Giving attention to the family, the cradle of life and love and where one first learns to become human

Giving attention to the family, the cradle of life and love and where one first learns to become human Reasons for and some notes on the 2006 STRENNA

“Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you with great anxiety”. “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”. But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them.

His mother stored up all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom, and in years and in divine and human favour” (Lk 2: 48-52)

150 years after the death of Mamma Margaret, mother of the educative family created by Don Bosco at Valdocco, we renew our commitment: Ensuring that special attention be given to the family, the cradle of life and love and where one first learns to become human.

Beginning with the positive lived experience of family life and spirit in order to arrive at “family today” as a mission field. This is so that the lived charismatic experience can shed light on the reality and show us a way of acting which, from an educational and pastoral perspective, will always be at the benefit of young people and society.

Mamma Margaret’s person is much loved, admired and venerated by all the groups in the Salesian Family, anxiously awaiting her Beatification. The 150th anniversary of her death is a time when we can make her better known.

Especially for the role she played in Don Bosco’s human and Christian formation.

Her motherly presence in Valdocco certainly did much to achieve the atmosphere of familiarity that existed there.

For us, then, “family” is above all a charismatic experience before it becomes a mission field, a lived experience before becoming an apostolate.

In his pastoral programme for the Church at the beginning of the Third Millennium, John Paul II made the family one of his priority issues.

“At a time in history like the present, special attention must also be given to the pastoral care of the family, particularly when this institution is facing a radical and widespread crisis…” (NMI, 47).

Benedict XVI too gives great importance to this reality: “One crucial question that demands of us the maximum pastoral attention…”

This is a theme already taken up the the Common Mission Statement of the Salesian Family: “The members of the Salesian Family assume a specific commitment for giving dignity and solidity to the family, so that it becomes, in an ever more evident manner, “a small Church, a domestic Church” (art. 17 and art. 18).

Besides, in 2006, providentially, we have the 25th anniversary of “Familiaris Consortio”, which will help guide us in relaunching our ministry to families.

The atmosphere of secularisation affects its ability to justify its proper nature and to carry out its mission on behalf of society.

Different models of family, each having equal rights with the other… … to the extent where it appears there is no longer any objective point of reference.

“Some pharisees came, and to test him they asked: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them: “What did Moses command you?” They said: “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her”. Jesus said to them: “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you” ….

… “But from the beginning of creation God created them male and female; for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together let no-one separate» (Mk 10: 2-9).

Here we have a text which throws much light on things, because it makes us see Jesus’ reasoning, in the context of the Creator’s original plan.

The strenna is accompanied by a Pastoral proposal for Salesians

Giving attention to the family, the cradle of life and love and where one first learns to become human