Saint of the day: Dominic Savio

Happy Feast of St. Dominic Savio! Today Salesians from all around the world remember this wonderful child saint! The following is a brief description of his life from EWTN:

Here is a boy-saint who died at the age of fifteen, was one of the great hopes of St. John Bosco for the future of his congregation, and was canonized in 1954.

He was one of ten children of Carlo and Birgitta Savio. Carlo was a blacksmith and Birgitta was a seamstress. When Don Bosco was looking for young men to train as priests for his Salesian Order, his parish priest suggested Dominic Savio. Dominic became more than a credit to Don Bosco's school—he single-handedly organized those who were to be the nucleus of Don Bosco's order.

St. Dominic Savio was twelve when he met Don Bosco and organized a group of boys into the Company of the Immaculate Conception. Besides its religious purpose, the boys swept and took care of the school and looked after the boys that no one seemed to pay any attention to. When, in 1859, Don Bosco chose the young men to be the first members of his congregation, all of them had been members of Dominic's Company.

For all that, Dominic was a normal, high-spirited boy who sometimes got into trouble with his teachers because he would often break out laughing. However, he was generally well disciplined and gradually gained the respect of the tougher boys in Don Bosco's school.

In other circumstances, Dominic might have become a little self-righteous snob, but Don Bosco showed him the heroism of the ordinary and the sanctity of common sense. "Religion must be about us as the air we breathe," Don Bosco would say, and Dominic Savio wore holiness like the clothes on his back.

He called his long hours of prayer "his distractions." In 1857, at the age of fifteen, he caught tuberculosis and was sent home to recover. On the evening of March 9, he asked his father to say the prayers for the dying. His face lit up with an intense joy and he said to his father: "I am seeing most wonderful things!" These were his last words.

Thought for the Day: "I can't do big things," St. Dominic Savio once said, "but I want everything to be for the glory of God." His was the way of the ordinary: cheerfulness, fidelity in little things, helping others, playing games, obeying his superiors. This heroism in little things is the stuff of holiness.

St. John Bosco, St. Dominic Savio and A Dream of Heaven

Saint John Bosco had a vision of Heaven in the form of a dream, which he related to his boys during one of his famous “goodnight talks.”

In 1876, his recently-deceased disciple Saint Dominic Savio appeared to him in a dream. Saint John Bosco told his pupils:

As you know, dreams come in one’s sleep. So during the night hours of December 6, while I was in my room – whether reading or pacing back and forth or resting in my bed, I am not sure – I began dreaming.

Marvelous Garden
It suddenly seemed to me that I was standing on a small mound or hillock, on the rim of a broad plain so far-reaching that the eye could not compass its boundaries lost in vastness. All was blue, blue as the calmest sea, though what I saw was not water. It resembled a highly polished, sparkling sea of glass. Stretching out beneath, behind and on either side of me was an expanse of what looked like seashore.

Broad, imposing avenues divided the plain into grand gardens of indescribable beauty, each broken up by thickets, lawns, and flower beds of varied shapes and colors.

None of the plants we know could ever give you an idea of those flowers, although there was a resemblance of sorts. The very grass, the flowers, the trees, and the fruit – all were of singular and magnificent beauty. Leaves were of gold, trunks and boughs were of diamonds, and every tiny detail was in keeping with this wealth. The various kinds of plants were beyond counting.

Each species and each single plant sparkled with a brilliance of its own. Scattered throughout those gardens and spread over the entire plain I could see countless buildings whose architecture, magnificence, harmony, grandeur and size were so unique that one could say all the treasures of earth could not suffice to build a single one. If only my boys had one such house, I said to myself, how they would love it, how happy they would be, and how much they would enjoy being there! Thus ran my thoughts as I gazed upon the exterior of those buildings, but how much greater must their inner splendor have been!

An Enchanting Melody
As I stood there basking in the splendor of those gardens, I suddenly heard music most sweet – so delightful and enchanting a melody that I could never adequately describe it. … A hundred thousand instruments played, each with its own sound, uniquely different from all others, and every possible sound set the air alive with its resonant waves.

Blended with them were the songs of choristers.

In those gardens I looked upon a multitude of people enjoying themselves happily, some singing, others playing, but every note, had the effect of a thousand different instruments playing together. At one and the same time, if you can imagine such a thing, one could hear all the notes of the chromatic scale, from the deepest to the highest, yet all in perfect harmony. Ah yes, we have nothing on earth to compare with that symphony.

Deepest Pleasure
One could tell from the expression of those happy faces that the singers not only took the deepest pleasure in singing, but also received vast joy in listening to the others. The more they sang, the more pressing became their desire to sing. The more they listened the more vibrant became their yearning to hear more…

As I listened enthralled to that heavenly choir I saw an endless multitude of boys approaching me. Many I recognized as having been at the Oratory and in our other schools, but by far the majority of them were total strangers to me. Their endless ranks drew closer, headed by Dominic Savio, who was followed immediately by Father Alasonatti, Father Chiali, Father Guilitto and many other clerics and priests, each leading a squad of boys…

A Most Radiant Joy
Once that host of boys got some eight or ten paces from me, they halted. There was a flash of light far brighter than before, the music stopped, and a hushed silence fell over all. A most radiant joy encompassed all the boys and sparkled in their eyes, their countenances aglow with happiness. They looked and smiled at me very pleasantly, as though to speak, but no one said a word.

Dominic Savio stepped forward a pace or two, standing so close to me that, had I stretched out my hand, I would surely have touched him. He too was silent and gazed upon me with a smile…

At last Dominic Savio spoke. “Why do you stand there silent, as though you were almost devitalized?” he asked. “Aren’t you the one who once feared nothing, holding your ground against slander, persecution, hostility, hardships and dangers of all sorts? Where is courage? Say something!”

Loving Warmth
I forced myself to reply in a stammer, “I do not know what to say. Are you Dominic Savio?”

“Yes I am. Don’t you know me anymore?”

“How come you are here?” I asked still bewildered.

Savio spoke affectionately. “I came to talk with you. We spoke together so often on earth! Do you not recall how much you loved me, or how many tokens of friendship you gave me and how kind you were to me? And did I not return the warmth of your love? How much trust I placed in you! So why are you tongue-tied? Why are you shaking? Come ask me a question or two!”

Abode of Happiness
Summoning my courage, I replied, “I am shaking because I don’t know where I am.”

“You are in the abode of happiness,” Savio answered, “where one experiences every joy, every delight.”

“Is this the reward of the just?”

“Not at all! Here we do not enjoy supernatural happiness but only a natural one, though greatly magnified.”

“Might I be allowed to see a little supernatural light?”

“No one can see it until he has come to see God as He is. The faintest ray of that light would instantly strike one dead, because the human senses are not sturdy enough to endure it.”

Here ends the narrative of Saint John Bosco’s dream.

A Prayer to Dominic Savio

Dear Saint Dominic, you spent your short life totally for love of Jesus and His Mother. Help youth today to realize the importance of God in their lives. You became a saint through fervent participation in the sacraments, enlighten parents and children to the importance of frequent confession and Holy Communion. At a young age you meditated on the sorrowful Passion of Our Lord. Obtain for us the grace of a fervent desire to suffer for love of Him.

We desperately need your intercession to protect today's children from the snares of the world. Watch over them and lead them on the narrow road to Heaven. Ask God to give us the grace to sanctify our daily duties by performing them perfectly out of love for Him. Remind us of the necessity of practicing virtue especially in times of trial.

Saint Dominic Savio, you who preserved your Baptismal innocence of heart, pray for us.

St. Dominic Savio, the boy who insisted on growing up

The following comes from Dawn Eden:

I wrote to you last week to tell you about my “press agent” St. Dominic Savio. Today I am writing, as I promised, to tell you about why the saint, who died a few weeks short of his fifteenth birthday (making him the youngest canonized saint whose death was not by martyrdom), is also a dear friend, patron, and model of life for me.

The best source we have on Dominic Savio is the story of his life written by another saint, Don Bosco, who admitted Dominic to his Oratory school and there became his mentor.

Reading Don Bosco’s account, the first thing I notice about Dominic Savio is that he seemed to live with one foot on earth and the other in heaven.Although he abhorred fights and lewdness, Bosco stresses that he was no plaster saint. He was a normal boy who enjoyed doing the things boys do:

He was the life of the games at recreation. He did not monopolize the conversation or keep butting in, but if silence came he was always ready with something interesting, a difficulty which had cropped up in class or an interesting story. The others were always glad to be with him. If someone started grumbling or criticizing, he would raise a laugh over something else and so distract them and dispel any word of criticism.

His cheerful smile and spirit of zest made him popular also with those who were not too fond of religious things. They were always glad to be in his company and whenever he gently chided them it was taken in good part.

Yet, at the same time, Dominic had an ongoing, intimate friendship with Christ and His Mother. This friendship seems to have taken the form of an ongoing dialogue, with Christ. Before he makes his First Communion, he writes down the resolution, “My best friends will be Jesus and Mary.” His intimacy with Our Lord and Our Lady grows more intense over time, so that by the time he reaches his teens, Don Bosco overhears him in an impassioned conversation:

Another time, as I was going out of the sacristy after finishing my thanksgiving, I heard a voice which seemed to be engaged in argument. It came from the little chapel behind the high altar and when I went there I saw Dominic. He was speaking and then stopping as though waiting for someone else’s reply. Among other things I heard quite clearly these words: “Yes, my God, I have already said it and I say it again: I love you and I wish to go on loving you till my last breath. If you see that I am going to offend you, let me die: I much prefer to die than to offend you by sin.”

And so, as Dominic gets older, a tension arises in his life as he tries so hard to maintain his friendship with Christ while also being engaged with the world.

After another saint, Edith Stein, entered a Carmelite monastery and became Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, she wrote to a friend,

Immediately before, and for a good while after my conversion, I was of the opinion that to lead a religious life meant one had to give up all that was secular and to live totally immersed in thoughts of the Divine. But gradually I realized that something else is asked of us in this world and that, even in the contemplative life, one may not sever the connection with the world. I even believe that the deeper one is drawn into God, the more one must “go out of oneself,” that is, one must go to the world in order to carry the divine life into it. [Source]

I see that same tension between sacred and secular in Dominic Savio’s experience, as when Don Bosco writes of how the saint reacted when he was prevented from taking on extreme penances:

[One] day I came across [Dominic] looking somewhat sad, and I asked him what was the matter. He replied: “You’ve got me in a real bind. Our Blessed Lord says that if I don’t do penance I will not get to heaven. I am forbidden to do any penance; what chance then have I of heaven?”

I explained to him that the penance Jesus wanted from him was complete obedience,; obey and that’s enough.

“Can’t I do some other penance?”

“Yes, you can allow yourself the penance of being patient with others and the unpleasant things of life; to accept equally the heat and the cold and the rain; to be cheerful when tired and not feeling so well and so on.”

“But,” said Dominic, “these things come to you whether you like it or not.”

“Precisely,” I replied, “offer them willingly to God; there is nothing that will please him more, and you will be doing real penance.” Thus reassured, Dominic was very happy and completely at peace.

When I see the maturity with which Dominic accepted Don Bosco’s correction—not with blind submission, but with a sincere desire for holiness at all costs—I begin to understand how he was able to attain such a high level of sanctity in such a short life.

Another reason I admire Dominic is that he was able to passionately throw himself into becoming a saint as only a boy could.

It is important to note that this is not a Peter Pan approach to holiness. Dominic is not “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.”

Peter Pan is self-made. He concocts fantasies of his own and then seeks to reify them.

Dominic Savio, by contrast, is always looking upward and outward to God. He sees Jesus and wants to receive his own identity from Jesus as a gift. He is immersed in the real world, the world that has been given to us by the Father who created us. He rejoices in his identity in Christ.

Witness Dominic’s response to a boy who tries to convince him to join in dressing in a Halloween-style getup, as Don Bosco narrates:

On one occasion a companion wanted Dominic to go with him and dress up. Dominic would not go, and said to the boy: “Would you really like to be what you are going to dress up as—two horns, a big nose and a clown’s costume”?

“Of course not,” replied the other.

“Well, why make yourself look like something you would not want to be and in addition deface the nice face that God has given you?”

Finally, I see in Dominic Savio a kindred spirit because he, like me, suffered evil things from people who took advantage of his vulnerability and innocence.

Don Bosco’s Life of Dominic Savio tells of three such incidents. On one occasion, Dominic is traumatized when some of his schoolmates tried to show him pornographic pictures in a magazine. He tears up the magazine angrily, prompting one of the schoolmates to protest, [There] is nothing wrong in looking at pictures like that.”

Dominic responds by calling out the schoolmate for his lack of sensitivity to sin: “If that is really so, it means that your eyes are already used to looking at such horrors.”

Another time, Dominic intervened to protect Oratory schoolmates from a strange man who entered their playground and mesmerized them with blasphemous stories:

Dominic came along and as soon as he grasped what was going on, cried out: “Come on, let’s get away from this unfortunate man who wants to ruin us”.

The spell was broken and all the boys, obedient to a friend whom they loved and respected, scattered, leaving the man talking to the wind. He was never seen again.

Today we would say that the man’s actions were grooming behavior. Dominic protected the boys against the predator.

The third such occasion took place earlier in Dominic’s life, when he was about ten years old. Some boys invited him to go swimming, and Dominic saw something that deeply disturbed him. Don Bosco does not say what it was, but he notes pointedly that bathing can have “dangers for the soul in certain circumstances, when boys are stripped together and have little care and respect for each other.”

Whatever it was that Dominic saw on the swimming excursion, Bosco says that “he was profoundly grieved and made up his mind never to go again.”

In My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints, I write about another young saint, Karolina Kozka, who was martyred at the age of sixteen while resisting sexual assault. An official from the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints told me that it has never been definitively established as to whether Kozka’s attacker raped her before killing her; in any case, her unquestionable sanctity assures her a place among the Church’s holy ones. And I observe that

if there were a saint whom we knew for certain was raped, our knowledge of that rape would be, in itself, a kind of intrusion into the saint’s private sphere. The very mystery surrounding the question of what was or was not done to Karolina serves to protect her personal dignity.

That is how I feel about what Dominic Savio may have seen, or not seen, when he went swimming with the boys at the age of ten. What happened to him will always be a mystery, yet one that preserves his modesty, enabling us to treat him with the reverence in death that he was not always granted in life.

At the same time, what we do know about the things Dominic endured is that he he was not always respected and was not always protected. He is therefore a friend and spiritual brother to all who have been mistreated, especially those who suffered in childhood, and his close friendship with Jesus and Mary points the way to healing.

So you can see now why I turned to St. Dominic Savio when I wanted to spread my book‘s message of healing for adults who have suffered childhood sexual abuse, and why he remains an inspiration as I continue my own journey of healing in Christ.

St. Dominic Savio, the boy who insisted on growing up

The following comes from Dawn Eden:

I wrote to you last week to tell you about my “press agent” St. Dominic Savio. Today I am writing, as I promised, to tell you about why the saint, who died a few weeks short of his fifteenth birthday (making him the youngest canonized saint whose death was not by martyrdom), is also a dear friend, patron, and model of life for me.

The best source we have on Dominic Savio is the story of his life written by another saint, Don Bosco, who admitted Dominic to his Oratory school and there became his mentor.

Reading Don Bosco’s account, the first thing I notice about Dominic Savio is that he seemed to live with one foot on earth and the other in heaven.Although he abhorred fights and lewdness, Bosco stresses that he was no plaster saint. He was a normal boy who enjoyed doing the things boys do:

He was the life of the games at recreation. He did not monopolize the conversation or keep butting in, but if silence came he was always ready with something interesting, a difficulty which had cropped up in class or an interesting story. The others were always glad to be with him. If someone started grumbling or criticizing, he would raise a laugh over something else and so distract them and dispel any word of criticism.

His cheerful smile and spirit of zest made him popular also with those who were not too fond of religious things. They were always glad to be in his company and whenever he gently chided them it was taken in good part.

Yet, at the same time, Dominic had an ongoing, intimate friendship with Christ and His Mother. This friendship seems to have taken the form of an ongoing dialogue, with Christ. Before he makes his First Communion, he writes down the resolution, “My best friends will be Jesus and Mary.” His intimacy with Our Lord and Our Lady grows more intense over time, so that by the time he reaches his teens, Don Bosco overhears him in an impassioned conversation:

Another time, as I was going out of the sacristy after finishing my thanksgiving, I heard a voice which seemed to be engaged in argument. It came from the little chapel behind the high altar and when I went there I saw Dominic. He was speaking and then stopping as though waiting for someone else’s reply. Among other things I heard quite clearly these words: “Yes, my God, I have already said it and I say it again: I love you and I wish to go on loving you till my last breath. If you see that I am going to offend you, let me die: I much prefer to die than to offend you by sin.”

And so, as Dominic gets older, a tension arises in his life as he tries so hard to maintain his friendship with Christ while also being engaged with the world.

After another saint, Edith Stein, entered a Carmelite monastery and became Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, she wrote to a friend,

Immediately before, and for a good while after my conversion, I was of the opinion that to lead a religious life meant one had to give up all that was secular and to live totally immersed in thoughts of the Divine. But gradually I realized that something else is asked of us in this world and that, even in the contemplative life, one may not sever the connection with the world. I even believe that the deeper one is drawn into God, the more one must “go out of oneself,” that is, one must go to the world in order to carry the divine life into it. [Source]

I see that same tension between sacred and secular in Dominic Savio’s experience, as when Don Bosco writes of how the saint reacted when he was prevented from taking on extreme penances:

[One] day I came across [Dominic] looking somewhat sad, and I asked him what was the matter. He replied: “You’ve got me in a real bind. Our Blessed Lord says that if I don’t do penance I will not get to heaven. I am forbidden to do any penance; what chance then have I of heaven?”

I explained to him that the penance Jesus wanted from him was complete obedience,; obey and that’s enough.

“Can’t I do some other penance?”

“Yes, you can allow yourself the penance of being patient with others and the unpleasant things of life; to accept equally the heat and the cold and the rain; to be cheerful when tired and not feeling so well and so on.”

“But,” said Dominic, “these things come to you whether you like it or not.”

“Precisely,” I replied, “offer them willingly to God; there is nothing that will please him more, and you will be doing real penance.” Thus reassured, Dominic was very happy and completely at peace.

When I see the maturity with which Dominic accepted Don Bosco’s correction—not with blind submission, but with a sincere desire for holiness at all costs—I begin to understand how he was able to attain such a high level of sanctity in such a short life.

Another reason I admire Dominic is that he was able to passionately throw himself into becoming a saint as only a boy could.

It is important to note that this is not a Peter Pan approach to holiness. Dominic is not “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.”

Peter Pan is self-made. He concocts fantasies of his own and then seeks to reify them.

Dominic Savio, by contrast, is always looking upward and outward to God. He sees Jesus and wants to receive his own identity from Jesus as a gift. He is immersed in the real world, the world that has been given to us by the Father who created us. He rejoices in his identity in Christ.

Witness Dominic’s response to a boy who tries to convince him to join in dressing in a Halloween-style getup, as Don Bosco narrates:

On one occasion a companion wanted Dominic to go with him and dress up. Dominic would not go, and said to the boy: “Would you really like to be what you are going to dress up as—two horns, a big nose and a clown’s costume”?

“Of course not,” replied the other.

“Well, why make yourself look like something you would not want to be and in addition deface the nice face that God has given you?”

Finally, I see in Dominic Savio a kindred spirit because he, like me, suffered evil things from people who took advantage of his vulnerability and innocence.

Don Bosco’s Life of Dominic Savio tells of three such incidents. On one occasion, Dominic is traumatized when some of his schoolmates tried to show him pornographic pictures in a magazine. He tears up the magazine angrily, prompting one of the schoolmates to protest, [There] is nothing wrong in looking at pictures like that.”

Dominic responds by calling out the schoolmate for his lack of sensitivity to sin: “If that is really so, it means that your eyes are already used to looking at such horrors.”

Another time, Dominic intervened to protect Oratory schoolmates from a strange man who entered their playground and mesmerized them with blasphemous stories:

Dominic came along and as soon as he grasped what was going on, cried out: “Come on, let’s get away from this unfortunate man who wants to ruin us”.

The spell was broken and all the boys, obedient to a friend whom they loved and respected, scattered, leaving the man talking to the wind. He was never seen again.

Today we would say that the man’s actions were grooming behavior. Dominic protected the boys against the predator.

The third such occasion took place earlier in Dominic’s life, when he was about ten years old. Some boys invited him to go swimming, and Dominic saw something that deeply disturbed him. Don Bosco does not say what it was, but he notes pointedly that bathing can have “dangers for the soul in certain circumstances, when boys are stripped together and have little care and respect for each other.”

Whatever it was that Dominic saw on the swimming excursion, Bosco says that “he was profoundly grieved and made up his mind never to go again.”

In My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints, I write about another young saint, Karolina Kozka, who was martyred at the age of sixteen while resisting sexual assault. An official from the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints told me that it has never been definitively established as to whether Kozka’s attacker raped her before killing her; in any case, her unquestionable sanctity assures her a place among the Church’s holy ones. And I observe that

if there were a saint whom we knew for certain was raped, our knowledge of that rape would be, in itself, a kind of intrusion into the saint’s private sphere. The very mystery surrounding the question of what was or was not done to Karolina serves to protect her personal dignity.

That is how I feel about what Dominic Savio may have seen, or not seen, when he went swimming with the boys at the age of ten. What happened to him will always be a mystery, yet one that preserves his modesty, enabling us to treat him with the reverence in death that he was not always granted in life.

At the same time, what we do know about the things Dominic endured is that he he was not always respected and was not always protected. He is therefore a friend and spiritual brother to all who have been mistreated, especially those who suffered in childhood, and his close friendship with Jesus and Mary points the way to healing.

So you can see now why I turned to St. Dominic Savio when I wanted to spread my book‘s message of healing for adults who have suffered childhood sexual abuse, and why he remains an inspiration as I continue my own journey of healing in Christ.