4 PASSIONATE ABOUT THE KINGDOM

Christians respond to the discovery of how much God loves them, by proclaiming Jesus as Lord in the context of a community, the church.

All this produces a new kind of experience of life. Christians begin to live their life experience as a following of Jesus.

To follow Jesus is not like following other leaders. It is something quite unique, like what happens. for instance, when a sudden flurry of wind scatters our well ordered papers all over the place.

Jesus asks for something which demands great commitment. He asks us to own and share his cause, a cause which filled every moment of his life and led him eventually to his death. Christian life is "vocation".

It is the courageous decision to respond to Jesus and to launch our existence in the direction of the kingdom of God, towards the triumph of life over death, in the name of the God of life.

Thus faith experience proclaimed in words becomes transformed into life and action.

Life is vocation

The whole of the gospel speaks about the challenge Jesus makes to his disciples. It is a challenge which asks them to put the whole of their existence on the line, for others. It is a challenge which asks them to become people who are capable of accepting the cry which arises from the very depths of their life. One page of the gospel in particular summarizes this fact very well.

Luke writes,

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said. "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?" He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself'.

And he said to him. "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live."

But wanting to justify himself. he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighhor?''

Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.

Now by chance a priest was going down that road: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity.

He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.

The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, 'Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.'

Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?"

He said, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

The Teacher of the Law asked Jesus, 'What must I do to inherit eternal life?' He was using a well known expression from the Hebrew Scriptures which referred to what was the most important aspect of our existence in the context of God's plan. Jesus heard the question and the response the man makes regarding the two fundamental conditions which the Law stipulates; love of God and love of neighbor With this reply it would appear that all had been resolved. Instead, in what follows next, we discover the real 'novelty' of the Gospel. The Teacher of the Law homes in on the more problematic area for him, and he asks, "who is my neighbor?"

Jesus replies turning the question upside down. Instead of listing who is and who is not a neighbor and taking off from an objective situation, Jesus asks the man to "make himself the neighbor". The question does not refer to others, but rather goes to the heart of our personal attitude to others. Jesus transforms the situation of physical closeness or apartness into a response, a vocational one, which challenges the man to personal responsibility and free choice.

Jesus' invitation is a very challenging one. Often the 'other' is helpless, and speechless, without even the strength to ask for help. Jesus gives the needy a voice, inviting us to hear the cry of those who suffer and need support. The parable teaches us that we build our existence by moving out of ourselves and reaching out to others. Human existence, from a gospel viewpoint, means letting go of selfishness for the sake of others and fighting the tendency to enclose ourselves in the tight and restricting circle of personal, group or national selfishness.

We live by love and we are challenged to build up life through acts of love. Like the Samaritan, we already have eternal life because when we love we meet God, who alone is the reason for our salvation.

God is at the heart of this vocation to love which calls out to us from the silence of another's need. In as much as we accept, serve and love people with our whole self, then we proclaim, know and love God.

Called to build up the Kingdom of God

By the words he spoke and above all, by the way he lived his life, Jesus places before us a role model for every Christian vocation.

This is the model of the Kingdom of God. It is something even greater than that which gives meaning to our lives, or even that which directs us toward living our lives in a serious and authentic way.

Jesus is indeed the man of the kingdom of God, because he made the kingdom his life purpose, that "fullness and abundance of life" for all (Jn. 10:10), that "pearl of great price" (Mt. 13:45-46) which means selling everything else in order to have it.

The kingdom of God is the recognition of God's ascendancy over all people of every age. It is a recognition which goes as far as acknowledging that happiness and life are only found in God.

The God we proclaim in this way is totally committed to people. This God wants a meaningful future for all. This God is glorified when the human person is fully alive and happy.

People recognize God as Lord when they commit themselves to promoting life and hope.

Aware that their problems are God's problems, believers entrust to God their hunger for life and hope. |

The God of Jesus is a God who can be trusted. This has been proved in the marvels God has worked in his people, but above all in the marvels he has worked in Jesus.

Where the man of the kingdom appears, anguish and fear of life and death disappear and are replaced by the freedom and the joy of living in God's name.

The most convincing words about the kingdom of God were pronounced by Jesus from the cross when he entrusted his existence to God.

By dying so that we might have life, Jesus rediscovered life and happiness for all of us. The risen Jesus is the ultimate sign of the fact that our God is totally on the side of life and happiness for all.

Jesus' cause is that every person may have the fullness of life in God's name and be helped to walk tall with head held high and live in hope and joy because in God alone there is no more fear of death.

Jesus entrusted to his disciples the task God entrusted to him. He said to his friends, "Just as the Father has sent me, so am I sending you" (Jn. 20:21). Link by link, a whole chain of people has been built who have committed themselves to the salvation of the world. The disciples in their turn call others and send them out. Thus the chain is lengthened, new disciples call others with the same passion with which they responded to their call. And these new disciples are sent out. So it continues.

Today, Jesus, his disciples, the first Christian believers, our friends who have educated us are calling you and me. And they are sending us out.

They are giving us the same task, the one which fired Jesus in his life; it is the cause of life.

A special call for the kingdom of God

The cause Jesus spent his life for was the kingdom of God. When we meditate on how Jesus brought about the kingdom in his own life we begin to discover new meaning in our lives and new ways to bring it about.

Today when we speak about kings and queens and royalty we tend to think immediately of ownership and of people who rule over others (or at least make out they do). In Jesus' time it was even worse. At that moment when Jesus had no wish to be funny (cf. John 18) Jesus reminds us that he is King, but not an ordinary King. His reign is not like the kingdoms of this world.

There is a substantial difference. Jesus is King because he served others to the point of giving his life for them, out of love. God's Kingdom is the fullness and abundance of life for all.

It is more than the victory of life over death. It is the victory of the power of God's love and it is a victory gained by loving to death.

To commit ourselves to the kingdom means committing ourselves to life over death calling directly on God's cause and plan for all. When life is at stake it is not possible to keep God out of things as if everything depended on us. Unfortunately it is all too easy to forget this basic fact. We have become presumptuous, full of ourselves and our power in the struggle to keep death always at a distance from us. To avoid this dangerous temptation we need people who are courageous and are capable of witnessing to the irrefutable needs of the Gospel. In the church there are different and very generous people who have a special vocation.

It is impossible to catalogue these special people as one does at an official level in many professional organizations. Some vocations have a very important responsibility in the logic of the kingdom of God. Among these vocations are teachers youth leaders catechists and priests and religious who at a very radical level are responding to Jesus' mysterious invitation to follow him. All these are a special expression of what each of us is called to become. They are a kind of sacramental revelation in the church and as church of God's plan of salvation and of the way in which Jesus realized this plan. They are women and men of our time, ordinary people. They look to the past and proclaim the marvels God worked for his people. They face the future anticipating in simple everyday ways the cause of their hope. The community (that of the church and in general of all people) is grateful to those people and constantly asks the God of life to continue to inspire many with the courage of this radicality and the perseverance and enthusiasm demanded of this way of life.

Love for life: a spirituality of celebration

"Salesian Youth Spirituality'' is a spirituality of celebration. It puts life at the center of the Christian life project. It does this because it has rediscovered within life itself the style and quality of God s presence. By proclaiming God's power at work through Jesus Christ, in the personal and communal stories of people this belief in life is transformed into celebrating life as it is constantly being renewed and saved. Don Bosco often spoke of joy as an expression of gratitude to size Lord of Life. Our Salesian tradition is strong on this point. "Be courageous and always happy. this is the sign of someone who loves the Lord greatly." (Letters of Mother Mazzarello 601 Research on our spirituality has enabled us to rediscover this aspect in terms of being faithful to the incarnation. We are witnesses to the fact that God has indeed mad. all things new in Jesus u ho went to the Cross so that life might be victorious. We can only be witnesses to this if we recognize the signs of life of this newness, even when we find ourselves surrounded by signs of death. Like Jesus of Nazareth we too love life taking on board the ordinary aspects of that life, accepting the challenges, the questions it raises, the tensions involved in growing, the lack of understanding about the future its different forms of poverty. We work towards overcoming the ambiguities present in daily living trying to let love be the basis of our choices in life. Celebration is this sense of living the extraordinary gospel of the victory of life over death. Celebration is doing this even when we find ourselves immersed in a daily living which savors heavily of death.

The cross and suffering in Christian celebration

Celebration does not eliminate the presence of the cross. We proclaim it when we cry out with joy at having discovered our right to love life and seek happiness.

In the celebration and the joy which pervades our existence we have many reasons for finding the courage to put Jesus' cross at the heart of our celebration. In fact in order to live a good spiritual existence, we need to allow the cross and celebration to be part and parcel of our lives. We must allow them to be woven into the fabric of our lives.

Serving others

We are alleluia people. We live a spirituality which gives lots of space to celebration because we believe that God's kingdom is already here, among us. We cannot allow our celebration to be consumed by lack of commitment and indifference, because what fires us is our passion for the cause of Jesus. For this reason, our celebration is an experience of solidarity with all people, and it is a vocation to let life be, to let life grow, so that all may find that joy which gives them reason to celebrate. In fact in our celebrating a special place Is given to those who are normally excluded from experiencing joy in their lives. Those who have savored the joy of living, live their lives as a celebration, and are in duty bound to share that joy with others. This choice, made within our spiritual life project, introduces into our daily experience the more difficult aspects of living. There is a great deal of resistance, both within and outside of us, which needs to be controlled and defeated. This requires the courage of risking death. Only those who live their love of life to the point of the cross can truly build that full and abundant life for themselves and others. Truly this is what Jesus teaches us to do.

Christian "mortification"

The life that we love intensely and that we want to have in all its fullness and abundance carries us towards an acknowledgment of our limitations. We are, to a certain extent, among those who are "condemned to death". We are not sad about our lot however. Death envelops us by the very fact that we are alive. The most wonderful experience we have, that of being alive, carries us in She irreversible direction of limitation. It is vital to remember this so that we can learn to live from the challenge which death throws at us, and live with the quality of life that Jesus demonstrates to us. For this reason we must never forget death. Death reminds us that the houses we have built in this life, are indeed only tents. Our real home is beyond, in the Father's house. Sometimes our very existence reminds us of this fact when somewhat painfully it brings us face to face with death and sadness and suffering. Sometimes we are the ones who choose to bring this fact to mind. We choose to distance ourselves from the beautiful things of life, not because we do not appreciate them but our awareness of the importance of the "ultimate good" brings home to us the temporariness of the here and now. We stop enjoying that here and now for a few moments in order to take stock of the fact that we are on a journey towards far greater experiences of life. In the Christian experience this need is referred to with an expression which is neither good nor particularly well accepted. We use the word "mortification" to sum this up. We do not make any efforts when life is difficult because, either we prefer death to life, or the struggles we are going through make us reflect a lithe on She fact that we will eventually have to face death. We look at the prospect of our death and we choose to distance ourselves a little from things so that we can live as people who have overcome death. In other words we do this so that we can love life more intensely and because we want to "possess" it more fully. We take up the invitation Jesus puts before us, "If She grain of wheat, falling to the ground, does not die, it will be lost. If instead it dies, it will grow and produce a hundredfold". This is the way we live our spirituality. Whoever loves life, and is willing to lose it serving others in God's name, plants She cross at the center of their life.

Doing our daily duty

Don Bosco often referred to 'doing our daily duly' as a way of living life to the full.

Mother Mazzarello insisted that "true piety consisted in doing one's duty at the time and place allotted and for love of God". Don Bosco's idea was that this daily duty was to be accomplished well and joyfully. He was able to integrate commitment with joy, holiness with happiness, not only in words but in his own life too. Today we use other words. We prefer to speak about professional responsibility, social commitment, coherence. Undoubtedly, with the passing of time words change. However, their substance does not change even though, today, that can easily happen. We live in an age of easy words which struggle to translate themselves into action, or we tend to adapt our more serious commitments to the subjective feelings of the moment.

Through this element of doing our 'daily duty' we discover once again that this commitment to love life is very serious indeed. It is a commitment to love life, all of it, all the time, and not just when it suits us. In this we discover that life is truly a vocation, not according to certain conditions or circumstances, but a vocation to love life as service and responsibility to others. We are faced with a challenging commitment. It is a commitment which causes our selfishness and our pride to suffer a little. This commitment takes us to Jesus' cross and to an undeniable aspect of Christian living. Christians committed to loving others by placing themselves at the service of others do so, even to the point of giving their lives "so that all may have life to the full", as Jesus did. This is the cross we place with great courage at the heart of our daily living.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness that brings about reconciliation in the midst of tension and division is an important aspect of Christian living. Forgiveness is not foolishness - turning a blind eye in the face of evil because of fear of becoming involved. Neither does it justify and reduce everything, putting off facing up to evil to another day. Christian forgiveness is an act of deep awareness that the one who offends another is less human than the one who suffers the offense. Forgiveness is an act which seeks to break with the fascination of evil, shattering to pieces its power over us. Christians forgive so that the evil might be nailed to its own sin, spreading out their own arms in acceptance. Forgiveness is the adventure of Jesus' cross. His act, clear and courageous as it was, denounced evil, fought to overcome it, recognizing that the cross is the sure sign of life's victory over death.

A social and political commitment

People who love life and want it in abundance in the way God offers it find themselves face to face with situations of daily dying. These situations disturb us and challenge us and urge us, together with others to look for ways and means to bring about the necessary cultural and structural transformations to help those who are violently deprived of abundant life.

For those who are serious about the quality of their lives, such a commitment will be part of everyday life. It is also at the heart of our spiritual experience. "Salesian Youth Spirituality" is strong on this issue. Social and political commitment are not added extras to Christian living. It is not only for those who are enthusiastic about solidarity. It is an essential for all. Certainly the ways in which it is carried through can vary according to personal and community vocations, but the task is a must for all who claim Jesus as the Lord.

The reason for this rests in the concept of the kingdom of God and its relationship to everyday life which Salesian Youth Spirituality places at the center of its understanding of Christian commitment. As so often happens, however, it is not enough to recognize the need. Those who are serious about living their spirituality in terms of social and political commitment find themselves faced with the question as to whether or not there are special dimensions which enable their life choice to become action.

Salesian Youth Spirituality, in line with what Don Bosco taught, proposes two dimensions. One is an attitude of hope, or optimism which knows how to survive even the most serious and seemingly insurmountable difficulties. The second is a trust and belief in education as the way we live. These two attitudes express our specific political commitment to peace and justice. We live these out with others who share our passion for life. At the same time we cannot deny how much faith is needed for us to live as spiritual women and men.

Hope, in spite of everything

Believers live out their lives and their commitment to life and hope in many ways. our faith experience, arising out of the cross and hope in the victory which the cross upholds, is beyond human understanding. This moves us to acquire attitudes, to speak words and make gestures which those who live only on the wave length of contemporary logic cannot understand and share with us.

It is not easy to be specific about what these attitudes are. It is certain, however, that these attitudes set believers apart a little and can force them to feel alone even in the best of company. A page of the gospel makes this clear:

When they came to the crowd, a man came to him, knelt before him, and said, "Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him."

Jesus answered, "You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me". And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly.

Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, "Why could we not cast it out?"

He said to them, "Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you" (Mt. 17:14-20) It is life which is at risk here. There is a poor epileptic boy. It is almost as if he is dead. Jesus is irritated by his disciples because he sees them lacking power and courage in the face of this death. Jesus will not allow death to triumph over life.

Jesus recognizes that this is difficult for them. He tells them that they have to learn to place this within the context of God's plan, of his saving action. Here, and only here, the impossible becomes possible.

It is life which triumphs. Jesus did not only do and say this for others. He believed in the victory of life and freedom, in the Father's name, even when death was part and parcel of his own human experience. He suffered and cried like all of us. He cried out with all his faith. He conquered death, forever, for all of us.

In Jesus the impossible becomes possible for his friends, for us, because we have believed in life and have tried to build life up through little gestures which stand as small signs of the great promise to be fulfilled.

Jesus does not suggest a magical remedy to the disillusioned disciples. He suggests instead that with a little faith one can indeed move mountains. It is almost as if he is saying, 'there are no sophisticated remedies to propose. What is needed is a totally new outlook. What is needed is that you make the passage from what can be seen to the mystery which rests within the visible. Only at this deeper level can you be sure that the seemingly impossible victory over death becomes possible.'

Trust in education

The triumph of life over death which we want to touch with our hands is impossible within the dominant logic of our present day culture. This triumph becomes Christ. There are many ways of making this commitment real and tangible. Don Bosco taught one in particular and staked his life on it. It was his belief in education, education in a specific way which the first Salesians called "the preventive method".

Education in this way is of prime importance to Salesian spirituality. Education is the Salesian way of living out our commitment, whatever our profession.

If we truly want to live a spirituality which commits itself to God's cause in the lives of people we need to make education a passion in our lives. We need to make education the way in which we are present to one another. We need to make it the special means of furthering the cause of human growth and development. In the name of education, Salesian Youth Spirituality asks all people of good will and all public institutions to commit themselves to enabling human beings to grow to wholeness and bring about political and cultural transformation. By choosing education we know that we are being faithful to the Lord according to Don Bosco's heart. We believe. as he did, in the human person as the prime mover in the process of growth and transformation.

Prayer as praise and petition

Christians have a special way of expressing their faith which we call prayer. All religious people pray.

Christians share this common experience and use it in a specific way. Prayer is a dialogue between the person and God. Assured of God's closeness people share their anxieties and desires, dreams and hopes. It is very like meeting a close friend. one who has the ability to help us out.

Christians are proud to treat their God in this way. Jesus himself taught us to pray in such a way (Mt. 21:22) and this makes Christian prayer unique.

Christians speak to God, immersing themselves in his mystery. They contemplate God, lost in the love which surrounds them, accepting who they are before God. What we discover about ourselves in prayer cannot be described in words that describe day to day experiences. We need the language of silence because that is how love is best expressed.

Often our words are inadequate and so we look to the solemn words of the Psalms, of the Church's liturgy and the ancient traditions of our faith. As believers we speak to God, we speak about ourselves and about him. We live and proclaim our faith.

More and more we want to become women and men of prayer, We want to do this in the style of the spirituality we have discovered. This means looking, yet again, at Don Bosco and Mother Mazzarello.

Both experienced an intense and particular life of prayer.

Their humble, trusting, apostolic prayer united their faith to their daily living.

Their prayer, enlightened by the Word of God, nourished by the mysteries of the faith, enabled them to read their present experience in the light of their beliefs.

For Mother Mazzarello this prayer had a fundamental characteristic, she tells us that it is "true heart prayer" capable of placing us and the young people "in the heart of Jesus".

Our founding saints saw it as a prayer which "adhered to life and became that life itself.

Don Bosco and Mother Mazzarello invite us to make prayer the center of our living and they teach us to live this prayer in a Salesian style.

Salesian style prayer is the prayer of the 'good' Christian. It is simple, it is 'of the people'. it is rooted in life and capable of making its mark in our day to day living. It expresses a sense of celebration and seeks to involve young people in the joy of meeting Jesus through experiencing his Spirit.

We know that the whole of our life is a prayer We know that our prayer depends very much on the way we live, and the way we commit ourselves to the kingdom of God where our prayer culminates. We do need special moments of prayer We need to find moments within the frenetic pace of our daily living so that we have spaces of silence, or calm. in which we can drink in and delight in God's presence. Our prayer is not something magical. The responsibility is ours, we cannot expect God to produce what we are not prepared to commit ourselves to seeking. He is, however, the good father who gives food to his children and waters the fields of (he good and the bad alike. For this reason wc place ourselves and our prayer, our hopes and dreams, in child-like trust in his hands.

We pray "together with" the young and their educators. as did Don Bosco and Mother Mazzarello and the first communities which they founded. We pray in a great community of love and commitment. Don Bosco wanted all his young people to become, in their turn, missionaries of other young people. He begged them to pray for their friends.

This is the prayer our Salesian Youth Spirituality promotes and encourages. It is true that many of these aspects are present in Christian prayer, and we are always content to learn from other Christians who arc better than us and who have already come a long way in their understanding of prayer. We also recognize that we need to pray as Don Bosco and Mother Mazzarello taught us. To do this we look for that special style implicit in our prayer, knowing it is a small contribution, on our part, to the prayer of the Church.

Contemplatives of daily living

We have declared, in faith, that the whole of our lives and the things which surround us, together with the events which happen to us, are surrounded and impregnated by a profound and intense mystery which contains a truth. We live immersed in God, in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Such living asks us to look beyond appearances. For this we need a depth of vision and an ability to listen and to reflect on life which in turn will enable us to find the 'inner' and deeper meaning of things.

We need silence to see deep within ourselves, beyond impressions and sensitivities and resonances, to arrive at God's mystery and the mystery of God within us. Salesian Youth Spirituality sees this inner vision resting in that secret and personal space where voices of others may echo.

However, it is the space where we make our choices alone and in poverty, a space when we discover ourselves without the false securities that make us pretend we can face the inevitable suffering inherent in choosing.

It is undoubtedly a precious gift to have someone with whom we can confide and share our problems and difficulties. However, building our personality and making personal choices can only happen in places of inner solitude. It is only in solitude that we can evaluate and really be coherent about the choices that bring us to wholeness in our daily living. Deep within us is the place where the Spirit of Jesus speaks out of silence and calls us to silence. It is not easy. For this reason we need to support one another towards a new asceticism which will enable us to contemplate life from the point of view of the mystery which dwells within us. To contemplate is to pierce the outer shell of material existence in order to arrive at inner meaning.

Contemplation knows how to find what lies at the heart of life in what to the distracted and superficial glance remains invisible. Contemplation, therefore, touches the whole of human life. It is not something reserved for special moments. Daily life is the 'place' where the God of Jesus Christ makes himself present. For this reason all of life needs to be gathered in and understood from the standpoint of that mystery which is contained deep within it. Contemplatives "in" life seek a place apart in which they can draw close to God. Contemplatives "of" daily living instead, acknowledge life's sacramentality by living life to the full. Contemplated on, our life becomes a book, the place where we read God, the road we take in following him. Contemplating life gives us all the more reason to be even more intensely passionate about it.

A spirituality of communion and collaboration

We have lived an experience of intense communion, while trying step by step to re-tell and complete the story of our Salesian Youth Spirituality. The "we" we spoke about at the beginning, was made up of a group of Sisters, Salesians and young people who met to gather together many of the elements written about our Salesian Youth Spirituality in the last few years. The circle encompassing "us" has extended out. We hope that all who read these pages may discover that they too belong to an "us" who have grown from the time of Don Bosco and Mother Mazzarello and will grow beyond us into the future.

The cause we serve is a great and challenging one. We can only serve such a cause fully if the circle of those who feel they belong within this project continues to widen. Don Bosco strove to do just this. He discovered that God, in a mysterious way, had presented him with a challenge. God wanted him to work to increase the joy and the life and the hope of the young. Don Bosco realized immediately that he could not do this alone. He set out, with creativity and courage, in search of collaborators. When he met someone he thought could help in this cause he would say, "Would you like to give Don Bosco a hand?" It was taken for granted that he meant "to help save souls" as he put it. Mother Mazzarello repeated often to the young women in Mornese, "are you happy here. Would you like to stay on here, forever?"

Many people have already responded to these questions with a 'yes'. Don Bosco has stirred up a movement which now reaches into all comers of the world.

One thing deeply unites us. We share the same passion for the life of the young and for the Lord of this life. It is the same spirituality life project which unites us.

When a group of Salesians and Sisters got together to make this project even more viable for today's world they discovered that while reflecting on the experience for others, they were immediately challenged at a personal level.

The barriers which traditionally separated the young from adults, educators from students, Salesians from Sisters have been lifted. Together, we discovered the gift the young are to us, and the responsibility every young person has before other young people. This is Salesian Youth Spirituality. It is a spiritual life project which involves others by seeking their collaboration, and by building communion and unity.

While working on our Salesian Youth Spirituality and reflecting and praying together we have come to a better understanding that has touched us personally.

Christian spirituality is often seen as divided. In the past it divided the sacred from the profane, love of God from love of one another, time of prayer from time of work, contemplation from action.

Salesian Youth Spirituality proposes something which is deeply unifying. Alternatives become facets of the same reality. Each one has its own dignity and special make up. Work is work and runs according to its own logic. Prayer is something else with different rhythms and expressions and attitudes. Work and prayer, carried out with the same intensity, are the place where God comes close to us and calls us. They are the places where we accept God with the enthusiasm of children. In the depths of our endeavors, we re-discover Jesus' cause because we re-discover his reassuring yet disquieting presence. We re-discover him when we begin to read from within, with the eyes of faith.

The same experience understood in the light of the mystery takes on different shades of meaning. It is a way of making all things new in terms of life. It is the moment of grateful contemplation of a presence which is already transforming all things from death into life. We give our daily experiences their own place, as we struggle for knowledge and wisdom. We then celebrate the fundamental reason which sustains our fragile hope moving us towards a hope which is without limitations.

This is one of the most beautiful aspects of our Salesian Youth Spirituality. It allows us to discover that the way we live in the Spirit of Jesus is one which is lived and shared with others. The Salesians, the Sisters and the young people committed to the apostolic educational mission have different roles and duties. They are responding to different callings. What they do have is a common project and they live this out in a unified style and with the same unique and undivided passion. Salesian Youth Spirituality produces unity in diversity because it puts the things that really count in common.