MESSAGES OF THE RECTOR MAJOR
(ANS - Rome) - On the occasion of the Feast Day of Don Bosco, yesterday, 31 January, the Rector Major, Fr Ángel Fernández Artime, offered his traditional message to young people. The central theme for this year’s message, given the circumstances the entire world is experiencing, is to look upon the world with a gaze of joy and hope for life, Christian and Salesianly inspired.
Dear readers and friends, this January issue coincides with the great worldwide celebration of Don Bosco’s feast on January 31. And there is something else:
Greetings, dear friends and readers. Today, on the eve of Christmas, I want to share with you a dialogue between a grandmother and her granddaughter. This is a grandmother who knows and understands the human heart from the wealth of experience she has gained from walking the road of life:
Dear friends of Don Bosco and his charism, I greet you almost at the end of 2020, this year which we have lived through and which we will remember as a hard year, painful in many ways. It is a year that has changed us – without intending to have done so – in our lifestyle, habits, and customs perhaps but, certainly, at least, in the rhythm of our personal, family, and community life. While thinking about all that a year means, I pondered on something that I keep very much in my heart. I don’t know if it is due to how I was raised or to my own nature but I have engraved into my very being the need to give thanks constantly and to be grateful for the so very many things that I receive in my life as a free gift, having nothing to do with personal merit. I don’t know if others feel this way. Maybe other people consider that everything they have is owed to them, even life itself, but this is not how I feel.