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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. If we remain open to the imagination of the Spirit, our love will become more creative and passionate.
5. The spirituality of communion reawakens and strengthens the energy of the educating community, giving birth to concrete, courageous and creative responses.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
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11. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. 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.
16. Preparation for GC XXII: a time of grace, an experience of vocational growth accompanied by Mary, the educator in the art of loving.
17. 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 completely to God’s call and thus became a wellspring of the goodness which flows forth from him. Show us Jesus. Lead us to him Teach us to know and love him, so that we too can become capable of true love and fountains of living water in the midst of a thirsting world.