Hajja Salesjana April-June 2022

charity put into practice,” St. Francis de Sales taught. "I recommend above all the spirit of sweetness, which is what warms the heart and conquers souls," he wrote to a young abbess. At the end of a war which, for four long years, had, at the very least, ignored and despised the virtue of sweetness in relations between peoples, the Rector Major Don Paolo Albera dedicated an entire circular letter to sweetness. "The virtue of sweetness requires you to gain control over the liveliness of your character, to repress any act of impatience, and to forbid your tongue to utter even a single word that is offensive to the person with whom you are dealing,” wrote Don Albera. “It demands the rejection of all forms of violence in behaviour, proposals and actions." For Don Albera, it seemed impossible to forget, in the framework of the sweetness left to us, "a nod to that serene gaze, full of goodness, which is the true and clear mirror of a sincerely sweet soul which desires only to make anyone who approaches it happy." Sweetness is not synonymous with “sugar-coated” and “sappy sweet,” which are but deceitful caricatures of it. Sweetness is not weakness at all—uncontrolled violence is weakness. Kindness is peaceful, patient, and humble strength. Don Bosco united sweetness and firmness in his authority. This spirit of goodness, sweetness and meekness was deeply engrained in the first Salesians and belongs to our earliest traditions. This just shows that we cannot neglect it—let alone lose it—at the risk of significantly damaging our charismatic identity. For many of our young people, what they remember most often about meeting the Salesian Family in the world is the familiarity, welcome and affection they felt: in short, the Salesian Family Spirit. In the early days, there was talk of a "fourth Salesian vow," which included goodness (first of all), work and the Preventive System. We cannot imagine a Salesian presence in the world, of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, of the Salesians of Don Bosco, or of the current thirty-two groups that make up the Salesian Family of Don Bosco, which does not have this characteristic of kindness as its distinctive element or, at least, should have it, as Pope Francis sought to remind us through his enlightening expression the “Valdocco option.” This is our option for the Salesian style of kindness, affection, familiarity, and presence. We have a treasure, a gift received from Don Bosco, which it is now up to us to revive. "Kindness is peaceful, patient, and humble strength - Don Angel Fernandez Artime, Rector Major" 34 April - Ġunju 2022 hajja