(ANS – Rome) – The Easter mystery reminds us that true love is not only feeling, but something that develops through sacrifice, trial, passion. God's choice as experienced by Don Bosco in his service of the young, was marked by the mystery of the cross. Fr Pierluigi Cameroni, Postulator General for the Salesian Family, presents a brief reflection on how Don Bosco experienced his exodus to freedom and the promised land, via the desert.

He also experienced the Easter exodus with his boys. The road to a stable place for the Oratory was marked by refusal, alienation, incomprehension. In the Pinardi chapel at Valdocco, the painting in the background represents the Resurrection.

The Easter mystery marked Don Bosco's journey and led him to the heart of the Christian event: he received his first communion at Easter 1826; he began the stably established Oratory at Valdocco on Easter 1846; he was canonised by Pius XI on 1st April 1934, the Holy Year of Redemption.

His bitter experience of being abandoned, lonely, dark night of the soul, lack of any security helped him participate with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and on Calvary. Don Bosco was steeped in the mystery of redemption as a pastor of the young. In his flesh and body he experienced the state of abandonment of young people, the fact that they were lost, opposition to his work of salvation and education. More radically he experienced Jesus' abandonment on the Cross: he was the shepherd who had been beaten, everything taken away from him; he was the flock lost and left to wolves.

From this abandonment came the anguished cry of faith, "Don Bosco crying." Tears that fell to fertilise the ground at Valdocco, where the great basilica of Mary Help of Christians would be built, where the martyrs, Avventore and Ottavio had shed their blood. They were tears of pain and love that fell to the ground, his face turned to heaven and from whence heaven replied. Don Bosco celebrated Passover with his boys. From abandonment to communion, from being lost to being together in communion, from tears to joy. It was here that Don Bosco, united with Christ's Passover, becomes the real father of the young; it was from here that the grace of redemption regenerated them; from here where the Oratory became the constant criterion for ministry and education: home, school, parish, and a playground for every child.

Christians know the experience of joy and suffering in their lives. The trials of life, while one understands the mystery of the Cross and being part of the sufferings of Christ (cf. Col 1:24), are a prelude to the joy and hope to which faith leads: "when I am weak, then I am strong "(2 Cor 12:10). We share the appeal and the call of Pope Francis: "When we walk without the Cross, when we build without the Cross and when we confess Christ without a cross, we are not disciples of the Lord; we are worldly; we may be Bishops, Priests, Cardinals, Popes but not disciples of the Lord. My desire is that everyone, after these days of grace, will have the courage, the courage just to walk in the Lord's presence, with the Cross of the Lord; to build the Church on the Blood of the Lord, shed on the Cross, and to confess the only glory: Christ Crucified. And so the Church will go on”.

Published 28/03/2013