Close to the 209th birthday of Saint John Bosco, which will be celebrated on August 16, we share with you an anecdote about Don Bosco with Domingo Savio, in which the saint of young people gave a three-ingredient recipe to his exemplary student for achieve holiness.
In a reflection titled As Ferment in the Salesian Family of today 2022, the then Father Ángel Fernández, Rector Major of the Salesians and today a cardinal, recalled that on June 24, 1855, all of Turin, in Italy, celebrated its patron Saint John the Baptist, and for this reason several young people also celebrated the name day. of his Father Juan Bosco.
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However, the night before, Don Bosco told his boys that he wanted to give them the gift they most wanted and asked them to write their wish on a little card.
Among the messages, the saint found that they asked him for “one hundred kilos of nougat”, a puppy like the one that several had left at home, and there were even those who asked him for a trumpet because they wanted to join the musical band.
Upon reaching Saint Dominic’s request, Savio read only four words: “Help me to be a saint.”
The Rector Major says that Don Bosco called his little student and told him: “When your mother makes a cake, she uses a recipe that indicates the different ingredients that must be mixed: sugar, flour, eggs, yeast… …”.
“Even to make saints you need a recipe, and I want to give it to you. It consists of three ingredients that have to be mixed,” he told her.
“First: joy. What disturbs you and takes away your peace does not please the Lord. Eliminate it. Second: your duties of study and prayer. Attention in school, commitment to study, praying willingly when you are invited to do it”.
“Third: do good to others. Help your colleagues when they need it, even if it costs you a little work and effort. The recipe for holiness is all here,” he concluded.
As Archbishop Ángel Fernández also explains today, Domingo Savio thought he had the first two ingredients, but he felt he could do something more with the third.
And as the story goes, the adolescent saint managed to fully fulfill the entire recipe, even becoming the yeast or ferment of a fruitful Company of the Immaculate Conception, which included Blessed Miguel Rua, Don Bosco’s first successor, and the first generation of Salesians.
Faced with all this, the Rector Major and Tenth Successor of Don Bosco concluded his reflection by encouraging the Salesian family, especially the lay people, “to respond in a creative, collaborative and concrete way, in everything possible”, to truly be “that leaven similar to that of the Gospel that Jesus our Lord proclaimed”.
This article was published in 2022, but has been updated for republication.
Abel Camasca
Journalist graduated from the Communication Sciences degree at the University of Lima. He has been part of the ACI Prensa journalistic team since 2014. Between 2016 and 2022 he was in charge of the production of the television program EWTN Noticias and Más que Noticias, a World Catholic Radio program. He often writes articles about the lives of saints.