Be human Be holy - The relevance of Don Bosco's spirituality for today

BE HUMAN BE HOLY – THE RELEVANCE OF DON BOSCO’S SPIRITUALITY FOR TODAY

Mario D’Couto

            Don Bosco told Dominic Savio that it is easy to be a saint. Unfortunately, Dominic Savio thought that he had to do a lot of hard penances in order to win God’s approval. So he would put hard stones under his bed or wear a hair shirt inside in order to make life tough and challenging for him. This went on for some time until Don Bosco came to know about it.

            On coming to know what Dominic Savio was doing, Don Bosco dissuaded him immediately saying that one does not have to do such things in order to please God. God does not want all those things but He certainly wants us to be loving and genuine. It is thus that for Don Bosco everybody is meant to be a saint as he would say, “God wants us to be saints and it is not difficult to be a saint.”

            Off late, I have been reading a book called “Radical Love” by Fr. Joe Mannath sdb. I must say that this is a very insightful book not just for priests and religious but also for lay people. If I could summarize this book in a few lines, it is just this that all of us  are called to follow and be like Christ no matter who we may be, where we come from, what is our ethnicity, our likes and dislikes and so on. All of us are called to love as Christ loved. Being a priest, religious or a lay person does not make one better than the other. We don’t become more holy because of ‘mere’ celibacy or joining a convent, a monastery or some religious order. At the end of our lives God would want to know how much we loved, not the degrees, posts or the offices we have held.  

            Don Bosco was a man far ahead of his time in terms of thinking. He believed in doing the ordinary things of life in an extraordinary manner and that is why being spiritual is all about being human for spirituality builds itself on humanity. As we celebrate the feast of St. John Bosco tomorrow, let us pray to this wonderful saint, who understood the dynamics of the human heart, asking him to intercede for us to make us instruments of God’s love to whomever we meet.

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