It is a gift because, before all else, strenna means: I am giving you a gift! I am giving you something important to help you celebrate a new time, a new year. This is how Don Bosco thought of it and he gave it to all the young people and adults who were with him.
I want to give you this gift, this strenna, for the start of the new year, of a new time.
This is something beautiful and important: a new year, a new time, a box in which all the other contents will be held. The coming year is not the same as those you have experienced up until now. A new year needs a new vision in order that it may be lived to the full because the new year comes only once! Each moment of time is unique because we are different from the prior year, from how we were the year before. The purpose of the Strenna is to help us prepare for this new time, by beginning to look inside this new year, bringing to light some things that will be an important part of it.
The “golden thread”. The gift of time, the gift of life
God’s gift and all other gifts are found within life: people, situations, opportunities, human relationships. Within this providential way of viewing the gifts of time and life, the Strenna, a gift that Don Bosco - and his successors after him have given every year to the whole Salesian Family - calls us to gaze upon the new year, this new time, with new eyes.
The Strenna is an aid to help us look at the time to come by putting into focus a golden thread that will guide the new time ahead: the golden thread that the Strenna gives us this year is Hope. This is also important! The new year will surely be filled with many things, but don’t get lost amidst them! Start by reflecting on how important it is... Don't scatter; gather!
The Strenna that our Cardinal Angel has laid out for us for 2025, like a new outfit, brings to light the events that we will all experience, uniting them with a single golden thread: Hope!
Strenna 2025 highlights both global and Salesian events which involve us all so as to help us live them well:
The Ordinary Jubilee of the year 2025: a Jubilee is an event of the Church in the Catholic tradition that the Holy Father gives us. To live the Jubilee is to live the pilgrimage that the Church offers us so we may put the presence of Christ back at the center of our lives and of the life of the world. The Jubilee that Pope Francis has proclaimed has a life-giving theme: Spes non confundit! Hope does not disappoint! What a marvelous life-giving theme! If the world is in need of one thing at this difficult time, it is precisely Hope, but not the hope of what we believe we can do all by ourselves, which risks becoming an illusion. Rather, it is the Hope of the re-discovery of the Presence of God. Pope Francis writes: "May Hope fill your heart!" May it not only warm the heart but fill it - fill it to overflowing! Hope makes us pilgrims; the Jubilee is a pilgrimage! It sets you in motion inside; otherwise it is not “Jubilee.” In the midst of this Church event that makes us feel like Church, we, as the Salesian Congregation and as the Salesian Family, will celebrate an important anniversary. In 2025, will be the 150th anniversary of the first missionary expedition to Argentina.
From Valdocco, Don Bosco casts his heart beyond all borders: he sends his sons to the other side of the world! He sends them, beyond all human security. He sends them even when he does not have a sufficient number necessary to carry on what he had already begun.
He just sends them and that is it for Hope must be obeyed since Hope guides Faith and sets Charity in motion. He sends them and these first confreres depart and go forth where they do not even know! From there we were all born, from the Hope that sets us on a journey and makes us pilgrims.
This anniversary should be celebrated, as should every anniversary, so as to help us recognize the Gift (it is not your property, it was given to you as a gift), to remember, and to give strength for the future, from the dynamic power of the Mission.
Hope is the foundation of the Mission because Hope is a responsibility that you cannot hide or keep to yourself! Do not hide what is given to you; recognize the Donor and hand over with your life to the next generations what has been given to you! This is the life of the Church, the life of each one of us.
St. Peter, who saw far ahead, wrote in his first Letter: "Always be ready to respond to anyone who asks you to account for the Hope that is in you!" (I Peter 3:15). We must think that responding does not mean using only words; rather, it is our life that is the response!
With the Hope that is in you, may you live and prepare for this new year to come, making a journey with the young and with our brothers and sisters to renew Don Bosco's Dream and God's Dream.
Our coat of arms
"On my labarum shines a star," they once sang. On our coat of arms, in addition to the star, a large anchor and a burning heart stand out.
These are simple images which begin to move our hearts towards the time to come: "Anchored in hope, pilgrims with young people." “Anchored” is a very strong term: the anchor is the salvation of the ship in the midst of a storm; it is firm and strong, rooted in Hope!
Within this life-giving theme is found the entirety of our daily life: the people, situations, and decisions... the "micro" of each of us that is welded with the "macro" of what we will all live together... handing over to God the gift of this time that is given to us. This is so because you must do your part for the Strenna that we will all receive; your daily life must be illuminated by what we have written and you will receive; otherwise, it will not be Hope, it will not be what your life is based on, and does not put you in "motion" by making you a Pilgrim.
We entrust this journey to the Mother of the Lord, Mother of the Church and our Help of Christians, a Pilgrim of Hope travelling with us.
