Dear readers and friends, this January issue coincides with the great worldwide celebration of Don Bosco’s feast on January 31. And there is something else:

Greetings, dear friends and readers. Today, on the eve of Christmas, I want to share with you a dialogue between a grandmother and her granddaughter. This is a grandmother who knows and understands the human heart from the wealth of experience she has gained from walking the road of life:

Dear friends of Don Bosco and his charism, I greet you almost at the end of 2020, this year which we have lived through and which we will remember as a hard year, painful in many ways. It is a year that has changed us – without intending to have done so – in our lifestyle, habits, and customs perhaps but, certainly, at least, in the rhythm of our personal, family, and community life. While thinking about all that a year means, I pondered on something that I keep very much in my heart. I don’t know if it is due to how I was raised or to my own nature but I have engraved into my very being the need to give thanks constantly and to be grateful for the so very many things that I receive in my life as a free gift, having  nothing to do with personal merit. I don’t know if others feel this way. Maybe other people consider that everything they have is owed to them, even life itself, but this is not how I feel.