friends. It was a joyful and loyal friendship even if of short duration for Mickey died at age 14. Because he was next to Mickey in the dorm, Paul was able to hear the conversation between Don Bosco and Mickey when the latter took ill, and he was deeply moved by it: "If the Lord should offer you the choice of getting better or of going to Paradise, which would you choose?" asked Don Bosco. Magone answered, "Who would be so crazy as not to choose Paradise?" Seeing how ill he was, Don Bosco said to him: "Before you take leave of us for Paradise, I would like to give you an errand." Mickey replied, "Tell me. I will do whatever I can to obey it." So Don Bosco said: "When you will be in Paradise and will have seen our great Virgin Mary, greet her humbly and respectfully for me and for those who are in this house. Ask her to give us her blessing; to take us all under her powerful protection; and to help us lest anyone here in the house now or any whom Divine Providence will send in the future, should lose his soul." The facts will prove that Mickey Magone had carried out his "errand". With this memory in his heart and with his eyes always fixed on Don Bosco, Paul Albera, shy and reserved, but more resolute than ever, became one of his best boys at the Oratory. Don Bosco's house was his home. He later described that period of great blessings in this way: “Don Bosco educated by loving, attracting, conquering, and transforming. He wrapped us all - almost entirely - in an atmosphere of contentment and happiness, from which pains, sadness, and melancholy were banished ... Everything in him held a powerful attraction for us: his penetrating gaze. sometimes more effective than a sermon; a mere movement of his head; the smile that always graced his lips, ever new and changing, yet still calm; the movement of his lips, as when one wants to speak without uttering words; the words themselves cadenced in one way rather than another; his personal bearing and his trim and self- confident gait: all these things worked on our youthful hearts like a magnet that cannot be pulled away; and even if we had been able to detach it, we would not have done so for all the gold in the world for his very singular influence over us, which came natural to him, without any study or effort at all, made us so very happy." Among the first Salesians It was therefore absolutely natural for Paul Albera to take on the cassock and become a cleric on October 27, 1861, and in the following year, on May 14, 1862, to become one of the first twenty-two Salesians. "That evening," as Don Bonetti narrates, "for the first time, after long yearning, those members of the newly-founded Society [of St. Francis de Sales] who had completed their novitiate year, and felt called to this life, formally pronounced their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. How wonderful to describe the humble circumstances of this memorable ceremony! There we were, squeezed into a small room, without even any benches to sit on, most of us in the prime of A Photo of Don Bosco and his boys