by Gabriel Alsó
The Salesian Family is a spiritual family, not a simple aggregation of like-minded people, but a charismatic and spiritual inner communion. It has one spirit but preserves the individual features of each group of lay people who engage in the defence of human dignity, the family and the promotion of justice and peace.
It is family with a plurality of expressions that converge in a single centre, the Eucharist. It has the spirituality of daily life as a mystic. Indeed, there is no apostolate without asceticism and there is no asceticism without mysticism.
It is a large family with its doors wide open, working and collaborating with others to build a better world, with fidelity to the Pope, to the Church, the young, the poor and the people not yet evangelized.
It is a family based on Salesian spirituality, with hope and a sense of responsibility for life and the future of humanity, with the person always at the centre, and loving others without prejudice or exclusion. The Salesian Family now exceeds thirty groups. In each nation, it keeps in mind the very roots that form the link between the different generations, and ensure the transmission of traditions and customs in which the majority of young people find many opportunities for building their own future. In 1875 ten Salesian missionaries arrived in this country (the first of the American continent). They became "pilgrims" and, thanks to the advice of Don Bosco, in just 13 years they brought to most of South America the Salesian educational method of the Preventive System they had learned from Don Bosco, and started the works that gave us the Salesian Family. The tenth successor of Don Bosco, the Rector Major, Fr Ángel Fernández Artime, has pointed out some sure and challenging paths in the new Strenna for 2017: "We are Family." "We are all necessary, we must let ourselves be modelled by the Lord, so we will find our Life project."
