The Venerable Don Bosco, the Apostle of Youth/Chapter XXIV
CHAPTER XXIV
FAILURE IN HEALTH. LETTER TO HIS CO-OPERATORS. SEMINARY OF FOREIGN MISSIONS
Don Bosco's health and strength had been slowly but perceptibly lessening for some years. A celebrated consulting physician, after a careful examination during his prolonged illness of 1884, had said of him: "Marvelous actions are reported of Don Bosco; but to me the greatest miracle is that, exhausted as he is, he is still alive."
Exhaustion! is there anything that holds pain in solution with more acute and relentless power? But the heroic sufferer was never heard to complain; his wan face, his weakened limbs, his bowed shoulders, told the story to his brethren and friends. Yet he never succumbed to weakness. Retaining to the last the direction of the Society, his solicitude for its spiritual and temporal well-being never flagged, nor his superhuman wisdom in forming projects and laying out plans for the individual and collective good of the three Salesian Orders and their world-wide charges.
The saintly founder's last long and zealous letter "To his Beloved Co-operators," contains a summary of all the year's work for the glory of God effected by the Salesian laborers. Several new foundations—in Rome, England, Austria and Ecuador, S. A.;—large accessions of property; new structures for the various educational and charitable purposes of the Institute; thousands of children added to the holy and willing burden of Fathers and Sisters; marvelous extensions of the works, especially in South America, whence letters had often come bearing sublime testimony to the power of the Holy Spirit over souls in their primeval simplicity and ignorance; letters that cause the heart to beat with new fervor and the head to bow in confusion, seeing that after years of inundation of heavenly grace we have not so gazed upon the Divine Light and so felt the power of Divine Love as have the innocent catechumens of Tierra del Fuego and other uncivilized settlements. It is a wonderful story of progress, of sacrifice and of heroic perseverance, recorded with loving zeal year after year by the saintly Monsignor Fagnano and his colleagues and disciples in the pages of the Salesian Bulletin.
Don Bosco does not conceal from his faithful friends that his life is now hanging by a fragile thread, that this will be his last word of love and counsel. Recommending to their tutelary care the Oratory just begun in Rome, adjacent to the newly-consecrated Church of the Sacred Heart, he quotes the words of Leo XIII. "Devote yourselves to the completion of the Oratory already commenced, that we may have the consolation of saving many poor children by teaching them to become good Christians and honest citizens. I bless you and all who aid your undertaking."
Don Bosco leaves his children, so dearly cherished, "four thoughts as a souvenir". These thoughts are elaborated with a wisdom drawn from the natural and supernatural experiences of nigh-fourscore years in the service of God; to my mind it is a treatise on sociology in a nutshell. First, if we wish to take real care of our own spiritual and temporal interests, we should, above all, take to heart the interests of God and procure by charity the temporal welfare of our neighbor. Secondly, if we wish to obtain favors readily from God we should practice the mandate of our Lord, Date, et dabitur vobis. Give and it shall be given to you. In the third advice he impresses forcibly upon them the truth that almsgiving is not a counsel to be dispensed with if one pleases, but a rigorous precept included in the commandments of our Divine Saviour. It is only a counsel to give away all one's possessions, as religious do who embrace voluntary poverty; but the precept Quod super est date eleemosynam, But yet of that which remaineth give alms (St. Luke XI), obliges the distribution of superfluity of property. He confirms his teachings by picturing for them the scene of the Last Day and drawing out the parable of Dives and Lazarus; then, quoting the powerful utterances of St. James, he ends with these words: "By means of charity we shut behind us the gates of hell and open those of Heaven."
His final paragraph sets the golden seal of love on this memorable letter: "I feel that I am leaving you and I foresee the day approaches when I must pay my tribute to death and descend into the grave. Should my presentiments be fulfilled and this letter be the last you receive from me, the fourth souvenir is: I recommend to your charity all the works which God has deigned to intrust to me during the last fifty years; the Christian education of youth, ecclesiastical vocations and foreign missions; I particularly recommend poor, desolate children to your care, who were always dear to my heart and who, I hope will be, through the merits of our Saviour Jesus Christ, my joy and crown in heaven. Now I invoke God's benediction on you; may He deign to pour His most precious blessings on you and yours; if my prayer is heard you will have happy lives, lives full of merit, crowned, on the day God has fixed, with the death of the just. For this end the Salesians and all pupils of our institutions unite their prayers daily with mine; and through the intercession of Our Lady, Help of Christians, and of St. Francis of Sales, we have a firm and sweet hope of being all united in eternal bliss. Have the charity to pray in your turn for me, who am, with the deepest gratitude, my well-beloved Co-operators,
Your humble and devoted servant,
Turin, December, 1887.
May we not say in all truth of the venerable servant of God what the poet, Francis Thompson, has said of the beloved titular patron of his Society:—
"He, the sweet Sales, of whom we scarcely ken
How God he could love more he so loved men."
Yet, the White Angel so near and the borderland of Heaven in view, his superhuman activities did not cease. At the College of Val Salice his dream of half a lifetime was fulfilled that year (1887) by the inauguration of the Seminary for Foreign Missions. He himself, on November 24th, in the absence of Cardinal Alimonda, gave the religious habit to three students of the seminary, respectively of France, England and Poland, and to Prince Czartorisky, heir of one of the greatest European families. The spectators could not control their emotion as Don Bosco in a feeble voice pronounced the solemn words of the ceremonial. But in his heart there was a deep sea of joy; and his pale face reflected the happiness of the new apostles, and the ardor of the Oratory students, who looked forward to a similar glory in the future.