Father Philip Rinaldi: Circular Letter on the Salesian Coadjutor Brother (Acts n. 40)

July 24, 1925 [Acts # 40; pp. 572-580]

THE CIRCULAR LETTER OF FR.PHILIP RINALDI ON THE COADJUTOR BROTHER.

Dear Confreres:

These past years the Salesian missionary movement has become the focus of our Salesian Society. This is due first of all to the growing vitality created within our society by the Venerable Don Bosco and also to the willingness of the Salesians to respond in the best way possible to the wishes of the Vicar of Christ on earth.

We have to acknowledge, however, that this focus and our response to the Pope's wishes have placed a heavy weight on us Salesians and they still do. They have called us to make extraordinary sacrifices both for the new foundations of missionary posts and for the upkeep of all Salesian undertakings entrusted with the task of forming missionary personnel.

For some years now, the aspirantates and studentates of Ivrea, Foglizzo and Penango have sheltered 600 youngsters who will be prepared and are actually being prepared to become future priests and coadjutor brothers, by means of priestly studies and technical training.

Nonetheless, a major, important and appropriately contributing undertaking was still missing within our Salesian Society.

The well deserving Flaudinet sisters have bequeathed to the Salesians a good amount of land next to the Cascine Nuove near the town of Cumiana and the specific purpose attached to this bequest is that that land be used for the training of missionary personnel to work the fields;

they want it to be an agricultural school for missionary aspirants. On Sunday July 17,1927 the project was begun and the undertaking is to be known as SCUOLA AGRICOLA MISSIONARIA DI CUMIANA THE AGRICULTURAL MISSIONARY SCHOOL OF CUMIANA.

We have begun that Salesian undertaking with the solemn blessing of a statue of Mary Help of Christians located on the upper part of that vast building, destined to gather youngsters called by God to religious life and specifically to carry out missionary work.

The specific orientation of the school is that of having people trained particularly and professionally to cultivate the land, which in turn will

provide for the upkeep of the missions and gradually offer to uneducated savages ways and means to live a decent and stable family life and be socially involved.

It is a fact that both the missionaries and the catechumens need a good knowledge of agriculture, because both live far away from civilized centers and it would take them endless weeks to simply walk their way to them; besides, they would exposed themselves to possible and real dangers while at the same time they would lack the necessary means to survive.

The cultivation of the land is the most essential means to guarantee a decent human existence in such missions both for the missionaries and the people they care for.

The other missionary locations, even though obliged to undergo great expenses, can somehow get hold of means to survive, by having access to civilized centers. This, however, does not exclude the need, even in these missionary posts, of a good knowledge of agriculture.

Agriculture is also for them an indispensable means to be able to have a decent way of living without being beset by so many and so great difficulties.

Nonetheless, if the knowledge of agriculture is needed for the missions and the missionaries as a way to provide for and improve upon their livelihood and the eating habits of people they are called to evangelize, it is also needed as a means to reach out to the savages hearts, turn them to conversion and change their views on what is beneficial to their families and to the social environment they live in.

In the religious Congregations of long ago, the Lay Brother made up a kind of second class religious who depended on the first-class religious and were allowed to share the spiritual goods of the Order only to a certain degree.

If we think of the missions of long ago as well. the Lay Brother was not really a missionary but only a helper of the priest who was the real missionary and the only missionary.

This was the status of the Lay Brother of the religious Orders of the past. And the ancient Orders still hold that the priest alone is the real missionary, while the others, like the Lay Brother, are considered only as helpers.

The updated statistics on the missions are still based on this view, namely that only the priest is the real missionary.

Up to our days the idea of who the Lay Brother is as visualized by Don Bosco our Venerable Founder, had not yet been fully developed. When our Venerable Father Don Bosco founded the Salesian Congregation the Lay Brother assumed a clever and modern-touch. While still strictly adhering to the essential spirit of his educative system, Don Bosco did not want the Lay Brother to be fossilized and

condemned to handle only matters which were not that significant and subject to change with the passing of time.

Our Salesian Constitutions are pervaded by the breath of an everlasting vitality that sprung forth from the Holy Gospel and because of this special birth or origin it belongs to all times and is always rich in new sources of life.

Now it is exactly the Gospel that tells us that one can be a religious without being a priest and that not all the disciples of Jesus Christ who had been sent to cities, towns and villages to proclaim the Good News were chosen by him to follow him with the dignity of the priesthood.

And so we are right when we assume that those non-priest disciples who were sent out to preach as missionaries by the Lord while he was still alive, continued to be missionaries also after his resurrection; and that they shed their blood to witness their faith in Jesus Christ and the sincerity of their preaching.

I am sure that Don Bosco did not fail to single out this particular historical event. And so, when he first began to think about founding a New Religious Congregation or Society, he also had the intention to have all the members of this new Society equally enjoy all the rights and privileges, no matter whether they were priests or lay people.

It is true that a priest with his priestly ordination assumes greater duties and responsibilities; but it is also true that just like the priests also the Coadjutor Brothers are called to share the same rights and are not to be considered as second class religious.

Just like the priests, the Coadjutor Brothers are true Salesians; true religious, bound to strive after the same high degree of perfection, to carry out whatever task or profession they may he entrusted with, to be concerned about the same identical mission and the same way of apostolically reaching out to the young and educating them, for this is the essence of the Salesian Society.

The Coadjutor Brother is a clever creation that sprung out of the great heart of Don Bosco; it is an idea that came to Don Bosco as an inspiration granted by our Blessed Mother, Mary Help of Christians.

It was Don Bosco's idea that the Coadjutor Brother should be a religious in every sense of the word, even though not endowed with a priestly dignity, since he considered the fact that the evangelical perfection is not the monopoly of any person on earth.

It was Don Bosco's idea that the Coadjutor Brother should be just like himself and all his sons endowed with priestly dignity; and that just the same way he should be striving to reach the highest degree of perfection.

According to the mind of Don Bosco, the means to achieve this goal, the supplies, the weapons, the supports, the objectives and merits were to be equally shared by all the members of his new Society just as they were to share the same food every day.

According to the mind of Don Bosco the Salesian Coadjutor Brother is not second to anyone; he is not simply a helper; he is not the right arm of the priest who is his brother in the Salesian Society.

The Salesian Coadjutor Brother is equal to all the priests and he certainly is someone who can outdistance the priest and be superior to him in the attainment of perfection, as our daily experience had so fully proven to be so to all of us.

According to the spirit of other religious congregations (I am not referring to the ancient monastic Orders which followed an altogether different setup) the Lay Brother, even though animated by the desire to reach perfection and willing to respond to God's call, had to be subjected to the demands of secondary services as needed or as expressed by a particular community and by a particular mission.

Also the number of such Lay Brothers was to be limited to such secondary needs. When the required number of Lay Brothers had been reached, no other Lay Brother was to be accepted, no matter whether or not he had received God's call to act the way he did. In this case "God's call was suspended", since there was no room for such a Lay Brother! The Lay Brother had gradually turned out to be an accessory, either because the rules so demanded or because this was the practical decision made by the priest-member of the Order.

Don Bosco founded a Society which was to make available the way to perfection not only to a certain amount or number of Lay Brothers but to all Lay Brothers who might have felt that they had been called to attain sanctity within a religious community, by being involved in the very same apostolate of educating the young and especially those who were poor, abandoned and at risk or in the missionary apostolate among the savages.

God's call to be perfect si vis perfectus esse was not restricted to those who aspired to become priests or to a small number of people assigned to carry out humble tasks within a religious community.

God's call is extended to anyone who longs to live a religious life; to anyone who wants to consecrate his life to teaching kids at a grammar school level or youngsters at a high school level; to anyone who wants to be assistant to a multitude of youngsters; to anyone who might be interested in teaching in schools where trades of all kinds are being offered and trades suited to the present needs of society; to anyone who might want to teach others how to work in the agricultural area namely to carry out that profession which has been singled out and used by the Lord in his parables, to the point of daring to call it the very profession of his Father:

"Pater meus agricola est! My Father is a farmer..Jn.1 5:1)This is how Don Bosco by founding the Salesian Society had made religious perfection accessible to all kinds of people as they carry out a variety of professional tasks, namely cultural, artistic, mechanical and even agricultural tasks.

The Salesian Society is the LOCUS where the most varied professions can be exercised.

The members who have received a lesser amount of formal education will be able to reach sanctity by discharging humble duties in any particular Salesian house.

The members who have become professors will teach in the classroom, be it elementary classroom or university hall.

The members who are technically qualified will teach in the shops, while those who are quite knowledgeable in the field of agriculture will mind the teaching of how to work in the fields.

Religious perfection in our Salesian Society is accessible to anybody whether they be working in civilized countries or in the wide and uncultivated regions of the missions, among the savages.

The field open to the Salesians is extremely wide and the harvest golden ripe all over. The only thing it needs is workers who can only be called by the Lord himself, people, that is, who are willing to live a sort of vocation that is far superior to the one they are living. When these workers will come ... the harvest will be ready to be picked up!

To be sure the number of these people who at certain moments of intimacy with God have received a call to work in God's field is far from being small.

This is my conviction: there are many people who are called and hesitate to respond to God's call because they wrongly think that such a life of perfection and apostolic work is reserved for those who have been called to the priesthood. And since they do not feel that they are qualified to enter the priesthood, on the grounds that they fail to have the virtues and qualities required of a priest, since they do not feel worthy to exercise the priestly ministry, they fail to respond to God's call to be perfect...

My dear Sons, it is necessarily up to us to dissipate such a wrong idea and convey the notion that a religious vocation is not necessarily the peculiar vocation of only those who intend to become priests.

We have to use all possible and available means to spread our conviction that religious life is open to anyone who longs to live a more perfect life and to serve the Lord in a better way by carrying out a variety of apostolic tasks.

It is up to all of us to show forth how beautiful and great is the vocation to simply live as a religious and that a religious vocation is a divine gift of an inestimable value.

The signs which may indicate that God has kindly given to someone this precious gift of a religious vocation are ordinarily connected with the family environment in which these people live. So look at them!

Another sign can be provided by the fact that a person discharges his duties as a Christian in a faithful way or that he desires to grow in the love of God or that he habitually performs deeds of love towards his neighbor and shows concern about saving souls.

Another sign might be a person's desire to work in a field wider than the one is actually working in and being offered by the family or others.

A sign might also be the desire that a person has to do good to others and the realization that were he to stay in the world he would not be able to ward off the dangers involved in such an apostolate of doing good to others.