Letter to all Salesians Past Pupils
from the new World Delegate
Prot. 09/0219
Rome, February 16th , 2009
Dear Provincials,
Salesian confreres, Directors, Confederal
President, Confederal Vice-Presidents, General Secretary, Confederal Treasurer,
Confederal Councillors, Past Pupils and priests.
It is my pleasure to address you with my first communication letter of
animation as World Delegate of Don Bosco’s Past Pupils.
When I was appointed in June 2008 by the Rector Major Don Pascual Chávez
Villanueva for this position, I
told myself that I was not worthy of such a distinction, since I was to be
responsible for the animation of the most precious fruit of the educational and
pastoral work of the Salesians of Don Bosco.
I have accepted the challenge because I know that I am not alone since
all the alumni of the world will unite to make our association stronger and to
continue to grow in awareness of belonging to the great Salesian Family under
the animation of our Rector Major. Indeed we are members of a “great movement
of people for the salvation of our youth.
On behalf of the Rector Major, the association, and myself, I want to
thank Don Jerónimo Monteiro for the wonderful work he has done in the past six
years as Alumni World Delegate. May the good Lord and Mary Help of Christians
assist him on his new assignment in his Province. We truly love him and appreciate the work he has done.
I am willing to visit the nations, the regions and all the provinces to
follow up and to study the diverse realities of our alumni.
Since I have to organize the animation visits program I ask you to
present the applications on time.
Article 28, letter “b” of the statutes of the Alumni World
Confederation of Don Bosco, declares that as World Delegate, is called to
perform my duties through “letters, personal contacts, and visits in which he
studies the diverse local situations of life and work”.
Formation is fundamental, that is why the statutes state that the World
Delegate, “is directly responsible for the permanent formation of the Past
Pupils an especially that of the young past pupils”. I will take care of the publications and the materials for the
cultural and spiritual formation of the alumni. I will also “keep the Rector Major and the Council for the
Salesian Family updated on the progress both of the Confederation and of the
various National and Provincial Federations, while in turn welcoming their
advice for this mission in the Federation and receive from them orientations”.
I am committed by all means to make the Association grow in fostering the
identity and unity of its members.
I am aware that the identity of the members of the association comes as a
result of the education received, as stated by the statutes:
“Don Bosco’s alumni are those who have attended an oratory, a school
or any other Salesian centre, and thus received a preparation for life based on
the principles of Don Bosco’s Preventive System”.
(1,a).
The Salesian General Chapter XXII defines the belonging of the alumni to
the Salesian Family and it is ratified on article 5 of the Constitutions.
And the reason given for this belonging is the education received; it
means that education as a fact gives birth in the alumni different levels of
participation in the Salesian Mission Worldwide.
I am convinced that the most valuable resource of our association is its
members, and that’s why we must ensure their human, Christian and Salesian
growth which means also growth in commitment and sense of belonging to the
Association of the Salesian Family.
For what was previously stated above I make a call first to myself
and then to the Confederate Council
or assembly, to the Confederate Presidency with all its members, to the
Confederate Committee and its members and all the alumni worldwide that we concentrate our best efforts on important aspects
such as the following:
Don Bosco took good care of his past pupils. The beginning can be dated as June 24th, 1870 when
they celebrated his feast day. On
that occasion a dozen of past students got together for the celebration which
through the years became a feast of gratitude.
It was in the year 1878 that Don Bosco proposed to his past pupils a
mutual help society to face the difficulties of life.
Don Felipe Rinaldi was the great organizer and the inspiration of the
Association; and its structure came up with the first international Alumni
Congress in the year 1911, as a federation of the diverse local unions, groups
and societies. Up to that moment it
was known as “Past Pupils Association” afterwards it will be known as Don
Bosco’s Alumni Association.
In the year 2011, we will celebrate the Association centennial.
It is a great opportunity to revive it, and to strengthen it so that each
member renews his belonging and commitment to it.
It is a wonderful occasion to initiate an evaluation at World, National,
and especially local levels. Without
any doubt the renovation of statutes will constitute a move that will promote
the rejuvenating of our group.
We have ahead of us the revision of the association statutes.
A job we have to face with seriousness and responsibility.
We need to actualize our statutes, to respond to the new realities that
will help us re-establish the association as it should be.
Abraham Lincoln used to say “The dogmas of the peaceful past do not
always serve for the tempestuous present”.
We need to reconsider our things. We
need not only to develop a new mentality; we are also called to establish new
tools and abilities.
I am sure that the experience with the revision of the statutes
will generate a new Pentecost for the association.
It will help us to inject the passion of Don Bosco in each alumnus and to
rejuvenate the local centres in so much need of a new spring season.
The statutes will help us to re-inforce our identity, build our unity and
to ensure a dynamic and functional structure in our association. And it is in
the local centres where the association could evaluate the fruits of the
education received from the Salesians.
If we want better and important improvements let’s work together
with new paradigms. There is one
single general explanation as to why there are so many people that are not
satisfied with their work and that the majority of the organizations are
incapable of taking advantage of their talents, creativity, and the human
resources and never become great and long lasting organizations. The reason has to do with an incomplete paradigm of who we
are, and of our fundamental conception of the human nature.
Human beings are not simple things that we should motivate and control.
The most fundamental reality is that human beings have four dimensions:
body, mind, heart, and spirit; reality that leads us to the fundamental pillars
of the preventive system: Amability,
Reason, and Religion.
The problem is that if we neglect some of the four parts of human nature,
we transform the persons into things; and, what is it we do with things?
We should control and guide them. Only
those who see themselves respected as whole persons choose one of these three
superior choices: pleasant
cooperation, genuine compromise, and creative passion.
I consider that one of the ways to respect and value the diverse reality
of our alumni around the world, is to think of some general statutes and
regional or provincial directories. The
Directory consists of a document that gathers practices and procedures proper of
a Region and Province about the being and the doing of the Alumni.
This will help with the unity and solidity of the Association.
The measure to which we live our Salesian charism that is distinguished
by family spirit, closeness, brotherhood and friendship, the more we’ll be
able to give answers to these dimensions of human
being.
This will contribute to potentiate participation, commitment, discipline
and passion in the local centres. Basically
we are talking about the attitudes that make Don Bosco’s Preventing System a
dynamic one.
Strengthening the
organizational structure will give the Association solidity, maturity, and
significativity, and above all, will ensure it’s permanence in time.
We shall look for the way to strengthen the direction, the accompaniment
the local animation; and above all, we shall look for practicality and
functionality so that it will help to keep the members cohesive.
The director of the Salesian community or whom ever he delegates together with the directive of the
alumni will put particular effort
to ensure the solidity that the Association is called to achieve.
The structure of the association will guide each member to see the person
through the lens of his potential and his acts; in other words, it will guide us
to live the pedagogy of the optimism proper of Don Bosco’s Preventive System.
The General
Chapter 26 is a document for the Salesians; the lines on it are the fruit of
consultations, studies, analysis and reflections of the Salesian family from
around the world. I consider that
these constatations and determinations in relation to the knowledge of the
person, pedagogy and the spirituality of the Saint of the Youth can illuminate
us at the times of making decisions for the future of our association;
and above all, in relation to the achievement of strengthening and
intensively living our identity.
This will ensure an impact that will generate changes and transformations
around the world, in the regions and in the countries where alumni are present.
The CG 26
states in the first line of action of the first nucleus that to go back to Don
Bosco, we have to, “commit to love, study, imitate and to let Don Bosco be
known, so we can start from him again” (8).
The alumni should continue to deepen the knowledge of our Father in order
to act with the passion that moved him. This
will imply to go from “a superficial knowledge of Don Bosco, to a committed
serious study of the history, pedagogy, pastoral and spirituality of our
Father…”(7) Depending on how
deep is the knowledge of the Father of the youth we will love him and imitate
him more. Our unity bonds with the
Salesian Family will deepen more each day and we will really become a “large
movement of people for the salvation of the youth.
In any moment of
each human being the interior fire gets weak. (7b) But then an encounter with
another human being, with God, will burst into flames.
We all should be grateful to those people and to God because they will
make the interior spirit come alive.
In the other hand,
we must be clear that the important problems that we confront cannot be solved
at the same thinking level that we were when we created them.
5.
Some
ways of participation of the alumni in Don Bosco’s mission.
The
majority of the proposals I am making, I have taken them from the circular
letter of the Rector Major Don Egidio Viganó to the Salesians about Don
Bosco’s Alumni dated March 19, 1987. After
reading the comments made by him I realize that they can be applied today and
that is why I am presenting them to you again.
a)
The permanent formation of the associates.
Who doesn’t form,
stagnates and stops the development process and institutional growth.
The lack of formation makes us afraid, takes us to adhere to structures,
experiences, practices and paradigms that were good in the past, but has lost
strength and tells nothing to society today.
Formation is a job
inherent in the education received. It
will help to achieve the objectives of the association:
“ To conserve and develop the principles that were at the base of
his(her) formation in order to convert them in authentic life commitments “ is
the job of each member. We should establish itineraries and formative plans
adapted to the realities of the alumni of the world.
b)
The
unity and solidarity among the members themselves and with the Salesian Family.
The title of
belonging to for reason of education easily bonds the association to all members
of the Salesian Family, but with a special way to the four groups founded by Don
Bosco. The union of the Association of the Alumni with these four groups of the
Salesian Family will become a challenge for the coming years.
To attend the national encounters convocated by the Salesian family
and to participate in common projects with the groups of the family will help us
to increase unity. In conclusion,
the challenge is to form ourselves together, grow together, and share
educational and pastoral projects.
The unity with the
Rector Major and his teaching and directives is fundamental.
He is the Father of the Salesian Family and as such, he will guide us.
Our relationships
will improve and get closer when we try to serve together our family,
other families, an organization, a community, or any other human group.
The best way for an
alumnus to live in charity is through the union and solidarity with the members.
Don Bosco used to say: “ make sure that this benefit is not limited to
us, but that it is to be extended to the youth of good conduct that comes out of
the oratory, the fellow members that you know and everyone gathered here”
(Biographic Memory, 13, pag. 758).
We will establish
strategies to attract those alumni that for whatever reason have kept a
distance.
c)
Work
for the stability and the family rights.
Today more
than ever the family system has been battered and weakened by the world crisis.
Of course the consequences of such crisis are evident:
rupture of matrimonial union, children living on the streets, increase of
delinquency, etc.
To fight this
situation we must defend and promote the rights and the family values.
The work shall be initiated within our own family.
Involvement in the church’s movements that looks for the strengthening
of the couples relationship and the family.
The Holy Father Benedict XVI on his speech to the audience that he
offered to the members of the General Chapter pointed out emphatically:
“your youth pastoral should open up with decision to the pastoral
family ”. (Speech of Benedict XVI
to the Capitulars, page 181).
d)
The
education and evangelization of the youth.
The CG 26 states that, “It is always Don Bosco who urges us to
face with audacity the youth challenges and to give courageous answers to
today’s education crisis, by implementing a vast movement of forces for the
benefit of the youth ”(CG 26, 2).
The alumni out of
consideration for the urgency of the youth problem of our time, try to develop
to the maximum suitable activities to raise their interest into the diverse
social apostolic action fields; feed
their initiatives and help them to assume responsibilities at all levels.
We are called to create educational opportunities on behalf of our youth
or add them to others that already exist.
For the
Salesian carism the education can not be separated from the evangelization and
vice versa. To evangelize is an
urgent call for the alumni.
The message
of the Synod about the Word enhances four icons that the alumni must keep in mind on
their work: The voice of the Word: Revelation;
the Face of
the Word: Christ; the House of the Word: the Church: the
way of the Word: the
Mission.
e)
To care for the alumni when they are about to finish the formative
curriculum.
To
establish contact with the alumni that are about to finish the arch of their
formation in the Salesian house and to motivate them so they can be part of the
association. To express to them the advantages of joining the association and to
take actions in this regard so as establishing
a data bank with the electronic and physical addresses of the alumni of the
local and national centres for follow up and
inviting them to activities
proper of the centre or civic feast days of the country.
Establish a national or provincial means
of communication as stated by the statutes (cfr. 36, a-d)
The future of
the alumni association lay in the animation and the follow up of the members in
the local centres.
Don Egidio
Viganó, past Rector Major, points out in the circular letter dated March 19,
1987: “We know how much Don Bosco
loved his students. At the end of
their education he did not forget them; he
followed them up, helped them,
invited them, welcomed them ,received them, comforted them, continued
counselling them, warned them if
necessary and he was always
preoccupied of their wellbeing, specially the spiritual wellbeing .
f)
The Volumtariate and the alumni.
The voluntariate is a
wonderful proposal for the alumni to live the solidarity within and outside the
association. Some of the existing
structures in the Salesian Family could be used by the alumni as a place where
they share their talents, time and lives with social groups, particularly the
youth that requires the company and the witness to life in service.
It is a great opportunity for the young members of the association to
discover their vocation of service to others in the church and in the society.
g)
The Social communication media and the Association.
I am aware that there
are many alumni in the world working in the social communication media.
It is important to remind those who are working in this professional
field that they are youth educators, defenders of family values, representatives
of the Salesian Family and children of the church whom they should love, defend
and take care off. For those who
are not working in the field but
have the opportunity to do so, do not hesitate and do it by giving the
best of themselves to others, specially the conviction of being sons of Don
Bosco and members of the Salesian Family. It
is fundamental today to educate in Christian and human values
Conclusion
The alumni are called
to develop their leadership to influence positively in today’s society.
On one occasion Warren Bernis said; “Leadership is the capacity to
translate the vision into reality”. Today
we want to make the goal of unity, the strengthening at world level and local
level, especially of the association, into reality.
Leadership creates an atmosphere that entices people to “wanting to
do” instead of “having to do”.
We seek by all
means, that all the alumni become the fertile transformers of the world and the
society that “want to do”. To
achieve this we need only to be an Institution with members that have the
vision, discipline, passion, and conscience.
The vision is to see with the
eye of the mind what it is possible in people, in projects, in the causes and
the association. Theodor M.
Hesburgh, Rector of the University of Notre Dame used to say; “The true
essence of leadership is to have vision; we should not play an indecisive
trumpet”. Discipline
is the price to pay to bring that vision into reality.
The discipline emerges when the vision is united to the commitment.
To continue strengthening the commitment in the Association is a
necessity. In relations and organizations, passion includes compassion. Conscience is the
interior moral sense of what is good and what is bad, the impulse towards
meaning and doing. Is the force
that guides the vision, the discipline, and the passion.
When the conscience
governs the vision, the discipline, and the passion, leadership endures and
changes the world for good. The
challenge for the alumni is to be men and women of conscience to change the
world. The key to create the
passion in our lives is to discover our personal vocation. It is fundamental that we know ourselves before deciding what
is the work we want to do.
The conscience
gives the why, the vision identifies the what (what are we trying to achieve),
the discipline represents the how (the way how to achieve it) and the passion
represents the force of the feelings (sentiments) behind the why, the what, and
the how.
When we don’t
know where to go, we can take any trail to reach anywhere, but we the alumni
know where we are going, that is why we take the road that will take us to the
goal we want to reach: unity, growth, strengthening, witnessing, and identity.
In human
interactions there are five emotional cancers that generate metastasis of
cancerous cells in people and in occasions in whole cultures that the alumni
have to avoid by all means.
The consequences are disastrous: the
association could be so polarized, so divided, that it could be almost
impossible to offer systematically a high quality to its members and to reach
their own objectives. These cancers
are: criticism, complaints, comparison, competition, and dispute.
Mahatma Gandhi used to say” a man can not act correctly in life on one
place and act incorrectly on another. Life
as a whole is indivisible”.
The majority
of lay or religious organizations affected by problems have developed a
functional blindness to their own defects.
They do not suffer not because they can not solve their problems, but
because they can not see them. Einstein
expressed it this way: “ The important problems we face can not be solved at
the same thinking level we were when we caused them”.
Look ahead, alumni!
The association needs you and needs us.
Let’s give what we have and what we are in order to be big and strong
to carry on Don Bosco’s mission as members of the Salesian Family.
May the Lord Jesus,
Mary Help of Christians, San John Bosco, and Blessed Felipe Rinaldi assist us
always in the realization of the mission we have received as alumni in the
Salesian family.
With love in Saint John Bosco, your brother and friend,
P.
José Pastor Ramírez