Salesian Annual Report 2018

RECTOR‘S
PREFACE
01
A Salesian parable for our times
Don Bosco collapsed on the first Sunday in July 1846. Here, he takes up the
story himself (abridged from his Memoirs of the Oratory, Chapters 43-44).
“My many commitments in the prisons, the Cottolengo Hospital, the Refuge,
the Oratory and the schools meant I had to work at night. On account of that, my
frail health deteriorated to such a degree that doctors advised me to stop all my
activities. I was exhausted and took to bed with bronchitis, coughing and violent
inflammation. A week later, I was at death’s door. I was sorry to abandon my
youngsters.
Tearful youngsters, without prompting, prayed for me day and night before
the image of Our Lady of Consolation, imploring her to preserve their poor Don
Bosco. And God heard their prayers!
I went home to Murialdo to spend some months of convalescence with my
family. I would have stayed longer, but my beloved sons wrote, urging me to
come back soon.
But what means did I have to keep my work going, work that was daily
becoming more demanding and expensive? How was I to support myself and the
persons indispensable to me?
At that time, two rooms fell vacant in the Pinardi house and these were rented
as a dwelling for me and my mother. We arrived on the evening of 3 November
1846. How were we to live? What were we to eat?
How could we pay the rent and supply the needs of the many children who constantly asked for bread, shoes, clothes, or
shirts, which they needed to go to work? My mother, always in good humour, one evening laughingly sang to me:
‘What a woe, with neither fame
nor a penny to our name!’
Back at the Oratory, however, I continued to work as before, and for 27 years I had no further need of either doctors or
medicine. This leads me to believe that work does no damage to bodily health!”
Fr Jeffrey Johnson
SALESIAN INSTITUTE YOUTH PROJECTS ANNUAL REPORT 2018
5
Salesian_Annual_Report_2019_insides.indd 4-5 2019/09/05 22:58