Pope Francis in Turin: The Holy Father always renews my hope.

In Turin the Holy Father continues his Apostolic mission.

He calls our attention to St. John Bosco, pointing out three important points which guided Don Bosco's spirituality.

Don Bosco's unwavering confidence in God - the essence of consecrated life.

The founder of the Salesian Family, he said, lived out to the end his priestly mission “sustained by an unwavering confidence in God.”

This confidence, the Pope said, is also “the essence of the consecrated life, so that the service of the Gospel and of our brothers should not remain a prisoner of our views, of the realities of this passing world, but might continue to rise above ourselves."

 Don Bosco's service to the young - especially the most vulnerable.

Another important aspect of the life of Don Bosco, Pope Francis continued, is “the service to the young, beginning with the most vulnerable and abandoned: this concerns the “pedagogy of the faith” which is taken up in the Salesian formula “educating to evangelize, and evangelizing to educate.” The Holy Father encouraged the Salesian religious to carry on “with generosity and confidence the multiple activities in favour of the new generations: oratories, youth centres, professional institutes, schools, and colleges. But without forgetting those whom Don Bosco called ‘the young people of the streets’.” These young people, he said, “have great need of hope, of being formed in the joy of the Christian life.”

Don Bosco, a priest always docile to the Church and to the Pope.

Finally, the Pope recalled that Don Bosco was always “docile and faithful to the Church and to the Pope, by following their suggestions and pastoral indications”; and he invites his spiritual sons and daughters “to always go forward anew to find the children and young people where they live: in the peripheries of the great cities, in areas of physical and moral danger, in social contexts where they lack so many material things, but above all lack love, understanding, tenderness, hope.”

Concluding his remarks, the Holy Father called on the Salesians “to proclaim to all the mercy of Jesus, making ‘an oratory’ of every place, especially the most inaccessible; bearing in the heart the ‘oratorian’ style of Don Bosco and aiming at ever greater apostolic horizons,” recalling the great many religious institutions living that today are living the charism of Don Bosco “to share the mission of taking the Gospel to the furthest reaches of the peripheries.” - Vatican Radio

No matter what happens - the Pope guides the Barque of Peter.  I love how he called the youth gathered in Turin to go against the current with courage:

It is easy to grow disillusioned with life, he said, when even today we live in a “culture of waste.” 

In the face of such evils, the Pope asked, how can we live a life that does not disappoint? “We must go forward with our projects of construction, and this life does not disappoint,” he said. We must help one another. And to do this, Pope Francis told the young people, they must go against the current, they must be courageous and creative. - VR

“To proclaim to all the mercy of Jesus, making ‘an oratory’ of every place." 

We can do that.  Old or young.  We need to despise honors and awards, and the praise that flatters our pride.  To cease being impressed by empty titles and pomp.  To quit trying to forecast the weather, the future.  We need to become living oratories of prayer, going against the current, the wind and the waves breaking over the stern of boat.  To let the dead bury their dead  ... and to move forward, against the current with courage.

St. John Bosco, pray for us,

pray for the Church,

pray for the Pope.