Hajja Salesjana

My name is Antoine, I’m 27, and a newly-professed Salesian of Don Bosco. I have known the Salesians for many years now; I was a student at Savio College from 2006 till 2011, then an animator, and lately an aspirant and a prenovice in the Salesian community present there. I graduated in Medicine and Surgery in 2018 and worked as a junior doctor within the Ministry for Health at Mater Dei Hospital, Mount Carmel Hospital and the health centres of Mosta and Rabat. My adventure with the Salesians brightened my studies and work duties, but in January 2020, with the help of my spiritual guide and confessor, I asked the Maltese Vice-Province to accept me for the novitiate within the Salesian Congregation. The novitiate is a year-long opportunity offered by the Congregation of St. Francis of Sales for young people that have already begun a journey of vocational discernment with the Salesians to continue to delve deeper into this calling. It is a period of great self-awareness, of personal reflection, of intimate prayer with the Lord, and of openness to His Spirit – lived within a vibrant community made up of Salesian confreres and novices – that enables one to be accompanied, to be loved and to love. Before describing my own experience, allow me to quote our Ratio Fundamentalis that rightly starts off from the cornerstone of any vocation, the Sequela Christi : “The novitiate is the beginning of the Salesian religious experience in following Christ. Its purpose is to give the novices a greater understanding of their divine vocation, and of their vocation to that Institute. During the novitiate the novices are to experience the manner of life of the Institute and form their minds and hearts in its spirit. At the same time their resolution and suitability are to be tested. In this phase, with the help of the director of novices and the community, the novice: - learns to live the Salesian apostolic consecrated life more directly as a religious experience: he deepens the motivations for his choice, acquires a faith mentality and assimilates Salesian values; - verifies his suitability for Salesian life in a way that enables himself and his community to arrive at a moral certainty based on positive motives; - constantly directs his life towards the gift of himself to God in the service of the young in the spirit of Don Bosco, and strives for the grace of unity which links together contemplation and apostolic action; - prepares to give himself completely to God knowingly and freely in his first profession, and enters a lifelong formation process.” (Ratio Fundamentalis, Institutionis et Studiorum, 4th Ed.) I entered the international Salesian novitiate at Colle Don Bosco, dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, on the 6th September 2021. During those months, together with the other novices, I experienced the Salesian way of life which expresses itself in three-fused aspects: union with God, fraternal community and the apostolic mission among the young. Accompanied by the Our Newly Professed Salesian Br. Antoine professing his First Vows as an SDB 20 Jannar-Marzu 2023 hajja