Hajja Salesjana

the life of Saint Francis de Sales. Those years can be read as a Eucharistic pedagogy, “The visible Eucharist, celebrated with great participation of the people, carried in procession after years of emptiness, is the culmination of a long desert, where it is He who lives in the Eucharist and makes His presence known secretly among the previously hostile people, and whom He approaches and makes friends one by one.” In his missionary example and in Eucharistic spirituality, the Rector Major recognizes the work of many Salesian presences in reaching those to whom they are sent “with patience and perseverance, without renouncing the explicit proclamation, but knowing how to wait for God’s long time” . “All this speaks to us of Don Bosco’s educational and evangelizing passion who, in the presence of the Lord in the Eucharist and in the strong presence of Mary in the life of the Oratory among his children, found the daily strength to carry out the Da mihi animas, cetera tolle” . But how to communicate? Don Bosco is a disciple of Francis de Sales, patron saint of journalists and master of communication, whom he follows with zeal by promoting and encouraging reflection, culture, humanism in its most beautiful expressions and with the means of the time, “is for us a message of maximum relevance and a real challenge in today’s world where communication is at the center of reality” . It is a beautiful proposal for the Church today and for Don Bosco’s Salesian Family to cultivate the art of accompanying the journey of faith, especially of many boys, girls, and young people of the world who do not know God, but at the same time, hunger and thirst for Him, often without knowing it” and it is very ‘Salesian’ to feel that they need ‘a friend of the soul’, in which to find advice, help, guidance, and friendship” . The Rector Major of the Salesians of Don Bosco concludes by recalling the words of Benedict XVI who invites us to follow the testimony of Christian humanism of Saint Francis de Sales in a ‘spirit of freedom’, “with his family style, with parables that sometimes have the wings of poetry, he remembers that humans carry the nostalgia for God inscribed in their depths and that only in Him do they find true joy and its fullest realization” . Photo by Harli Marten - www.unsplash.com 9 Jannar-Marzu 2022 hajja