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Don Bosco the Saint in union with God
Till the day mankind succeeded in going to the moon, we only knew one face of it, the face tuned towards the earth; the other face remained unseen and unknown. Something similar can be said about our knowledge of Don Bosco. Till Don Bosco was declared a Saint we saw only one aspect, his enormous activity. We did not know him as a Saint, we did not realise that all this activity was the outcome of his intimate union with God. Cardinal Salotti, who was in charge of Don Bosco ‘s canonisation, told Pius X that he was struck by the interior life of Don Bosco. Father Ceria’s book ‘Don Bosco with God’ opened the eyes of many Salesians to the reality of Don Bosco: his much-admired activity was the result of a life of prayer. Even for us, in practice, it is easier to imitate him as a busy man than as a Saint – but then we give a false picture of our Father.
Pius XI, the Pope that canonised Don Bosco, always believed in the sanctity of Don Bosco and the reason was that he had seen Don Bosco for himself. Imagine a Saint who is so intensely busy with his work that he has no time to say his prayers, he even asked the Holy See to be dispensed from the duty of saying the Breviary – not that he made use of the dispensation very often, but he had it. Imagine the Founder of a religious Congregation who tells his followers not to have any special prayers at all. Just to take part in the common prayers of the boys. Imagine a Saint who even on his deathbed twice repeats, to Cagliero and to Rua: Work, work, work! – We would have expected: Pray, pray, pray!
Don Bosco is extremely reserved in all that concerns his exterior life. He easily speaks about his outward realisations, but neither in talking nor in writing, not even in his numerous letters, he betrays his interior life. When Don Bosco speaks about himself, he speaks in the 3rd person, as if he were speaking about somebody else, he just says what every good priest would say in the circumstance. Few people, said Fr. Ceria, were so extraordinary under an ordinary appearance. He treated big and small matters with the same naturalness, and at first sight he revealed nothing more than an ordinary good priest. After his death, the Salesians discussed about who was the greatest Saint, Don Bosco or Don Rua – the sanctity of Rua was evident. They favoured Don Bosco because Don Bosco knew to renounce even the appearance of sanctity.
A French proverb says that no man is great for his personal valet – take any big man, any general or politician. He may be acclaimed by all people but despised by those who live with him, his personal secretary or the maid who sweeps his room – they know all his foibles, may be his bad moods and bad manners which he carefully hides for outsiders. For Don Bosco it was the other way about. The nearer people came to Don Bosco, the more they had a chance to peep into his personal life, and the greater veneration they had for his person. Don Rua testified: “I lived at Don Bosco’s side for more than 37 years. To observe even the minutest actions of Don Bosco made a greater impression on me, did me more good, than to read or meditate any pious book.”
Even so, nobody has spoken better of Don Bosco than Pope Pius XI. His words have exceptional value, not only because they come from a Pope, but because he had been an eyewitness, a close observer. He spent a few days in the Oratory in 1883 “living under the same roof, eating at the same table, having had more than once the opportunity of talking with him even for a long time, in spite of the unbelievable pressure of work, in spite also of him being already advanced in years and in indifferent health.” The impression that Don Bosco made on him did not fade with the advance of years.
We have been told to imitate Don Bosco in his union with God: ‘The Salesian cultivates union with God’ (Const. 12). What was this union with God for Don Bosco? We have it, again in the words of Pius XI: ‘A constant attention, ardent and peaceful at the same time, zealous and patient, to something that his soul contemplated, with which his heart communicated: the presence of God, union with God.’
The presence of God was for Don Bosco not an abstract principle but a living experience. God is at work always to redeem the world, but God will do nothing without man’s co-operation. And this is what Don Bosco did: co-operate with God for the salvation of souls. This was the reason for his zeal, the explanation of his inexhaustible energy.
That was Don Bosco. Also for us there can be no other motivation for the work we have taken up. Our mission is wonderful, but most of our life does not consist in glorious gestures. The daily grind can wear us out, and unless we have a profoundly anchored motivation – to work for our boys and our people ‘that they may have life, and may have it abundantly’, we will draw back in our shell, become frustrated and do the minimum.
As Salesians we have a rightful distrust for those who preach piety from an easy chair; should we not equally distrust the apostolate of those who are not profoundly pious? It is either, or: either we work for God or we work for ourselves. Who works for himself cannot produce fruit: ‘Without me you can do nothing.’ He will work as long as his success lasts, as long as he is sufficiently rewarded for his efforts – if that is no longer there, he will begin to take things easy.
The more difficult our work is, the more frustrating it may be, the more we need our roots deep in the Heart of Jesus; the more we need to cultivate, like Don Bosco, a continuous union with God.
By,
Fr. John Lens
