The Venerable Don Bosco, the Apostle of Youth/Chapter I
THE VENERABLE DON BOSCO
APOSTLE OF YOUTH
CHAPTER I
BIRTH AND EARLY CHILDHOOD
This year, 1915, all the nations are doing honor to the memory of a man who was born a hundred years ago, August 16, 1815, in sunny Italy, on the western slope of the Alps. They are keeping the centenary of his birth, some with magnificent celebrations. And who is this illustrious favorite of four continents? you will ask. Is he a great general who won famous victories? No, he never steeped his sword in the blood of his fellow-men. Was he a renowned poet, a singer of songs to the heart of the people, a chanter of high epics, a great dramatist? Human histories do not so record him. Was he an extraordinary musician, then, or a Titian or Raphael in art that the world so honors him? No, he was not a Napoleon, nor a Mozart, nor a Raphael. Yet I dare to say he was all of these, but in a sublime and supernatural manner; and I think when we have studied him a little together the generous hearts of my readers will be in accord with me.
The name of Don Giovanni Bosco, the saintly parish priest of Turin, the Apostle of Youth, has gone forth into the whole world. The Church has already set her seal of approval, on his sanctity by proclaiming her priest Venerable; and the Apostle of Youth he is rightly called, for he saved thousands, hundreds of thousands, of children from moral destruction.
In the far days of the past, so far back that they seem like a beautiful, hallowed dream, I learned to know and love Don Bosco, then in the zenith of his great achievements, a living and powerful force for good. His name became a household word with us because of the profound appreciation of our mistress for his heroic character, his noble simplicity, and his astounding labors for the glory of God and the salvation of the poor little homeless boys roaming the streets of Italy—waifs in her beautiful, historic cities, no one to love them, to care for them, or educate them, but many, alas! to teach them crime and wickedness by word and example. Don Bosco had known the pangs of poverty, and his great heart, Christ-like in its vast capacity of loving, took them all in, and they became his own children, his own far-reaching, virtuous, and happy little world of souls.
You are familiar with Joseph's prophetic dream, how he and his eleven brethren were all binding sheaves in the field, when suddenly his sheaf arose and stood, and their sheaves all bowed down before it. How cruelly they hated him for that dream—selling him finally as a slave into Egypt, where the vision was realized when Joseph became ruler of the country and held their destinies in his hands. God often foreshadows the future to little children who are serving Him with their whole heart and soul. What beautiful visions the little Joan of Arc had of her supernatural mission as savior of France! And perhaps some of you have read the story of the child, Just de Bretenière, afterwards the heroic priest-martyr of Corea at twenty-eight years of age. In 1844, ere Just had completed his sixth year, he was one day playing with his brother in the garden, both digging, when suddenly Just stopped, and looking into the hole he cried: "Look, I see the Chinese! I see the Chinese! Come, let us dig deeper and we shall reach them." While digging vigorously, he described their appearance and costumes, and declared he could even hear their voices. "They are calling me," he said to his mother who had come to the spot; "and I must go to save them."
God favored our little John Bosco with such a vision, though he told it as a dream to his mother and brothers at breakfast. Here is his own version of it: "I stood on a hillock, and saw numberless wild beasts approaching me from the neighboring wood; they terrified me as they advanced jumping, fighting and biting each other, when a mysterious voice told me to bring them to pasture. Immediately I held a crook to them; they followed, and, strange to say, I had then around me only a flock of gentle sheep."
The mother treated the dream lightly, as an illusion, though in her heart she trembled with joy as she thought it might be a token that this beloved son was called to the priesthood. Anthony and Joseph pleasantly ridiculed it; one warned him not to become a bandit chief; the other prophesied that he would have a drove of pigs. Later in life, at Barcelona, he confessed that the mysterious voice was the Blessed Virgin's; disguised as a shepherdess she gave him the crook, saying that he would tame the animals, and even indicated how this was to be accomplished. In a vision later he saw that some of the lambs became shepherds and assisted in guarding and directing the flocks. And the whole world is witness of the miraculous manner in which this prophetic dream has been fulfilled in the stupendous moral transformations Don Bosco wrought during his long and active life of seventy-two years.
Some one has said and truly: "If in creatures there is any spark of goodness, it comes from an intimate participation of God's abundance." Baptism brings to every Christian soul this abundance of God, since from the moment of the pouring of the waters He dwells there, One God in the Three Divine Persons, as in His palace, His temple, filling it with the Light Invisible before which angels bow in reverence. But the soul must be active, must be trained to know its heavenly dignity, and to love the Eternal Creator and Sovereign who is living there within it. Poor little child, so helpless, so dependent! It grows and develops, and if there is no one to impart this divine knowledge in those early, impressionable years, what a lifelong, nay, what an eternal loss! What designs of God over that little creature are all frustrated!
Now who is the being to whom this beautiful, awe-inspiring mission is intrusted? Whose tender hand shall mould that little heart to good, who shall teach those little lips to murmur its first prayer, who shall instruct, console, strengthen it in virtue, even turn it wholly to God from the beginning? In all your hearts is the answer, Nature's own answer—the mother!
And such a mission did John Bosco's mother accomplish. Upright, religious, a truly holy woman, she participated in that abundance of God that I have told you of, and by continual prayer sweetened her hard life of toil and poverty. She must have married when very young, for at nineteen she was a widow with two children of her own, Joseph and John, and a step-son, Anthony, John, the youngest, was two years old when his father died. They had their little home on a slope of the Alps, their modest vineyard above, and below a pasture for the cattle, while opposite was a deep, wild forest. A lonely place, you might think, for our little John; but there he grew up, thoughtful, observant and prayerful, in the midst of grand and impressive scenery that was ever drawing his heart upward, while the pure, invigorating mountain airs were nourishing mind and body, and helping to build up that strong, magnificent physique which later rendered him capable of such incredible labors and hardships.
Margaret Bosco did not bring her sons up in softness or idleness. They rose with the sun in the summer, and long before dawn in the winter; dutiful children, they worked in the fields and helped in the house—prayer, work and play divided their day; their meals were frugal and they took their night's rest on the floor. John was inured early, you see, to penance; but under this regime he flourished, and was the delight of his mother's heart because of his tender piety, his purity of conscience, and his love tor the poor. Margaret, though her prospect of education had been blighted by the repressive measures of the time, had a beautiful mind, with rare force of character; she was somewhat of a poet, too, for from nature and from little daily happenings, she could draw analogies most sweetly spiritual, and these have often a lasting influence with children.
The neighbors, near and from a distance, used to meet in Margaret's barn of a winter evening, where she would relate Bible stories or traits from the lives of the saints. Little John was frequently called upon to report the Sunday sermon—for he had a prodigious memory—or read aloud, or perform some juggling tricks. But these diversions, which he had learned at a fair, were generally enacted under a large old pear tree, his seances beginning and ending with prayer or a hymn. Indeed his only end in these humorous entertainments was to gain a moral influence over his audience: prayer and rosary, or no admittance, was his inflexible law, to which all willingly submitted.
He became a practiced acrobat, danced, turned somersaults, walked on his hands, his feet in the air, multiplied eggs, drew nuts from the noses of the spectators, and transferred watches to neighboring pockets, with other tricks, all enthusiastically applauded by his rural admirers. I have often thought that in his extraordinary genius for fun and humor we may find a partial explanation of the wonderful magnetism with which he attracted the boy nature of every class.
John Bosco, the little preacher,
repeating the Sunday Sermon