The text, which could not fail to refer several times also to St Francis de Sales, a model of the pastor for Don Bosco and himself linked to the spread of devotion to the Heart of Jesus, opens with an ardent exaltation of the Eucharist, and the quotation taken precisely from St Francis de Sales of the Eucharist as the ‘Love of Loves’, the greatest gift received by humanity, superior even to the noblest acts performed by Jesus in his earthly life.
The author emphasises how Christ himself, before instituting the Sacrament, wished to prepare an understanding of it through the multiplication of the loaves and a discourse delivered in the synagogue at Capernaum. And this is because Jesus' entire life, he explains, tends towards this culminating gesture of love, in which he gives himself entirely to humanity.
Then lamenting - already at the end of the 19th century! –that many Christians are moving away from frequent Communion which is the very soul of Christianity, Don Bosco cites and recalls the Dream of the Two Pillars, reiterating that for a true believer ‘there is no true Catholicism without Our Lady and the Eucharist’: Mary as the mother of faith and the Eucharist as its fulfilment are thus reaffirmed in one fell swoop.
In the continuation of the text, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is presented as the privileged way to renew love, faith in the Sacrament of the Eucharist and in general to relaunch Christian life and life in general. ‘Shall we infuse this weak and sluggish society with a principle of strength, virtue and valour, this rotten and gangrenous society with a powerful breath of chastity, of incorruption, of immortality? Let us ardently promote and practise devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus!’
Observing how devotion to the Heart of Jesus and to the Eucharist is a sure viaticum for growth in faith and holiness of life, St Francis de Sales is again proposed as a model, who passed on to his Visitation Sisters - the Order of the Visitation of St Mary, which he founded - a profound veneration for the Eucharist, aware that through it God dwells ‘familiarly and intimately with us’ and perfects the human being.
The Church too, it is added, recognises the link between the Eucharist and devotion to the Sacred Heart, so much so that in granting liturgical approval to the relative feast, the Holy See explicitly declared that it served to make the love of Christ manifested in the sacrifice and in the Sacrament shine forth.
Lastly, taking the reflection from the highest theological heights to the real concreteness of needs and practical necessities for pastoral work, Don Bosco once again invites support for the construction of the Sacred Heart Church in Rome, so that it may become the beating heart of this devotion throughout the Church.
Particularly noteworthy is that in this article of April 1886 he also added to the appeal in favour of the sacred building the appeal for a hospice for young people, pointing out that the Esquiline district where the church and hospice were to be built was inhabited by many young people without guidance, and adding that where pagan temples had once stood, the time had come to build a Christian institute that would form ‘sentinels destined to watch over for the glory of the true God and the salvation of souls’.
The full text of the article written for the Salesian Bulletin of 1886 is available in the original Italian version of the time, at the bottom of the page.
