Author: salesianstudies
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Lenten Special: The Last Things, Death, Evil, and Sin
PDF – DB Study Guide – March 2012 As we enter into Lent, this issue of the Don Bosco Study Guide will look at Don Bosco’s religiosity and his pivotal understanding of the last things, death, evil, and sin. It is difficult to confine a study of Don Bosco’s educational system to a few topics. The approach to …
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Political Climate of Don Bosco’s Day
PDF – DB Study Guide – February 2012 This issue looks at stages of Don Bosco’s lived experience, his view of the Vow of Obedience, & Important political figures in Don Bosco’s times. For the late Fr. Michael Ribotta, and investigation into the figure of Don Bosco would be incomplete without a thorough understanding of the…
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The Gift of Understanding
PDF – DB Study Guide – January 2012 This issue of the Don Bosco Study Guide continues to look at the person of Don Bosco. We begin with reflections written by the great Salesian historian Fr. Pietro Stella. Fr. Stella gave us a critical historical analysis of Don Bosco from many vantage points. We will summarize Fr. Stella’s examination of…
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God is in the Mess
-Fr. John Roche, SDB I don’t know about you, but every Advent and Christmas season reawakens inside my heart the desire for the perfect Christmas, the perfect family celebration or the greatest and most meaningful spiritual experience of the Incarnation. Swinging from the secular to the religious, the longing is all the same. Madison Avenue…
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Don Bosco’s Mentors and Spiritual Friends
PDF – DB Study Guide – November 2011 Don Bosco’s Mentor’s and Spiritual Friends Befriending the interior life …We turn our attention to the special and formative relationship with Luigi Comollo, Don Bosco’s closest school-time friend. It is no small detail that Saint John Bosco would enshine the friendship he shared with luigi Comollo in one of…
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Don Bosco’s History
PDF – DB Study Guide – October 2011 This first study guide revisits Don Bosco’s story, as well as focus’ on his personal experience of accompaniment. The sources we have are amazing! The saint is so close to our own history that we have the richness of his own words, a plethora of eye-witnesses, chroniclers of many…
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Where are Our Young People?
-Fr. John Roche, SDB I will not be surprised if the present generation of young people coming of age will go down as the most researched and studied generation of any to date. For the most part, the studies are encouraging. The work of William Strauss and Neil Howe raised the bar with their study…
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When Innocent Children are Caught in the Cross-Fire
-Fr. John Roche, SDB It happened again. An innocent child is caught in the cross-fire of urban gang wars and a community is rocked to the core. People of faith question deeply, ministers fumble for words, and the pain only widens. Where is God in all of this? I remember questioning God in a similar…
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It is Who is Inside that Counts
-Fr. John Roche, SDB Browsing for a greeting card some years ago, I came upon a section of cards that had no particular greeting on the inside. These cards were labeled “Birthday, blank inside” or “Thank You, blank inside,” etc. I took a moment or two to linger in this aisle looking at the various…