Hajja Salesjana July-September 2021

H AJJA S ALESJANA 30 remind us of our identity as spiritual “Church Builders”, which is not to be confused with material “builders of churches”. Where St. Peter exhorts the baptized to draw near to Jesus, a living stone, in order to be built up as a spiritual house, Pope Francis, provides the blueprints for that building project: “be bold and creative in [the] task of rethinking the goals, structures, style and methods of evangelization in [your] respective communities.” (Evangelli Gaudium, n. 33) This could well be the mission statement for the early Oratory, which was nothing if not a bold, creative rethinking of how to evangelize and how to build Church. In Salesian jargon, the locus of this rethinking and church building is the local Educative- Pastoral Community (EPC), that is, the team of young people, consecrated women and men, lay people and priests, working together in the spirit of Don Bosco, in ways appropriate to each one’s vocation, to make their local environment an Oratory where the Risen Jesus is experienced in a concrete way. Living stones in the Oratory’s first dining hall The inspiration for this reflection comes from within the stone walls of the boys’ first dining hall in the Oratory “underground”. In 1856, Don Bosco tore down the Pinardi House to build a more suitable home for his ever-expanding family. Funds were tight and enrollment was high. So he dug deep before he built up. Literally and metaphorically, these stone walls are the foundation not only of the Oratory’s first dining hall, but also of a Salesian experience of educating and evangelizing. In this dining hall, up to 200 boys at a time were nurtured by God's providence. Here, they received more than their daily bread. They built themselves up in faith, hope and love through the family spirit they shared. In the process, they learned the value of their own contribution.The stones used to build these walls are keepers of a precious Salesian legacy: each one was carried to the construction site by a boy from the Oratory, in response to Don Bosco's invitation: "In your free time, go to the river and bring back the biggest stones you can carry, so that we can build our house more quickly". Emerging from poverty to build hope: Like the boys who carried them, these stones were "baptised" by poverty and sacrifice, rejected by men but chosen and precious in God’s eyes. The young people did not haul them from the waters of the Lungo Po which winds graciously through the posh, aristocratic neighbourhoods on Turin’s south side. No, they drew them from the polluted shores of the Stura and Dora Rivers which ran a gritty course through Valdocco’s toxic ammunition factories, mills, bordellos, slaughter houses and the residential squalor of Borgo Dora, very much, as Pope Francis would say, on the periphery of society. Stone wall of the basement dining room