(ANS – Rome) – The Salesian Biblical association (ABS) has sought to stand with and throw light on the period that the Congregation is going through by offering a reflection on the radical dimension which is characteristic of following Christ, both in the Gospel tradition and in its embodiment in the life and Salesian mission today. This is why “Witnesses to the radical approach of the Gospel: a biblical and Salesian reflection” has gone to the press now.

The text, published in Italian (Elledici), Spanish (Editorial CCS) and English (Kristu Jyoti Publications), has been edited by Salesian biblical scholars Frs Juan José Bartolomé, and Rafael Vicent and, for the English version, Fr Shaji Joseph Puykunnel as well.

The book brings together various contributions with a strong biblical and Salesian emphasis on the topic of the Gospel’s radical approach, “an aspect” that “does not just join others but is rather a fundamental dimension of our life”.  This fine initiative is not something new: since it began in 1983, the ABS has shared the Congregation’s journey, contributing reflections and offering choices based on the Word of God and the daily experience of the Salesian charism.

This time the theme for GC27, the radical approach of the Gospel, needed to be given special attention. The notion in itself is rather recent and its precise content has yet to be firmly determined; and although it is readily applied to consecrated life, it is not exclusively so.  Furthermore, Salesians practise and give witness to the Gospel’s radical nature through “work and temperance”, which is precisely “the Salesian way of understanding and practising this radical Gospel approach”. 

The first part, the larger part, presents this radical approach in its two essential dimensions: firstly as Jesus, Paul and Don Don Bosco personally put it into practice, and then as an unconditional demand in practice for their disciples.

• The Jesus of the Gospels, his personal example and the demanding pedagogy he adopted with his followers, is the dominant reason for the reflection offered in the first section: Jesus of Nazareth’s radical life.
• The second and shorted part focuses on an apostolic radical style, which we find in Paul, the apostle par excellence.
• The Salesian radical style is the topic for the third part, which attempts to present the concrete  – we could say charismatic way – in which Salesian live out their radical life. And we find this happening first of all in Don Bosco.

The second part offers a biblical and Salesian reflection on the motto “work and temperance”. Taking its inspiration from the great New testament envoys (Jesus, Paul, the Twelve), Fr Jordi Latorre presents Salesian work as apostolic activity which brings about God’s salvation. But it is a work carried out through temperance, a virtue with deep biblical roots, as Fr Mario Cimosa illustrates. In the closing contribution Fr Morand Wirth proposes once more a Salesian understanding of the classic ‘work and temperance’, looking back over the magisterium of the Rectors Major, from Fr Rua to Fr Chávez.

Published 13/02/2014