THE IMPOSSIBLE IS GOD’S WAY

My dear friends,

We are now entering a new pastoral year. We look back and remember the celebration of the 9th  International Congress of Mary Help of Christians, which took place in Fatima with the theme  ‘I will give you the teacher’, in memory of the dream that little John Bosco had at the age of nine and which represents the inspiration and the beginning of his whole mission.

 In Fatima, we gathered in great numbers, from every continent and from different places and countries. Each of us with our own history and experience, each with our own path, but all called and wanted there by Mary and all united by feeling part of that dream that is our origin as Salesian Family.

 All of us certainly came to Fatima with a dream to get back to Mary. We came with something to offer and something to ask of Her who is mother and teacher. We certainly entrusted everything we hold close to our hearts: our children, families, friends, the suffering, the sick, our projects, our communities, ADMA and the Salesian Family.

They were intense days of prayer, rich in joy, profound in content. Filled with gratitude, we want to thank Mary once again for this immense gift and to thank all those whom She used to make this congress possible. Of the many beautiful speeches and testimonies, we would like to recall two that we hope and wish can guide our journey and our choices.

The first is that of Don Andrea Bozzolo who, in his commentary on the Dream, reminded us how ‘while bearing witness to the fascination of an encounter with God that seduces for ever, at the moment of the call, biblical men seem more to hesitate in fear before something that goes beyond  them, than to launch themselves headlong into the adventure of the mission. The turmoil that John experiences in the dream seems to be a similar experience. It stems from the paradoxical character of the mission assigned to him, which he does not hesitate to define as ‘impossible’ (“Who are you who command me what is impossible?”)... it is not on the level of natural aptitudes that the demand for the impossible is played out here, but on the level of what can be included in the horizon of reality, of what can be expected on the basis of one's own image of the world, of what falls within the limits of experience. Beyond this frontier, the region of the impossible opens up, which is, however, biblically, the space of God's action.’

Let us truly remember that nothing is impossible for the Father. The dream will carry on. “Lord ask me what you want and give me what I ask for,” said St Augustine. So, let us have courage, willingness and hope in animating the life of our groups, in offering our willingness to serve the weakest and most fragile.

The second sharing was that of Don Stefano Martoglio who began his concluding speech by saying “I take the floor, after what we have heard and experienced, to reaffirm an act of personal and institutional entrustment, according to the heart of Don Bosco and the Faith of the Church. We close these days with one of the spiritual aspects that Don Bosco perceived and lived as important on a personal level and qualifying for his work: Marian devotion. We entrust ourselves to the maternal hands of Mary. Here now, in this holy place of Mary's presence; we ask her to make fruitful in life what we have lived, prayed and listened to here” and he goes on to say “popular religiosity is the fifth essence, the distillate, of the experience of centuries that is brought to us as a gift; of which we must appropriate” and again reminding us how “Mary is, in Don Bosco's life, a perceived, loved, active and stimulating presence, aimed at the great mission of eternal salvation and holiness. He feels her close and entrusts himself to her, allowing himself to be guided and led along the paths of his vocation (he dreams of her, he ‘sees’ her). She is an operative presence: she who accompanies, supports, guides, encourages; she who was given to him: ‘I will give you the Teacher under whose discipline you can become wise, and without whom all wisdom becomes foolishness.”

We strongly reaffirm our entrustment personally and as an Association to Mary. ADMA is asked in a special way to preserve those forms of popular religiosity and that simple and yet profound devotion which makes us live with Mary present, with Mary at home, with Mary in our families. The presence of Mary, Don Stefano reminds us, “stimulates us to live consciously in the presence of God in a process of totality”: “Al pensier di Dio presente / fa” che il labbro, il cuor, la mente / di virtù seguan la via / o gran Vergine Maria. / Sac. Gio Bosco’ (prayer written by the saint at the foot of one of her pictures)’.

We wish everyone a happy time ahead.

Don Gabriel Cruz Trejo,

SDB Spiritual Animator ADMA Valdocco.

Renato Valera,

President ADMA Valdocco