The Vision of Saint John Bosco

By Tom Dennehy

We celebrate the feast day of Saint John Bosco on January 31st. He is the patron saint of young people. He spent most of his life as a priest rehabilitating boys from lives of poverty and crime, helping them to grow into productive and virtuous men.

He was born in Piedmont, Italy on August 16, 1815.

When John was two years old, his peasant father died. His mother, Margaret, a woman of great devotion and common sense, reared him in poverty but provided him with a good education. She later worked with him when he was a priest.

As a boy John worked to keep himself, his brother and his mother. He would often go to a circus or a carnival where he would learn the tricks he saw magicians perform and in that way be able to present the show himself. While attending college and seminary he also worked as a tailor, barber, shoemaker and carpenter. He was quite a performer.

Ordained as a priest in 1841, he soon had hundreds of boys and youth attending his chapel and evening classes. He set up boarding houses for apprentices and had workshops for teaching, tailoring, and shoe making. Subsequently he set up a printing works, a joinery and an iron foundry to provide education and employment opportunities. He would organize all day Sunday outings for his boys with a full agenda of mass, work and games. During a cholera epidemic in Turin in 1884 in which thousands died, he formed the boys into teams to carry the sick to hospital and the dead to mortuaries. He urged the boys to trust in God for their protection. None of them died and he got the reputation of being a miracle worker.

This led to the foundation of a community of religious, which he called the Salesians in admiration of the Spirit of St. Francis De Sales. It is one of the largest and most influential orders of the Catholic Church. He also founded a congregation for girls with a peasant woman from Genoa who became St. Mary Mazzarello. The Salesians spread all over Europe and America and the congregation now numbers over 16,000 in 139 different countries.

Besides providing for his work God gave him the gift of miracles. With his blessing, Don Bosco cured people who were sick. The deaf heard, the lame walked, and once a dead boy was raised to life. He had the gift of prophesy. He could read consciences, and used this gift to assist penitents in confession. He could foretell one’s vocation, as well as one’s future.

When he died in 1888, the entire population of Turin lined the streets for his funeral. He was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1934. He has come to be recognized, like Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta, as one of the great “social saints.”

Famous quotes from St John Bosco.

1.Entrust everything to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and to Mary Help of Christians and you will see what miracles are.

2.Do not try to excuse your faults; try to correct them.

3.Avoid idleness and idle people, carry out your duties. Whenever you are idle you are in serious danger of falling in to temptation.

4. The power of evil men lives on the cowardice of the good.

5. Whatever you do; think of the glory of God as your goal.

6. Do not waste any time. Do good, do all the good you can and you will never regret it.

7. In every young person, a point of goodness is accessible and it is the primary duty of the educator to discover that sensitive cord of the heart so as to draw out the best in the young person.

The prophetic Vision of St. John Bosco.

The Church is a ship about to sink. Enemies on all sides are trying to destroy it.

The Pope guides the Church to safety between two pillars rising from the sea.

One pillar is The Blessed Mother. The other is The Blessed Sacrament in The Monstrance. Peace is restored and the ship comes in to a harbour too magnificent for words to describe.

John Bosco thinks it is Heaven. The Blessed Mother tells him it is Earth renewed and transformed through the Rosary and The Eucharistic reign of her son Jesus.

Prayer to St John Bosco.

O Saint John Bosco, father, teacher and friend of the young, you worked so hard to prepare them to face up to life with honesty, integrity and active faith as you led them to Christ. Three great loves gave purpose and meaning to your earthly life ; help me to deepen my own devotion to Jesus in The Blessed Sacrament, to Mary help of Christians and to our Holy Father the Pope. Together with the grace for which I now pray …… obtain for me final perseverance and the grace of a happy death. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen. Say one Our Father , Hail Mary, Glory Be ….