Interrupting the life of a city is always an extraordinary act. Filling the streets with young people from all corners of the world is a moving memory. A World Youth Day is this and much more.

The organisation of a WYD requires so many hours of work, putting all kinds of resources at the disposal of young people. If it bears spiritual fruit in proportion to the effort, it will have been worth it, all for an educational, communicative and evangelising reason: the objective of an event like this is to make Jesus Christ known to a large number of young people, and to succeed in making them understand that following Him is a sure way to find happiness.

It is to young people that we must look with particular fondness these days and discover the secret of a surprising phenomenon: a “silent revolution” is taking place in the world of youth, whose biggest stage is the World Youth Days. Young people who raise questions among Christians and are not afraid to show themselves as such, young people who do not want to be intimidated let alone deceived, young people who bring enthusiasm and passion to bring about change.

These meetings continue to surprise both inside and outside the Church. And they are a snapshot of a youth that is very different from the one proposed by some, thirsting for values, searching for the deeper meaning of life, with a desire for a different world than the one we found when we arrived.

Today, a significant percentage of WYD participants come from very different family, social and cultural backgrounds. Many of these young pilgrims have no Christian reference points in their own contexts. In this sense, the lives of many of them resemble surfing: they cannot expect to change the wave, but they adapt to it to direct the board where they want it to go. These radiant faces of the Church wake up every day with the desire to be better followers of Jesus among their family, friends and acquaintances.

Young people have the strength to give their best, but they need to know that this commitment is doable, they need the complicity of adults, they need to believe that this struggle is neither sterile nor doomed to failure. For this reason, the days are a way for young people to experience synodality, the particular style that characterises the life and mission of the Church. Belonging to their local church community implies belonging to a much larger and universal community. A community in which we need everyone, young and old, to ‘take charge of the world’.

For this, it is necessary to cultivate certain attitudes for this new synodal spirituality. WYD allows us to:
– share the small stories of others, experiencing the courage to speak freely and bring to the table deep conversations that come from within;
– learn to grow together with others and appreciate how we are adding to each other, even if at different “speeds” (styles, ages, visions, cultures, gifts, charisms and ministries in the Church);
– to take care of the “community green spaces” for our relationship with God, to take care of our connection with the source of life, with the One who takes care of us, to root our trust and our hopes in Him, to unload our worries on Him, to be able to “take charge” of the mission He leaves in our hands;
– to accept and welcome our fragility, which connects us to the fragility of our world and mother Earth;
– to be a voice that joins with many others to denounce the excesses that are currently being committed against the Planet and to take common actions that contribute to the emergence of a more responsible and ecological citizenship;
– to reorient pastoral processes together from a more open and inclusive perspective, making us ready to “go out to meet” all young people where they are, and to make visible and real the desire to be a “Church on the move” that reaches out to believers and non-believers alike, and to become a travelling companion for those who want or need it.

In short, a synodal Church that fosters a change of heart and mind that enables us to approach our mission in JESUS WAY. An invitation to feel within us the touch and gaze of Jesus that always makes us new.

Official WYD 2023 website: https://www.lisboa2023.org
WYD 2023 saltisani website: https://wyddonbosco23.pt

The greatest difficulty in the service of vocation promotion today lies not so much in the clarity of ideas but in three aspects: firstly, the approach to pastoral practice; secondly, the involvement, witness and prayer of the entire educative and pastoral community and, within it, of the religious community in a “culture of vocation”.

Given the change of climate in our societies, values shift, are transmitted and sometimes camouflaged. This change seems inevitable and irreversible. However, we feel the responsibility to be proactive and to generate educative and pastoral proposals to young people that encourage their free, authentic and determined response to God’s plan. Over the past few years, much has been said and written about vocational animation in order to revitalise our efforts, recognise the new movements of the Spirit, open ourselves to the Church’s reflection and develop new understandings of vocational accompaniment and discernment.

Today, many young people ask the same questions and do not always find room for examining and exploring them. The questions come from within, as inner movements that they often do not know how to interpret or recognise. Each of us has more than once needed someone who could give us the necessary tools to move from this inner turmoil to confidence in a meaningful life project.

Similarly, by “culture of vocation” we understand an environment created by the members of an Educative and Pastoral Community (not only the religious community) which promotes the conception of life as vocation. It is an environment that allows each individual, whether believer or non-believer, to enter into a process in which they are enabled to discover their passion and goals in life. “Feeling called to something” means feeling called by a precious reality from which I can read and give meaning to my life. It implies not so much doing what we want, but discovering what we are called to be and do.

It can be said that this vocational culture has some fundamental components: gratitude, openness to the transcendent, questioning life, availability, trust in self and others, the capacity to dream and to desire, being surprised by beauty, altruism… These components are certainly the basis of any vocational approach.

But we should also speak of the specific components of this Salesian vocational culture. These are the elements which, among other things, encourage: the knowledge and appreciation of the God’s personal call (to life, to following him and to a concrete mission) and the paths of Christian life (in the world and in special consecration); the practice of discernment as an attitude of life and a means of making a life choice; the relevant aspects of the Salesian charism itself.

2. It is people who promote vocations, not structures. There is nothing more provocative than the passionate witness of the vocation that God gives to each one, only thus does the one who is called trigger, in turn, the call-in others. We Salesians must strive to make our way of living with the Lord comprehensible. All of us Salesians are heart, memory and guarantors not only of the Salesian charism, but also of our own vocation.

5. If trust in God who calls functions as a lung that gives oxygen to pastoral work for vocations, the other lung is trust in the generous hearts of young people. The hearts of our young people are made for great things, for beauty, goodness, freedom, love…, and this aspiration continually appears as an inner call in the depths of their hearts. From this perspective, we have been able to come up with two vocational approaches: the first approach focuses on the young people closest to our charism, i.e. those who, because of their links with Salesian communities and works are open to an experience of God, to meaningful community relationships and to service with the young; the second approach focuses on those who may be attracted to deepening their understanding of the Salesian vocation as a fundamental life choice.

6. Finally, to complete the map, let us not forget the promotion of the vocation of special consecration. In this proposal, a concrete aspect of vocational promotion is defined which seeks to awaken and accompany people called to a concrete form of life (the ordained ministry, their own congregation or movement), as a concrete way of following Jesus.

Today’s Church also needs the vocation of the consecrated Salesian. Perhaps we should remember that the dynamic of vocational discernment is a spiritual task enlightened by the hope of knowing the will of God; it is a humble task because it implies the awareness of not knowing, but it expresses the courage to seek, to look and to walk forward, freeing oneself from the fear of the future that is anchored to the past and that is born from the presumption of already knowing everything.

A vocation is a lifelong process, perceived as a succession of calls and responses, a dialogue in freedom between God and every human being which takes the form of a mission to be continually discovered in the various phases of life and in contact with new realities. A vocation, then, is the particular way in which a person structures their life in response to a personal call to love and serve; the way of loving and serving that God wants for each person.

Starting from Pope Francis’ words (Evangelii Gaudium, 107), we can indicate three paths to follow for coherent vocational animation: living contagious apostolic fervour, praying with insistence, and daring to propose. In short: what can we do? Pray, live and act.

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Investing in the education of youth to build the families of today and tomorrow

The education of young people is the primary task of parents, connected to the transmission of life, and a primary duty with respect to the educative task of other subjects; the role of the EPC is therefore proposed as a complement, not a substitute for the educative role of youngsters’ parents. The contribution of vocation as family, parents and couples can be identified in at least three central themes: love, life and education.

Caring for the family arouses great interest around the world. Particular attention is given to the issue through articles, scientific publications and conference documents. At the same time, the family is asked to take care of the bonds that make up the dense network that supports the person of young people in the growth process and that increases the quality of life of a community. Therefore, it is necessary to promote adequate educative-pastoral strategies to support the family, on the role it has in building interpersonal and intergenerational relationships, as well as in the overall understanding of the education and accompaniment of new generations.

In its complexity, each family is like a book that needs to be read, interpreted, and understood with great care, attention, and respect. In our contemporary society, family life has, indeed, certain conditions that expose it to weakness.

Meeting Don Bosco is a timeless journey. Following his dreams; understanding his passion for education; learning about his talent for pulling young people out of the “wrong path” to make them “good Christians and honest citizens”, to educate them in the Christian faith and social conscience, to guide them to an honest profession, is an experience of extraordinary human and familiar intensity. Don Bosco’s experience has deep roots. His life, indeed, is filled with families, a multitude of relationships, generations, youth without families, love stories and family crises, from the earliest years of his life, when he has to face the loss of his father at a very young age.

The Educative-Pastoral Community is one of the forms, if not the form, in which the family spirit is embodied. In it, the Preventive System becomes operational in a community project. As a large family that is responsible for the education and evangelization of young people in a specific territory, the EPC is the actualization of that intuition which, at the origin of the Salesian charism, Don Bosco often repeated: “I have always needed everyone’s help”. Starting from this conviction, from the earliest days of the Oratory, he built around himself a family-community that did take into account the diverse cultural, social and economic conditions of its collaborators and in which young people themselves are the protagonists.

For this reason, both locally and at a provincial level, it is necessary to start planning formative courses for operators/ educators, integrating families into the SEPP, where the educative and pastoral proposal is structured around activities in which the family is the protagonist in favour of young people. These paths must include dialogue, the methodology of family pedagogy and the Salesian Spirituality as their central core.
For this reason, it is essential for the youth ministry to redesign itself together in a vocational sense; at the same time, it is necessary to enter into the daily life of families, speak their language, remain next to the fragility of relationships and recognize the hardships present in the lives of many of them, taking care of young people without families, young families, the most fragile family situations (from poverty, inequality and vulnerability) by promoting solidarity among families. It is then essential to accompany the love of young couples/families by taking care of them and planning a good and constant formation in love for the development of every vocation.

All that has been said regarding the Salesian Youth Ministry and Family, in order to be realised, the launching of formation processes for all the members of the EPC: for consecrated Salesians and for lay people who support the development of SEPP and the Salesian Family.