Being authentic disciples and zealous apostles in bringing the Gospel to the young

The following comes from the Salesian News Agency:

Also this year, as is the tradition, the Rector Major of the Salesians, Fr Pascual Chávez Villanueva, officially presented the Strenna to the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians during a visit to the Generalate this afternoon, 31 December.

In the theatre of the Generalate, in addition to Mother Yvonne Reungoat and some of her Council, among those present were the Sisters of the community, those from the Auxilium and those from the formation houses in Rome.

The Strenna for 2010 invites the 27 groups of the Salesian Family to bring the Gospel to the young, being authentic disciples and zealous apostles.

The background to the Strenna for 2010 contains several items.

Above all the invitation of Benedict XVI to the Salesians, on the occasion of their 26th General Chapter, to consider evangelisation the main and priority frontier for their mission. The Pontiff, addressing the Rector Major in a Letter sent to him on the occasion of the GC26 said: “It presents many tasks, urgent challenges, vast fields of activity, but its fundamental purpose is that of proposing that everyone should live their human life as Jesus lived it. In multi-religious situations and in secularised ones, it is necessary to find new ways of making Jesus known, especially to the young, so that they may discover his perennial fascination.”

To this is added the constant commitment of the members of the Salesian Family to link together, as a specific characteristic of the charism of their own groups, the ideas summed up in the phrase “educating by evangelising and evangelising by educating” in order to help young people to see others and the world around them through the eyes of Christ.

The Strenna for 2010 is also an invitation to draw profit from the recent celebration of the Pauline Year and from the Synod on the Word.

In addition with the Strenna for 2010 Fr Chávez proposes as a model of the disciple and of creative fidelity Blessed Michael Rua, the first successor of Don Bosco, the centenary of whose death occurs in 2010.

Present once again in this Strenna, as in that of 2007 is the theme of education and the promotion of human rights, and from 2008 the invitation to make the Salesian Family a vast movement for the salvation of the young, and the exhortation to live in a more radical manner the Christian vocation welcoming into one’s heart Christ the Word of God.