Getting to know...... history or hagiography?

ROME -- 22 January would normally be the memorial of Blessed Laura Vicuña, but as it is also the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, it will be passed over in most places. Were you aware that just some months back, photos were unearthed that were potentially real photos of the young girl in question, and after a serious investigation and research by competent historians and the help of the Chilean Police department, finally declared as such.  Compare the 'real' Laura with the hagiographical depiction!

Which brings us back to the major theme intoduced by this year's Strenna, and foremost in the minds of the Salesian Family as it concludes, in Rome, the 30th Salesian Family Spirituality Days: Coming to know, getting to know, Don Bosco's life-story.  The Rector Major has been insistent that this is both an act of head and heart, but at the centre of it lie the Memoirs of the Oratory, Don Bosco's own summation of things as he saw them around 1875 - except that it's much more than a 'summation', it is a heart-tugging appeal to his 'dear sons', and 'memories of the future' as Braido so neatly put it.

As people move into the novena for the great Feast on 31 January (you recall the resources offered in an earlier austraLasia), there are two more resources that you may find useful not just for the novena period but throughout the year.

The first set of resources is the collection of major talks given over these days in Rome.  One or two of them are of extraordinary interest to us. The presentation of the MO as a handbook of pedagogy and spirituality is one of these - by Fr Aldo Giraudo.  The other you might want to consider is Fr Bruno Ferrero's 'wander' through many of the formerly well-known anecdotes about Don Bosco. I say 'formerly', because the Biographical Memoirs are often considered as more along the hagiographical lines than the real ones these days. What Bruno does is to recover one very distinct and real fact that is of value today - that not all truth is propositional!  That narrative truth is valuable and that we can glimpse Don Bosco through this means.

Anyway, this set of resources and several others besides, is available directly at this link in SDL.

The other resource you may find useful is the January 2012  Don Bosco Study Guide that comes from DB Hall Berkeley.  This link will take you to that but will also produce the material from the previous link, since I've taken it from the 'date' tab this time, and it all belongs to January 2012.