general chapter part 7:the frontiers of our mission

The Frontiers of our missionThe Frontiers of our mission

With the help of Mary, we too listen to reality, especially that of young people, and welcome the call of God to open ourselves to ever new frontiers. We speak of new frontiers because the situations in which we work are ever new and the love that moves us to offer Gospel types of educational programmes, is new.

The Chapter theme is an appeal to us to awaken our hearts and to feel co-responsible together with the laity, for responding to the new challenges.

If we remain open to the imagination of the Spirit, our love will become more creative and passionate.

The spirituality of communion reawakens and strengthens the energy of the educating community, giving birth to concrete, courageous and creative responses.

Let us maintain our commitment to renew our style of presence so that it may be open to relationships, listening and communication, that it may be a Gospel presence

characterised by simplicity, moderation, neighbourliness and free giving: more attentive to being with than to doing for.

The missionary spirit demands new ways where we are already working.It requires that we be able to integrate formal and non-formal education and that we be ready for the necessary change of mentality in order to respond to the new forms of poverty among young people.

Evangelisation invites us to renew our passion for the first proclamation, for catechesis and for the missions ad gentes. It leads us to promote educational interventions in

dialogue with different cultures and religions.

Preventive education makes us attentive to identify the new calls of God that reach us from the youth reality and challenge us to a commitment to evangelize through

education.

These are the new frontiers of mission, places of hope that encourage the educating community to be present to meet

• disillusioned young people,• those who have lost the meaning of life, • young emigrants who are manipulated and abused, • those deprived of meaningful family reference points, • those deprived of educators capable of accompanying them.

The prophetic force of the charism urges us to know the sometimes inhuman situations in which young people live, to involve lay people, to network with the other groups of the Salesian Family, with other Religious Institutions and with inter-congregational bodies so

as to offer meaningful responses.

The flow of communication that characterizes our era is a call to the educating communities to

be present in the communications area especially by favouring educomunication.

We intend to continue, together with the laity, to broaden the horizons of our educational commitment in the world of human mobility that is now present almost everywhere we

work.

We consider education to respect nature as essential and we commit ourselves to promote programmes that guide young people to a sense of gratitude, of wonder.

Every educating community is called to live a style of life inspired by moderation and self-limitation, both at personal and social level, to favour the renewed awareness of the

interdependence that unites individuals and peoples in worldwide solidarity.

Preparation for GC XXII: a time of grace, an experience of vocational growth accompanied by Mary, the educator in the art of loving.

We invoke her in the words of Pope Benedict XVII:

Holy Mary, Mother of God,you have given the world its true light, Jesus, your Son – the Son of God.You abandoned yourself completelyto God’s call and thus became a wellspringof the goodness which flows forth from him.Show us Jesus. Lead us to himTeach us to know and love him,so that we too can becomecapable of true loveand fountains of living waterin the midst of a thirsting world.

We invoke her in the words of Pope Benedict XVII:

Holy Mary, Mother of God,you have given the world its true light, Jesus, your Son – the Son of God.You abandoned yourself completelyto God’s call and thus became a wellspringof the goodness which flows forth from him.Show us Jesus. Lead us to himTeach us to know and love him,so that we too can becomecapable of true loveand fountains of living waterin the midst of a thirsting world.