Salesian Youth To Youth Ministry

15. A Home: for belonging... A School: for learning... What we need to create for all young people is… A Playground: for fun… A Church: for praying... Salesian Youth Ministry

Editor's Notes

St Ambrose - Leaders' Workshop 11/23/09 Youth to Youth: Salesian Style
St Ambrose - Leaders' Workshop 11/23/09 Youth to Youth: Salesian Style So let us take a look at this Oratorian heart. It has four sectors or valves that pump out the life and energy of love from us as we go about our daily tasks. All four need to be functioning well if we are living our spirituality deeply and consciously.
St Ambrose - Leaders' Workshop 11/23/09 Youth to Youth: Salesian Style This corresponds to the way we create a sense of home in all we do and in the places we live and work. Just as in the Oratory in Valdocco Don Bosco wanted the place to be a ‘home’ for the young people, so are we called to create in the people we live and work with a sense of belonging, as sense in which all feel at home, at ease in our presence. This presupposes that we are working hard to belong to ourselves and interestingly enough to belong to our God. There is no way that I can create a home environment unless I truly feel at home with myself. Think about what it is like to move into a new room or a new office or a new house. I can bring in easy chairs and put pictures on the walls, I can have music playing and set out all the belongings that are special to me. If my heart is heavy however, if I am still living in the memory of the old house or office or room then nothing I can do will make me feel at home. A sense of belonging is something much deeper than external furnishings. A sense of belonging is something I gain when I know that I am loved and appreciated and valued for who I am. It is something that rises in my heart and speaks to me of acceptance and warmth. This is what we are called on to do with this part of our Oratorian heart. We are called to love those around us in such a way that we give them a sense of being welcomed, of being accepted for who they are and of being valued for what their presence in the group or the classroom or the camp or the youth center or the parish contributes to the whole. It is indeed the sense of belonging which turns a house or apartment into a ‘home’. I think this is why today we often hear about the ‘homeless’ as meaning those without a roof over their heads, or those who have made the street their home. I wonder and reflect often on the many young people who I have worked with who live in houses and apartments but are home-less, are without that sense of being loved and accepted for who they are. This is a vital work in living out our Salesian spirituality.
St Ambrose - Leaders' Workshop 11/23/09 Youth to Youth: Salesian Style This part of our Salesians Oratorian heart expresses the way we view life as a school , as the place where we can learn the lessons that life needs to teach us. School, in Salesian terms is never just about books knowledge and understanding. It is always about the capacity to see the events of each and every day as capable of teaching us something about our faith, about our God. To create a school then skills are taught and learnt. These are usually skills that equip us for life and for the tasks and responsibilities we are called on to carry out. School is the place where we grow in confidence in our ability to take each day as it comes and make within it a valuable contribution to those with whom we live and to the society we are immersed in. In terms of our Salesian spirituality this valve is a little more subtle. It is that part of our lived faith that enables us to reflect on our experiences and see God at work in what has happened, in what is happening and in what will happen. This needs a basic belief that our God is indeed a God who walks with us, even walks towards us in the events that unfold each and every day and in the experiences that are offered to us as part of the fabric of our human story. It is about a way of approaching life with the eyes of one who can learn from each and every moment. This is difficult enough for us but even more difficult for our young people, distracted as they are by so many opposing and contradictory signs and experiences around them in their culture. We are people who believe in life and love life enough to want to live it to the full. But it cannot stop just with us, we are people who want others to view their lives from the perspective of what can or have we learnt today. This is a key factor in our work with the young, getting them to love their lives enough that they will want to give thanks to the Lord of life who calls them to the fullness of life each and every day.
St Ambrose - Leaders' Workshop 11/23/09 Youth to Youth: Salesian Style Don Bosco’s Oratory was, above all, a church. However it was not one fashioned after the church’s of the locality. Don Bosco in fact gathered together the boys who did not go to Church. Before we were even talking of ‘unchurched’ young people, Don Bosco already perceived the need to gather together young people who were not crossing the threshold of the local churches. He provided a place and a space and in the first instance also took care to explain the meaning of the words of the scriptures to them. This is a vital factor in understanding what our Salesian spirit is really all about. The idea that Church is that which provides us with meaning and purpose is a difficult one to fathom if we restrict the idea of Church to the four walls of a building. Indeed if we do this then we choose to ignore the fact that church is about the task of making Jesus present in the world through her mission to serve, especially the poor in Jesus’ name. Church indeed is that combination of place, space and action that enables Jesus presence to be acknowledged and spread to the furthest ends of the earth. Just like Salesian Spirituality itself, Church has this combination or integration, what we called previously this unity of spirit and action, of prayer and politics and even of worship and witness. This needs to be understood in order to fathom what it means to have our hearts beating with love for the church so as to create that sense of church everywhere we go and in everything we do. This section of the heart then calls us to continually give meaning and purpose to our lives because we have found and continue to find meaning and purpose in Jesus. It is not so much then about getting people into church as being church, being a person who witnesses to others the fact that I have beliefs and I live in a certain way because of those beliefs. This is an essential factor in the overall experience of the Oratory and therefore vital to us who desire to live with an Oratorian heart. We are called to seek meaning in our own lives so that we can bring meaning to those around us. We do this not singly, or at least not solely in as an individual but rather as a group of people, a community of meaning makers who gather together in order to uphold each other in our search for meaning and purpose. This, in essence, is what church really is – this and the recognition that Jesus is the one in whom we find meaning and from that meaning take heart – take courage in living out our lives as an expression of his presence, his body in the world. The challenge here is then to become presence of Christ for others by being people who seek to find meaning in our ordinary everyday lives and bring that sense of meaning and purpose to all those we meet .
St Ambrose - Leaders' Workshop 11/23/09 Youth to Youth: Salesian Style Known in the Oratory as the playground this is probably the section of the Oratorian heart that needs to beat loudest and pump the most energy into our being Salesian wherever we are. This is the part of us that continues to reach out to others and to reach out to them in love. It is the part of us that needs to recognize that others also give us the energy to continue trying to love in the way we are called to love. Often I sense that in this section of the heart we are continually called on to work to keep the valve open. Very easily and perhaps even all too easily can we let the artery leading to this section of our heart become encrusted with all sorts of blockages. At times we feel we are not getting the response we were expecting when we reach out in love, so we allow a little resentment to build up. Soon resentment builds on resentment and we are faced with a situation where towards that particular person or group we have no way of reaching out. And this is sad. It was what caused the sadness for Don Bosco as he looked at his Salesian in the dream and saw them on the periphery of the playground. Their artery was blocked and therefore they did not get involved. They just let the play continue and they certainly did not show the young people that they were all that interested in what they were doing. Salesian Spirituality needs this characteristic of moving out towards the other and needs it very badly. Salesian Spirituality relies on this getting involved in things, of being in the midst of things in order to be present to those around us. Too often in our present day society we are almost programmed to stand back and not get involved. Yet, for us who are drawn to love with an Oratorian heart then we are truly asked to be in the midst and be a person in the midst who makes things happen, even extraordinary things in the ordinary of human relationships. I guess it calls on us to live intensely, to live compassionately, with that ‘passion’ of one who loves and loves and loves. Oftentimes intensity that we feel in people can draw our energies away from us. I sense this is because it is an intensity born of need. Compassion is most definitely not a needy intensity, but rather the intensity that provides the ‘spark’ for others to feel the fire of love burning within us
St Ambrose - Leaders' Workshop 11/23/09 Youth to Youth: Salesian Style The heart then becomes the place where God’s love finds a home in us. From our hearts we then work to create spaces and places for the young to find a home in God. This is why the place, or environment we create for the young is so important. It is not about walls and rooms, it is about making the young feel at home, feel at ease, feel they can express themselves even when their hearts are heavy with sadness or tense with anxiety and confusion. To this place and space for the heart Don Bosco gave the name “Oratory”. Interestingly enough until he began his work with the young an Oratory was conceived as a place of prayer, gathering together to serve the parish. Even today that meaning would be the predominant one. I think the term Oratory for the origin of the Salesian ‘work’ is extremely fitting. For Don Bosco the love of God expressed in prayer extended to his work with the young. His work with the young, on the other hand, became the place and space where he met God, where his day-to-day existence found God’s love, savored God’s love and allowed that love to overflow into life. This is the challenge that Don Bosco leaves to each one of us. We need to make our being with the young also our place of prayer. The relationship we build with God through our prayer is reflected in and lived out through our relationships with the young. If Salesian Spirituality then is a matter of the heart, the heart of the matter is that we begin to live with the kind of heart that Don Bosco had. It is a call to live our lives with an Oratorian heart.
St Ambrose - Leaders' Workshop 11/23/09 Youth to Youth: Salesian Style
St Ambrose - Leaders' Workshop 11/23/09 Youth to Youth: Salesian Style

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Editor's Notes