6th SALESIAN BROTHERS CONGRESS OF SOUTH ASIA
CHENNAI – 30th December 2008 to 3rd January 2009
Inaugural Address
I am very grateful for the invitation to this meeting and I am indeed very happy to be able to take part together with Fr Maria Arokiam Kanaga, Regional for South Asia.
My participation also gives me the opportunity to come to India for the first time and to begin to get to know this important presence.
Certainly you are part of a Region in which the charism of Don Bosco is experiencing a particular and happy development, comparable only to what happened in Italy at the beginning of the Congregation.
It is good therefore that there should be Congresses and meetings like this present one – quite providential –because if the Salesian charism really is expanding in India and now represents a “tree” in full bloom that continues to produce new branches it is, however, essential that this growth should respect to the full and be completely faithful to the original nature of the charism.
And one specific aspect of that original nature is precisely represented by our vocation as Salesian Brothers, which Fr Rinaldi, 3rd successor of Don Bosco, loved to describe as a “inspired invention created by the heart of Don Bosco”.
Why “inspired invention” ?
Because it represented – and still represents today – a style of religious life that is very modern and original, in which consecration, mission and professional skills happily come together and highlight the temporal dimension that is intrinsically linked to our mission, that Don Bosco took very seriously, and which is well summed up in our Constitutions in article 31, which speaks about “a plan for the total well-being of man.”
An “inspired invention” therefore that is not perhaps always well understood even by ourselves who are living expressions of it.
It is true that the ideal example of the Salesian Brother does not exist, but so many confreres do who are bearing witness to and incarnating this vocation in concrete terms, each one in his own individual way.
But it is equally true that specific features of this vocation do exist which cannot be ignored otherwise there the risk of losing the identity of the Salesian vocation in itself.
Already in his letter “The lay element in the Salesian community” in AGC n. 298 from 1980 – therefore almost thirty years ago – Fr Viganò said that in speaking about the vocation of the Salesian Brother it was not so much a question of a “category” of members, but of the lay component of the Salesian community and of the temporal dimension of our mission.
Therefore considering the person of the Salesian Brother, means speaking about our actual life as consecrated persons and as Salesians, not so much because the “statistics” are worrying us – even though the “quantitative” identity is threatened by the falling numbers – but because we want to remain faithful to the charism handed down to us by Don Bosco.
Without the lay element represented by the Salesian Brother, the community is less Salesian and in the end the mission itself runs the risk of losing its specific nature.
And it is for that reason that in the last General Chapter, in the third key issue “Need for vocation ministry” it comes out very clearly that a real youth ministry is vocation ministry – in the sense that it produces vocations of special consecration – and a vocational ministry that is really and truly Salesian produces vocations also of Salesian Brothers.
To the extent that this does not happen then, it means that we have to act in order to correct or change some aspects of our pastoral activity.
The Holy Father – Benedict XVI – in his message for the opening of the Chapter, when speaking precisely about our vocation expressed himself in this way: “Certainly it is not an easy vocation to discern and to accept; it emerges more easily where apostolic lay vocations are presented to the young and where they see a joyful and enthusiastic witness to religious consecration.”
This is why our Chapter translated this renewed attention into a correct and complete Salesian vocation ministry – with the 11th guideline at paragraph 74 – inviting us to recover Don Bosco’s understanding about the complementarity and thespecific nature of the two forms of the one Salesian vocation, also taking up a renewed commitment to the promotion of the particular vocation of the Salesian Brother.
However, we cannot ignore the fact that in some parts of the Congregation one sees that the clerical concept of Salesian life, and perhaps of religious itself is still very strong, to the extent that now religious life seems to be only the monastic or the feminine, while male religious life is understood only in terms of a vocation to the priesthood.
This should not discourage us, and even less make us feel that we are on a “dead-end track,” as though the vocation of the Salesian Brother is already “facing extinction.” We need to believe in our vocation to the point of being able to offer, first of all, a joyful and enthusiastic witness to our consecration, as the Holy Father reminded us, knowing how to make of our lives a synthesis between religious consecration and our being lay people.
This synthesis, that is indeed original and charismatic, comes about by our being above all SALESIANS; it is that vital experience of being at one and the same time RELIGIOUS and LAY, the combination of a treaty with God and the service of our brothers and sisters, the synthesis of the sacred and the profane, total entrustment to God and a lay state shaped by the Salesian spirit in a way that is quite original.
This too is certainly an aspect of that grace of unity that is characteristic of our vocation as Salesians: I give myself totally to God who then sends me among my brothers and sisters to undertake everyday work in the temporal sphere.
For myself, therefore, complementarity and the specific nature of the one Salesian vocation can be translated into a twofold profession, “religious” and “lay,” the synthesis of which is found in the passion for God (“sequela Christi”) and in the passion for mankind (the lay dimension), and the whole being given a “Salesian character - in other words, always doing everything for the well-being and the (eternal) salvation of the young to whom we are sent.
I wish you all a good Congress and I pray that through your lives you may always say to those you meet, especially the young that you are:
Happy to be Christians, happy to be Salesians, happy to be Salesian Brothers.
May Mary Help of Christians and Don Bosco support us in our good resolutions and help us always to deserve many holy vocations, especially those of Salesian Brothers.
Chennai, 30 December 2008
Claudio Marangio SDB
Economer General
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