MESSAGES OF THE RECTOR MAJOR
Merry Christmas to all of you friends of Don Bosco’s charism. I’m writing this greeting to you a few hours after returning to Rome from visiting Nepal and the Salesian province of Shillong in beautiful Northeast India.
The dream to which I refer, my dear friends of the Salesian charism, is the great missionary dream of Don Bosco. Even in the very first years of the foundation of the fragile, little Society of St. Francis de Sales (the Salesians), he sent out his first missionaries to Argentina (in the year 1875) with the intention of caring for the Italian immigrants who had reached those shores by the thousands.
The monument to Don Bosco in front of the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians in Valdocco is a symbol of the Salesian mission in the world.
It is a cross (as we well know, the symbol of Christianity), but it is not our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who hangs on this one; rather, it bears the image of a poor boy. The message is clear and very strong: our Lord Jesus is being crucified in those who are being crucified in today’s world.